Future of OSU Open Source Lab in Jeopardy

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Impact on Students and Open Source Ecosystem

  • Many commenters say working at OSUOSL was transformative early-career experience, especially for sysadmin/devops/SRE skills with real production systems.
  • Alumni are seen as “top notch” hires, often graduating with years of hands-on experience; one YC company is cited as being founded by alumni.
  • Numerous projects (e.g., Mozilla-era Firefox/Thunderbird, GHC, OpenStreetMap, OpenSCAD, Vagrant/Packer, Debian/Fedora ports) benefited from hosting, mirrors, or CI on unusual architectures.
  • Several describe OSUOSL as a “crown jewel” of OSU and unusually high leverage relative to its size and cost.

Salary and Budget Debate

  • Initial confusion: some thought $150k was 60% of one staffer’s time; others clarify it’s ~60% of the budget and likely a fully loaded cost (salary + ~40% benefits, payroll taxes, etc.).
  • Opinions on whether $150k is “excessive” diverge:
    • Many say it’s modest for a senior engineer/sole full-time staffer running the lab, mentoring students, fundraising, etc., especially with 17+ years’ experience.
    • A few, especially from lower-paid regions or roles, react that it’s high and wonder why not “two cheaper people”; others respond that you simply can’t hire equivalent talent for that.
  • Some push back against blanket criticism of nonprofit salaries, distinguishing between overpaid executives and fairly paid technical staff.

University Funding, Endowments, and Constraints

  • Commenters note OSU’s sizable endowment/foundation but explain most funds are tightly earmarked; not a free “slush fund.”
  • There is speculation (not confirmed) that broader shifts in federal/university funding priorities are behind the cut.

Corporate Sponsorship and Responsibility

  • Many argue that cloud and big tech firms—who rely heavily on OSS—should easily cover a $250k gap. Names like Google, IBM, ARM, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and others are mentioned.
  • Some note that bandwidth, hardware, and some infra are already donated, but cash to pay staff is missing.

Services, Costs, and Donations

  • People are surprised how much infra is run on a small cash budget; explanation: many costs (bandwidth, some hardware) are donated.
  • Practical donation tips are shared: use OSU Foundation, explicitly select “Open Source Lab Fund,” and beware of mailing-list fallout; some suggest email filtering tricks.
  • Several readers report donating and encourage others to do so.