follow the money, especially in opensource

From the «money talks, bullshit walks» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: Follow the money, especially in open source
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:27:46 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/145548/follow-the-money-especially-in-open-source/

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel and git, is employed by
the Linux Foundation[1]. This Foundation is a non-profit organisation
dedicated to, as the name obviously implies, the promotion of Linux. The
primary use of the funds it collects is to “help fund the infrastructure
and fellows, including Linus Torvalds, who help develop the Linux
kernel”. The list of megacorporations donating most of the Foundation’s
funds is long.

The Linux Foundation has twelve platinum members[2], which donate
$500000 per year, followed by twelve gold members, who donate $100000
per year. Below these two primary tiers lie the silver peasants, who
each donate $5000-$25000 per year, based on number of employees. Looking
at the list of twelve platinum members, I noticed something interesting.

Of the twelve platinum companies, six are “AI” companies or companies
with massive investments in “AI”: Google, Huawei, Facebook, Microsoft,
Oracle, and IBM/Red Hat. Then there’s Samsung Electronics, which is
raking in stupendous amounts of money[3] thanks to the “AI” bubble.
Additionally, one of the gold members is Anthropic, another major “AI”
company and makers of “Claude”, the sloppiest of slopcoding tools.

Many of these companies are unimaginably deep in the red[4] when it
comes to “AI”, with very little indication they’re ever going to be able
to recover any of it[5]. The situation is particularly bad for Oracle
and IBM/Red Hat. Oracle’s debt has been downgraded to one notch above
junk status[6] because of its “AI” spending, while IBM’s shares
experienced the largest crash in its 115 year history[7] only a few days
ago. By the way, in the first half of 2025, “AI-related capital
expenditures contributed 1.1% to [US] GDP growth[8], outpacing the U.S.
consumer as an engine of expansion”.

Fun fact: since most of The Netherlands is effectively a swamp, most of
the country’s buildings are built on massive wooden or concrete poles
(piles) hammered deep into the ground[9] until they hit something more
stable than mushy clay and wet sand. Otherwise, buildings in the country
would simply sink into the ground. Every Dutch person who ever lived
near a construction site has heard the rhythmic kathunk, kathunk,
kathunk, all day long, as the massive piledriver machines spread their
gospel. I guess something reminded me of this just now.

Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald’s employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical and
often downright hostile towards “AI”[10] to spend money on “AI” before
the bubble bursts.

For some reason, I thought this was interesting[11].

Links:
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation (link)
[2]: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members (link)
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kyy8yrpxdo (link)
[4]: https://isaiprofitable.com/ (link)
[5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/business/ai-spending-oracle-stocks-bonds.html (link)
[6]: https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/sourceId/101695609 (link)
[7]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/07/14/ibm-shares-crashed-25-in-worst-day-ever-heres-why/ (link)
[8]: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/market-updates/on-the-minds-of-investors/is-ai-already-driving-us-growth/ (link)
[9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piling (link)
[10]: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/hate-ai-more-ice-poll (link)
[11]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-understand-something (link)