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> Nevertheless, the revolutionary economics of FOSS are based on collaboration, and are incompatible with competition. FOSS seems to mostly be about copying e
by drewcoo 2y ago
> Nevertheless, the revolutionary economics of FOSS are based on collaboration, and are incompatible with competition.
FOSS seems to mostly be about copying existing non-free work in some legal way. It only exists because it copies its competition.
As for economics . . . big players often back FOSS development but only in markets those companies aren't in yet and only insofar as the development directly benefits them.
If you want to compete with FOSS, just make something closed source that's successful. They will come.
- glimshe 2y agoYou are partially right, but your characterization is overly broad. Yes, FOSS does often copy closed source, but when doing that it often innovates on top of it - not only in features, but in extensibility. Many open source projects become so widely used and powerful, they become a reference in the field not only because they are free, but because of their quality or feature set when compared to closed source alternatives. Examples off the top of my head are ffmpeg, qemu and Blender.
- kmacleod 2y ago> A lot of commercial software seems to mostly be about copying existing popular work in some legal way. It only exists because it copies its competition. Fixed that for you. But not really. Open source software exists because a community sees a use for it. Just like any other competitor, it competes on features, including price, support, and total cost of ownership. Free software doesn't necessarily mean no cost to deploy and support.