On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 02:00:53PM -0700, Steven Bosscher wrote: > Perhaps it was true more 12 years ago than today. The whole idea of > FOSS is probably better understood than 12 years ago. At least, > projects like Linux and LLVM attract contributions from large > companies without involvement of the FSF.
Linux has the Linux Foundation signing Linus's paycheck. Many other large free software projects have some kind of foundation; others are the captive of one company (e.g. OpenOffice.org). If Linus were to accept employment from Red Hat or Novell, there would be a massive stink and we'd see the old Unix wars (OSF vs AT&T/Sun, etc) all over again. Thinks haven't changed that much; having a neutral body helps a lot.
