This is true - proprietary tends to lead - albeit it doesn't address the societal concern here: Are these really the only roles a software developer can have?

This is true - proprietary tends to lead - albeit it doesn't address the societal concern here: Are these really the only roles a software developer can have? On one end, acting as a mercenary for platform monopolies doing the new stuff, and on the other, reproducing those designs without the same kind of paycheck? I guess there is the third option of bilking investors by saying you'll definitely be a monopoly any day now and then open sourcing the whole thing. My sense of it is that this particular phenomenon - the entire "hacker" arc from Unix in 1970 through the formation of the FSF to the present - was of an era, and the era is finishing up. Before that, there wasn't a software business to speak of, and after, the era of individual programs and proprietors is likely superseded by the needs of specific communication networks, which, like the Internet generally, everyone ends up standardized on, but no-one owns. Part of why software is in a cynical state now is because the convergent network goal is ethically desirable, but the only way in which we seem to be capable of framing it societally is "someone owns this", so we have proceeded down a path of toxic corporate ownership, while everything else is a weird thing deserving of mockery.