Thanks for the thoughtful article. I've always viewed Free software and to some extent OSS as by programmers, for programmers, period. Contributing code back

Thanks for the thoughtful article. I've always viewed Free software and to some extent OSS as by programmers, for programmers, period. Contributing code back supports the other programmers who use it. If commercial businesses want to use the software then they are free to contribute back (monetarily to support programmers or with their own code) or not. There is a long history of volunteerism in maintaining the Internet via open standards and I see a lot of OS/Free software in the same way. It doesn't make sense that businesses don't invest enough in the software they use (paid commercial software or otherwise). That is only to the detriment of the businesses that don't care to invest (their unique use-cases are not improved). It's not quite a tragedy of the commons because nothing prevents the people who do care (Google, MS, Amazon, FB, IBM, to name the large ones) from contributing their improvements back to the ecosystem, and they retain the full benefit of their work. It is absolutely an unequal exchange of goods for labor for most businesses but the near+zero marginal cost of replicating software means that it's a negligible loss for the authors, if that. The solid benefit for most programmers and system administrators is that they get to use high-quality Free/OS software in the jobs where they do earn money. At least for me, business concerns are secondary; I want to use quality software with a good ecosystem rather than know for sure that my employer paid money for the software that I have to use.