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As others have noted, the article is based on a study that only looked at a small subject of OSS projects, so it's not very solid. But the results fit with man

As others have noted, the article is based on a study that only looked at a small subject of OSS projects, so it's not very solid. But the results fit with many commenters' perceptions. It's surprising that so little is known about the dynamics of how OSS gets written, given how crucially important it is to the global economy these days. (Even) more broadly; I wonder if a similar system will wind up dominating in some fields of science. There's been a bunch of cases where prominent research papers in AI or biomedicine have been published by entirely for-profit companies; one supposes they benefit in the same fashion that more traditional software companies benefit from publishing open source work, namely by building a reputation and cultivating a larger ecosystem around their expertise.

dnomad 8y ago
Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology corporations have banded together to give away billions of dollars of software completely for free. It is, I suspect, the greatest act of charity our planet has ever known. It's not difficult to see how virtually all of the major trends from the rise of China to the ever expanding proliferation of smartphones and IoT are being driven by this. The disconnect between the narrative around technology companies and and the reality is due to a severe cultural blindspot. It would simply never occur to most people that private companies would compete to give way most of their products. Even people who should know better don't want to admit that much of the software they consume (for absolutely zero dollars!) is provided by the same companies they love to whine about. We seem to be missing a whole new phase of capitalism happening right under our noses and there's really not enough research into it.

dnomad 8y ago

Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology corporations have banded together to give away billions of dollars of software completely for free. It is, I suspect, the greatest act of charity our planet has ever known. It's not difficult to see how virtually all of the major trends from the rise of China to the ever expanding proliferation of smartphones and IoT are being driven by this. The disconnect between the narrative around technology companies and and the reality is due to a severe cultural blindspot. It would simply never occur to most people that private companies would compete to give way most of their products. Even people who should know better don't want to admit that much of the software they consume (for absolutely zero dollars!) is provided by the same companies they love to whine about. We seem to be missing a whole new phase of capitalism happening right under our noses and there's really not enough research into it.