> Open source contributors give away a lot of value, since if everyone had to re-create their work (including its dependencies, its dependencies' dependencies,

> Open source contributors give away a lot of value, since if everyone had to re-create their work (including its dependencies, its dependencies' dependencies, and so on), there would be 1,000,000 times the demand for software engineers than there is today and innovation progress would be much much slower. I disagree with this analysis. You are assuming that the demand for software products is static regardless of cost and ignoring the positive effects of standardization. Open source means your X years of programming experience on 1 company’s product immediately applies to thousands of other companies. So you can leave your job and be productive at any of those companies, therefore commanding the same salary or greater. If it wasn’t for open source, I don’t think we would have 1/100th of the leverage we have. Open source is not a giveaway; it’s an investment in the entire industry. This is why all major companies are contributors to open source projects now. In fact, we are losing leverage the more this trend accelerates.