I think Free Software suffers from the misaligned incentives. Take documentation for example. Why would I write it? I already know how the system works. I d

I think Free Software suffers from the misaligned incentives. Take documentation for example. Why would I write it? I already know how the system works. I designed it! If I forget in a few years, a quick glance at the code will refresh my memory. One would argue that you should write documentation so that people will use your thing. That's true! But there is almost no incentive to have users; you pay a cost, but they pay nothing in return. (Someone will send a bugfix now and again, of course, but it's very very rare.) Some other incentives are balanced, though. Persistent low performance or bugginess affects the author and end users equally; the more the author uses their own software, the more this will hurt. Sometimes the low performance is a design trade off; Python isn't Rust, and the users seem to be okay with that. It was done on purpose. Sometimes low performance is a factor of the author's needs; you're trying to run the thing on 1 billion machines, they only have 1; something has got to give. But that's not misaligned incentives so much as it is lack of suitability for a particular purpose. A screwdriver is terrible for hammering in nails. That's not the screwdriver's fault.