Subject: Re: Are there any publicly known funders (companies or otherwise) of git development?

From: "brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 21:02:46 +0000

On 2021-03-19 at 19:31:56, Christian Chavez wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Idle curiosity question - stemming from an argument with somewhat
> inebriated co-worker(s):
> > How is the Git development (being an open-source product) pro bono? Done for free?
> 
> Or is there any (publically known - not just an employee "randomly"
> being told to upstream a bugfix) funded effort?
> Such as with the Linux kernel project - where companies/organizations
> put up money for X amount of time/efforts/projects?

There are people in the Git development community who usually work on
Git most or full time as part of their role.  That doesn't mean those
patches immediately make it to the list (oftentimes they are tested and
deployed internally first), but they do generally work on Git most of
the time and their patches do eventually show up on the list.

There are also people who work on Git with their employer's 20% time.  I
believe we have several such contributors here in this case.

There are also people like me who usually contribute independently.  I
have sent patches upstream that directly benefit my employer by fixing a
direct need (in some cases written during work hours, in some cases not,
depending on my employer at the time), but the vast majority of my work
is independent and done on my own time.  There are others who just
contribute independently altogether because they enjoy it.

I would say that of the top 20 contributors historically, I know that 4
fit into the first category, 2 fit into the second category, and 3 more
have some other corporate affiliation known to me (but not into what
category they fall).  There are others who have more recent
contributions who are also known to send patches on behalf of their
employer.  I just don't know about the rest, mostly because it hasn't
come up in context and it's never been important to me.

There are some employers that are well known to employ people in the
first and second categories, as well as some that are known to have
staff that send patches on behalf of their employer.

Hopefully that answers your question reasonably well, even if it's a
little vague because I lack all the details.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US