All this talk about ethics, open, and free brings another angle to mind folks like Cantrill seem to be ignoring and therefore misrepresenting what they are achi

All this talk about ethics, open, and free brings another angle to mind folks like Cantrill seem to be ignoring and therefore misrepresenting what they are achieving in at least U.S.. I used to push for OSS/FOSS in the past. Now I’m switching to hybrids. The reason is that encouraging people to play “give it all away” or “use low-revenue models” in a capitalist country where opponents of freedom make billions of dollars for their software shifted all the money (and therefore power) to the latter. They then paid off politicians and used pricey lawyers to win more power against OSS/FOSS in ways they couldn’t fight against without piles of money. This includes ability to patent/copyright troll users of open/free software and especially Oracle’s API ruling which jeopardizes OSS/FOSS, backwards-compatible implementations of anything that had a proprietary API. From what I see, OSS/FOSS have done great things but are a fundamentally-flawed model in a capitalist country where money wins. As many as possible need to be charging by default both to support contributors and send money/power the other way. They and FOSS-using companies that don’t depend on patent/copyright money need to pool money together to fight legal advances of patent/copyright-trolling companies that want lock-in. Otherwise, in a game where only one side is playing for keeps, the OSS/FOSS groups keep losing by default software freedoms and ability to enforce their licenses while preaching that they’re maintaining them. Seems dishonest. Also, strange I almost never read about these issues in FOSS writers articles about business model and licensing recommendations. Far as hybrids, I can’t give you the answer yet since it’s too soon. For FOSS, I’m looking at Open Core and Dual-Licensing with strongest copyleft available. For non-FOSS, Source-available from public-benefit companies and nonprofits chartered to implement most software freedoms for customers on top of free for non-commercial or under certain use. These freedoms and justifications would also be in licenses and contracts with huge penalties for non-compliance for extra layers of defense. Maybe expire into FOSS after certain time passes or revenue threshold. We need more experimentation that lets companies currently supplying or later releasing as FOSS to get millions to hundreds of millions in revenue collectively to fight this battle. Again, it’s not optional: the other side is actively fighting to remove software freedom inch by inch. And mostly winning despite FOSS organizations’ little victories. Edit: Added a few specifics for hybrid model in this follow-up: https://lobste.rs/s/kbcjnx/open_source_confronts_its_midlife_crisis#c_yokqtn https://lobste.rs/s/kbcjnx/open_source_confronts_its_midlife...