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I’m not sure how I see this as a problem. Software is complex, costly, and time-consuming. Perhaps some individuals are altruistic enough to take it on themsel

I’m not sure how I see this as a problem. Software is complex, costly, and time-consuming. Perhaps some individuals are altruistic enough to take it on themselves without some sort of monitization, but in a capitalistic society, most open-source will tend towards profitability (in some avenue). And that’s just fine with me. We all have benefited greatly from the model.

volaski 9y ago
This is a problem because it results in vendors with huge budget to dominate the open source space. This in itself is fine, but the side effect is that it discourages all the grass roots innovations that could have happened, and effectively kills off all the small time competition with no budget. normally these large vendors have every interest to stay away from implementing anything that undermines their power in the ecosystem. When that happens, people can “fork” out of the project since it’s open, you may say. But imagine even thinking about forming something like react.js or tensorflow. Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. So I think the problem with these large vendors dominating open source is that when things come to this state, we don’t have an alternative and everyone is locked into the “open source” projects given to us by those small number of companies. Not so much different from their own services dominating consumer market share.
- nordsieck 9y ago
  > the side effect is that it discourages all the grass roots innovations that could have happened > people can “fork” out of the project since it’s open [but] Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. You don't get to have it both ways. Either: 1. There are (potential) projects being stifled by big money, but forking those projects is easier than starting from scratch. or 2. The scale of software is simply too big for hobbyists so there's no real stifling going on and forks are too hard.
- dreamfactored 9y ago
  >But imagine even thinking about forming something like react.js or tensorflow. Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. See Linux
watwut 9y ago
Altruistic individuals still need to eat and pay rent. And if they have full time job, then they have few hours max for open source. Larger project being sponsored by a company or having some kind of monetization seems inevitability to me. In the long term, open source developer is hungry too.

volaski 9y ago

This is a problem because it results in vendors with huge budget to dominate the open source space. This in itself is fine, but the side effect is that it discourages all the grass roots innovations that could have happened, and effectively kills off all the small time competition with no budget. normally these large vendors have every interest to stay away from implementing anything that undermines their power in the ecosystem. When that happens, people can “fork” out of the project since it’s open, you may say. But imagine even thinking about forming something like react.js or tensorflow. Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. So I think the problem with these large vendors dominating open source is that when things come to this state, we don’t have an alternative and everyone is locked into the “open source” projects given to us by those small number of companies. Not so much different from their own services dominating consumer market share.

nordsieck 9y ago
> the side effect is that it discourages all the grass roots innovations that could have happened > people can “fork” out of the project since it’s open [but] Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. You don't get to have it both ways. Either: 1. There are (potential) projects being stifled by big money, but forking those projects is easier than starting from scratch. or 2. The scale of software is simply too big for hobbyists so there's no real stifling going on and forks are too hard.
dreamfactored 9y ago
>But imagine even thinking about forming something like react.js or tensorflow. Unless you have very strong motivation it would be very discouraging to even start. See Linux

watwut 9y ago

Altruistic individuals still need to eat and pay rent. And if they have full time job, then they have few hours max for open source. Larger project being sponsored by a company or having some kind of monetization seems inevitability to me. In the long term, open source developer is hungry too.