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I think a better explanation for this is the tragedy of the commons. Do companies want open source software contributions to keep up? Yeah. As long as those
by j_baker 16y ago
I think a better explanation for this is the tragedy of the commons. Do companies want open source software contributions to keep up? Yeah. As long as those contributions are made on someone else's time.
- astrofinch 16y agoSo why wasn't this true in the past?
- mtts 16y agoThe tragedy of the commons is a myth. It doesn't exist. If it's truly "common" the companies that have an interest in it contribute and, guess what, that's exactly what they're doing: IBM, Oracle, Redhat: everyone pays to have Linux developed. The problem is that a lot of these "product people" don't perceive themselves as being part of "the commons". To them a lot of open source software is simply something that for some reason exists and can be had for free, not something that took effort to build. To illustrate that the tragedy of the commons really is a myth, consider the recent complaints against Ubuntu: they were found to be freeloading on the commons of desktop Linux and were reprimanded for it by the other contributors and users of that commons. What did emphatically not happen is that other contributors followed their example. Red Hat continues to develop Gnome, for example, even though they know their work will be profited from by Ubuntu without Ubuntu contributing something back.