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Linux was started by someone because they could, not because they were paid. Sure, if a project (like Linux) gets big enough, corporations will throw money at d

Linux was started by someone because they could, not because they were paid. Sure, if a project (like Linux) gets big enough, corporations will throw money at developers who work on it, but by and large, FOSS is done by unpaid people. If the majority were paid, GIMP would be on par with Photoshop, Inkscape with Illustrator, etc. But they’re not on par because they don’t have corporations throwing millions of dollars at them like Adobe does.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Have you ever been somewhere like FOSDEM? Next time walk around and ask people if this is their full time job. In most of the rooms I’m in, it’s everyone’s corporate full time job and they’re there on corporate expense accounts. It’s just not the case that most projects are just random hobbies these days, and it’s bad for the movement to keep pretending it is. It’s grown up and corporations invested - that’s a good thing!
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  No. I haven’t been to FOSDEM and I’d bet the majority of FOSS developers haven’t. And that’s the point. Just because you experience a lot of people getting paid to do it doesn’t mean “the vast majority” are. I guess we’re just arguing past each other. I agree it’s good to recognize money in the industry (many have an aversion to it because of EEE fears), and I also agree that the majority of successful projects are done by paid people. I guess that’s the disconnect: I’m looking at all projects, not just the successful ones.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    The term "EEE" gets misused so often that it has lost most of its original meaning. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" refers to a specific strategy by Microsoft to make incompatible software and push competitors out of the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Taking money does not lead to EEE unless you're taking it for the explicit purpose of making incompatible software. (A person with anti-competitive attitudes doesn't actually need to take money to do this, but it probably helps) The aversion to money is likely coming from somewhere else.
mamon 6y ago
>> corporations will throw money at developers who work on it, but by and large, FOSS is done by unpaid people Money thrown by corporations is what separates successful projects, like Linux, or Apache Spark, or Postgres from niche things that no one knows or care about. Another common scenario is big corpo developing software for internal use, and then open sourcing it, so that volunteers can do maintenance (e.g. Kubernetes)

chrisseaton 6y ago

Have you ever been somewhere like FOSDEM? Next time walk around and ask people if this is their full time job. In most of the rooms I’m in, it’s everyone’s corporate full time job and they’re there on corporate expense accounts. It’s just not the case that most projects are just random hobbies these days, and it’s bad for the movement to keep pretending it is. It’s grown up and corporations invested - that’s a good thing!

colejohnson66 6y ago
No. I haven’t been to FOSDEM and I’d bet the majority of FOSS developers haven’t. And that’s the point. Just because you experience a lot of people getting paid to do it doesn’t mean “the vast majority” are. I guess we’re just arguing past each other. I agree it’s good to recognize money in the industry (many have an aversion to it because of EEE fears), and I also agree that the majority of successful projects are done by paid people. I guess that’s the disconnect: I’m looking at all projects, not just the successful ones.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  The term "EEE" gets misused so often that it has lost most of its original meaning. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" refers to a specific strategy by Microsoft to make incompatible software and push competitors out of the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Taking money does not lead to EEE unless you're taking it for the explicit purpose of making incompatible software. (A person with anti-competitive attitudes doesn't actually need to take money to do this, but it probably helps) The aversion to money is likely coming from somewhere else.

mamon 6y ago

>> corporations will throw money at developers who work on it, but by and large, FOSS is done by unpaid people Money thrown by corporations is what separates successful projects, like Linux, or Apache Spark, or Postgres from niche things that no one knows or care about. Another common scenario is big corpo developing software for internal use, and then open sourcing it, so that volunteers can do maintenance (e.g. Kubernetes)