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> Now the other extreme of free software is, arguably, also (economically) bad, as it fails to reward the effort of the creators proportionally to the value gai
by tshaddox 1y ago
> Now the other extreme of free software is, arguably, also (economically) bad, as it fails to reward the effort of the creators proportionally to the value gained by the user.
What’s the economic explanation then for why so much high quality (or at least, widespread and critical) free software exists?
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y agoProbably that free software never actually dies or even really degrades in the traditional sense. Given decades of time, even small incentives to make things better, like the reputational increase one gets from contributing to good FOSS projects, compound really heavily. Take the Linux kernel as an example. If you were a kernel hacker, even a minor one, from the 1990s, it's quite likely you could parlay that experience into a good job today doing something similar. Those 50-100 hours decades ago have compounded quite nicely for you. But your contribution didn't decay over the next 30 years - worst case scenario, it stayed exactly as good as it was when you stopped, and best case scenario it's been substantially rewritten and incremented upon. That's how I explain it to myself at least.
- AlienRobot 1y agoThat's only true for libraries because developers benefit from bugs getting fixed. FLOSS applications are far from high quality.