I think we both see the fundamental misalignment of incentives. The company's job is not to maintain the mountain or the trails, and once it begins flourishing,

I think we both see the fundamental misalignment of incentives. The company's job is not to maintain the mountain or the trails, and once it begins flourishing, it'll always be tempting to cut those branches because they're silly to spend so much effort on. It's a very helpful metaphor though, thanks for that. Free software is doing a ton, but there is a lot of space left unepxlored for economical reasons, surprisingly. I've seen projects refusing to document their code or clean up their APIs, leaving a high barrier to entry just to keep the consultancy running. Then there's the fact that infrastructure is never sexy, and then the whole xkcd #2347 problem where the entire world relies on one destitute retired person in their dacha to keep their lights on with a key library that everyone uses quietly. Makes me think if there could ever be a model that implements micropayments for software library usage, a little like lambda calls or like pay-by-article models for newspapers. But the reason why that isn't feasible may be the same reason why hiking trails aren't toll roads.