I open source everything I legally can. People pay me for custom advice and integration of otherwise generic publicly available work. That public work also is

I open source everything I legally can. People pay me for custom advice and integration of otherwise generic publicly available work. That public work also is what gives me the credibility to get gigs I otherwise never could. Others can go make money offering consulting based on my work if they want. I hope they do! There is no shortage of companies in need of consultants to unblock them in niche areas. It is kind of the "paid support" model, and it works well for a lot of open source projects whose creators actively market themselves as the defacto subject matter experts offering support. Likewise when I have worked for big companies and am having trouble or need a feature from an open source project I use my elective budget to pay project authors to implement what I need. Bailed me out many times in ways I would have never seen from a big tech firm like Apple. Let's be honest though. The people that love the Apple brand enough to use Safari in spite of all the shortcomings don't use it because WebKit is open source or not. They use it because Apple supports it and they trust the brand. Apple could open source everything and still be a top player for the foreseeable future. They just want to be -the- top player making a little bit -more- money by monopolizing control of a major software platform even if it means developers have a shitter experience being stuck with decade old software they can't easily update in a safe way.