Tonight Julie blogged Luke Timmerman's article in yesterday's Seattle Times: Progress, not profit: Nonprofit biotech research groups grow in size, influence, which is about the rise of non profit organizations as driving forces in Seattle's biotech industry.

In software, we are starting to see some similar ideas. We have some foundations: the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the Mozilla Foundation (MF), the Open Software Applications Foundation (OSAF), the Python Software Foundation (PSF), and the Jabber Foundation (JF) come easily to mind. The foundations vary. OSAF and MF are actually supporting staff to work on their projects (I think FSF is doing some of thus but not as much). The ASF and PSF are not doing this -- the ASF does have companies contributing developers but that's not quite the same, and Guido van Rossum has to keep changing day jobs to put food on the table.

Could such an idea work for software? It will be interesting to watch the OSAF and MF over the next few years. In software, we have a culture of "he who has the idea should get rich off it". But that also leads to short term thinking about many of the problems that we are facing. Is this article pre-figuring the future of software foundations?