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I saw an interesting comment a few weeks ago, but can't remember where now, so I am unable to properly credit the original author. There's probably an irony the

I saw an interesting comment a few weeks ago, but can't remember where now, so I am unable to properly credit the original author. There's probably an irony there somewhere. Anyway, the gist of it was: In the '90s, FOSS devs mostly volunteered their labour to build things for each other - for other FOSS devs. In the '00s, FOSS devs mostly volunteered their labour to build things for users. In the '10s, FOSS devs mostly volunteered their labour to build things out of habit, which kinda ended up unintentionally being for the benefit of FAANG/Microsoft/VCs. No-one's quite sure how that happened, or where we go from here.

tracker1 3y ago
I think it comes down to first and foremost scratching one's own itch in things. Most are just creating/updating things they need. This can be a company's contribution (AMD/Intel) to support their products, or it can be an individual fixing a bug or implementing a needed feature. It can also be company devs contributing to something that is adjacent to their own needs. Where the FAANGs/Clouds leach a bit is when they offer a service monetizing what the creator of that service/software is using to monetize themselves. Can they do it, sure... should they, maybe not. I think, for example AWS could have made an offer for a more limited licensing agreement to Elastic, offered direct funding, or developer support, or buying them outright. Instead they forked, offer their own SaaS for the product, and carry on. Leaving Elastic to develop/support the core product.
TillE 3y ago
The latter really only applies to a handful of huge FOSS projects; there's a long tail of open source which is irrelevant to large-scale web infrastructure companies. I would hope that very few people are actually volunteering to contribute more than minor fixes to those huge projects. They're largely full-time employees, or at least supported by corporate sponsorships.
cosinetau 3y ago
> to build things out of habit That answer seems to lack self awareness. A lot of people saw how a few VC-back companies using open source software could get them rich, and then they executed. Why else would we be on this particular website? Why else are do many folks find it absolutely necessary to post their product announcements on places like this?

tracker1 3y ago

I think it comes down to first and foremost scratching one's own itch in things. Most are just creating/updating things they need. This can be a company's contribution (AMD/Intel) to support their products, or it can be an individual fixing a bug or implementing a needed feature. It can also be company devs contributing to something that is adjacent to their own needs. Where the FAANGs/Clouds leach a bit is when they offer a service monetizing what the creator of that service/software is using to monetize themselves. Can they do it, sure... should they, maybe not. I think, for example AWS could have made an offer for a more limited licensing agreement to Elastic, offered direct funding, or developer support, or buying them outright. Instead they forked, offer their own SaaS for the product, and carry on. Leaving Elastic to develop/support the core product.

TillE 3y ago

The latter really only applies to a handful of huge FOSS projects; there's a long tail of open source which is irrelevant to large-scale web infrastructure companies. I would hope that very few people are actually volunteering to contribute more than minor fixes to those huge projects. They're largely full-time employees, or at least supported by corporate sponsorships.

cosinetau 3y ago

> to build things out of habit That answer seems to lack self awareness. A lot of people saw how a few VC-back companies using open source software could get them rich, and then they executed. Why else would we be on this particular website? Why else are do many folks find it absolutely necessary to post their product announcements on places like this?