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Reading blog posts from Aaron or Jos, I notice there has been a discussion lately about corporate sponsorship and how that may influence the direction taken by KDE.

Also, I noticed some messages in identi.ca from Jos about FSF and FSFE. That prompted a small exchange between him and me, and it was also the trigger for this post, which is a very personal opinion piece about corporations and free software projects.

I believe that free software has two main drivers to it. First, software development and usage. The possibility to use, and eventually modify and extend software any way you want, which is mostly just a technical aspect of the way we use technology for our own profit and leisure.Then you have the free, and in the case of free software, it is "free as in speech",  the freedom to use and utilize software as we like. That freedom is put into question when a free software engages a corporation.

We have organizations like the FSF and FSFE, which are mostly legal organizations, which some see are "ideological purity watchdogs" and "extremists". Whenever a company comes up with a product or service which is "ideologically dubious", we have these watchdogs reminding us why we shouldn't deal until it comes up with a "really free" service or product. And of course when that happens, we have pragmatic people saying we should disregard these loonies. I'm somewhere in-between those positions, but I lean more to the "loonies" side.

Call it personal history, innate distrust or what have you, I don't trust corporations. I believe in incentives. I believe that whenever you have big incentives to do something, and the punishments for doing it in a cheap, illegal or unethical are small, you will get a lot of cheap, illegal and unethical behaviour. Since you can't imprison corporations, punishments are mostly economical, be it fines or else, but they have proven to be ineffective agains big transnational corporations.

Even "do no evil" corporations screw up sometimes, and play with our data for their own profit, until users riot and get them back to their senses. So, what can you expect from corporations who have called us, free software users, a lot of bad names like cancer virus, pirates, and even, oh no, communists? Can you believe a corporation that uses free software but never mentions it does? One that locks you up into their format, and doesn't even provide a suitable player for it on your platform of choice, and hides security bugs from until the very last minute? One that only provides security one tuesday every month? One that won't even let you develop for it unless you use the software and hardware they see fit? All those are valid business models, just not in the free software world.

Of course, now that "open source" seems to be the buzzword of choice by the pointy-haired bosses around the world, the PR machines of these corporations now try to look like "open source friendly". They might even setup a website where you can download the source for some crappy feature that you wouldn't need unless you buy their software.

So, are any of these corporations worthy of my trust? Hell no. They have called me names, threatened with lawsuits, and even forbidden their employees to talk to me. Why should I trust them, or even give them the benefit of the doubt when I see their PR machines doing exactly as their disclosed "Evangelist manual" say they should do to take over us?

If you partner with such companies, shame on you. You know they will screw you and everyone else when the time is right. It would be much more honest to offer your body for sale on the red light district. At least you could tell when you'll get hit.

And then we have companies like Google, Canonical, IBM, Nokia, et al. They are good "corporate citizens" within the free software, yet all of them need to be kept in check from time to time. They need to be reminded that it's not all about profit. There is a gold standard of ideological purity maintained by the loonies, which most companies will never achieve, but which we should hold them to and remind them from time to time how they are doing. Because, either by mistake or malice, everyone will toward easy money, and will forget there people behind this. We have to be there to remind them of that, and not let them slip because they offer "oh another shiny feature!" and it is so cool. Even if they just offered our personal data to the next internet scammer.

With that said, it is of course hard to have a project depend on only one donor. Sooner or later you will find yourself between your principles and your paycheck. And principles are not something you can buy back. The new KDE supporters program is a good step to avoid that, and to grow even more in the future. It is great to see smart moves like this, thinking ahead.

And all along the way, we should be open about what we are doing. Corporations have a tendency toward secrets. Again, we should not lose our nature when dealing with them and should continue to do our business in the way that's worked for us. Adapting is good, bending over is not, no matter what the pragmatics will tell you. If we are open, if we offer a good roadmap and with good quality, they will come. But they have to know that some conditions are not up for negotiation, no matter the price. Then, keep doing it long enough, and people will start thinking things were always that way. :D