My immediate question to that CEO would be, "OK, so what is it you're marketing?" In the case of open-source software, they're probably marketing consulting, b

My immediate question to that CEO would be, "OK, so what is it you're marketing?" In the case of open-source software, they're probably marketing consulting, books, training. (I think conferences would likely be part of the marketing.) And that, folks, is how we end up with those crapulacious open-source software tools (libraries, whatever) that are deliberately incomprehensible to anybody outside the producer bubble. e.g. Bouncy Castle: Utterly shite API to the point of unusable, despite the undoubtedly well done implementation underneath; completely absent documentation in any useful/usable form. Everything around it is just, "Buy our books, come on our courses if you want to use this library." The code itself is obfuscatory. Not a design document or user-guide in sight. (Other examples abound. I just pick on the one that burned me the worst.) So, back to music. How is this a good result for the "market"? We end up with a flume of mediocre-to-crap music (but frequently! as if that's a good thing all by itself) all in the name of marketing,... what precisely? Where's the passion gone? Where's the art? Where's the music I'll listen to over and over again for decades?