Foundations are founded for a purpose though — to do work nobody wants to do as well as to do PR for the movement/idea. This blog kinda compares apples to oranges.
None of the foundations are working towards their purpose. I don’t see FSF advocating vehemently for libre office or Linux Foundation asking people to install linux on their desktops. Only the community is doing the efforts, people are advocating open source themselves, not any foundation.
But they do though. You’re aware that the whole GNU project including C compiler is under FSF, right? FSF is also funding free software education through free resources, public talks and so on.
Linux Foundation is not linux desktop foundation, their goal is attract corporations to use linux kernel. What you’re looking for here is Gnome and KDE foundations which are doing amazing work.
Foundations are about strength in numbers.
I don’t see FSF advocating vehemently for libre office
Actually the FSF does advocate for prominent free software apps, including LibreOffice. But the point of the FSF is to advocate for the free software movement in general, not specific projects. I agree, you should support specific projects by actually supporting those projects directly; that’s not the place of the FSF and one should not donate to FSF with the expectation that it’s going towards LibreOffice or some other project.
There’s more to the free software world than individual projects, and more to the free software world than developers.
(Edit: Not to mention, that open source and free software are distinct philosophies, and one of the things the FSF has to do is explain the difference. Of course, you are not helping “open source” by supporting the FSF because the FSF is not an open source advocacy organization)
If it were that easy. As a developer I’m happy these (and other) foundations exist, because they do the work I don’t want to do, couldn’t do - or simply wouldn’t want to waste my time on: taxes, legal advice, sending out donation receipts, handling of a non-profit legal status. All the overhead that comes with being able to legally accept donations in the first place.
My problem is that foundations are often 501’s, so I can submit my donation to be matched from my company. I think it just makes sense to do that and unfortunately, direct mutual aid and funding indie developers does not offer that same level of extra cash
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