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Open source doesn't work and I'm glad the world is starting to understand. It promotes unfair compensation (or lack thereof). If you have the skills to advance

Open source doesn't work and I'm glad the world is starting to understand. It promotes unfair compensation (or lack thereof). If you have the skills to advance technology and no capital to invest to acquire other technical solutions you may need, you can get a job and use that money to pay what Expecting free work from people rarely work, there are just not enough motivated individuals willing to work and maintain something for free. Most open source I rely on is either backed by a giant company which uses it as a way to attract talents (and retain talents, by letting their employee work on their favourite project on company time) or it's unmaintained. If it's unmaintained I either need to do the work myself or hire someone, which introduces a myriad of variables. I'd rather hire the author but often he's busy with his real job and doesn't think he can live off its project. If it wasn't for the OSS movement and the sheer amount of free work we would have a network of company buying OSS solutions and, most likely, more distributed, smaller companies that produce and resell proprietary software.

nine_k 6y ago
Why, open source does work: look at Linux, Webkit, Postgres, LLVM, any programming language with wide adoption, every serious Web framework. But open source does not necessarily mean: - that the bulk of the work is done by people at their leisure, unpaid; - that commercial use for free is necessarily easy or possible; dual licensing has a long history. - that large companies have no interest in maintaining, advancing, financing, or starting open-source projects: currently the opposite is true.
argomo 6y ago
I think you've successfully argued against your own point. With open source, developers are paid for ∆V -- the amount of value added to a project. Companies are paid $0 in most models but it's backed by a monetization model that's non-zero. Basically, more work == more value == more pay. With proprietary software, developers are still paid ∆V, but companies are paid for V∆t -- value times the duration of usage. While some of this is just compensation for risking investor money, the ultimate model is rent-seeking and lock-in. This is extractive because the company keeps getting paid even when they don't add value. You may raise concern that volunteer developers don't get compensation, but use that a problem for a voluntary activity? People program as a hobby, to scratch an itch, to develop mastery, to solve a problem they already have, to advance an ideology, or for a chance at recognition/popularity. Only that last one is anything near a problem, and it's the same boat as first time authors or artists.

nine_k 6y ago

Why, open source does work: look at Linux, Webkit, Postgres, LLVM, any programming language with wide adoption, every serious Web framework. But open source does not necessarily mean: - that the bulk of the work is done by people at their leisure, unpaid; - that commercial use for free is necessarily easy or possible; dual licensing has a long history. - that large companies have no interest in maintaining, advancing, financing, or starting open-source projects: currently the opposite is true.

argomo 6y ago

I think you've successfully argued against your own point. With open source, developers are paid for ∆V -- the amount of value added to a project. Companies are paid $0 in most models but it's backed by a monetization model that's non-zero. Basically, more work == more value == more pay. With proprietary software, developers are still paid ∆V, but companies are paid for V∆t -- value times the duration of usage. While some of this is just compensation for risking investor money, the ultimate model is rent-seeking and lock-in. This is extractive because the company keeps getting paid even when they don't add value. You may raise concern that volunteer developers don't get compensation, but use that a problem for a voluntary activity? People program as a hobby, to scratch an itch, to develop mastery, to solve a problem they already have, to advance an ideology, or for a chance at recognition/popularity. Only that last one is anything near a problem, and it's the same boat as first time authors or artists.