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You seem to be perpetuating the fallacy that because some software developers can make a living under GPL, all software developers can do so. Perhaps the marke
by gress 11y ago
You seem to be perpetuating the fallacy that because some software developers can make a living under GPL, all software developers can do so.
Perhaps the market has already chosen the correct balance of GPL vs permissive licenses.
- pknight 11y agoI'm not perpetuating this supposed fallacy. Software developers fail with their products for various different reasons, there just seems to be very little evidence that the choice of GPL has impacted economic viability. At least I can say that there is very little evidence of that in the WordPress ecosystem. If you complain about the lack of an example of how a GPL based economy can work, you simply ignore existing markets. The WordPress ecosystem (worth billions) is almost exclusively GPL and developers are succeeding with successful products and services, operating businesses in all kinds of revenue ranges. Many small teams and even solo developers are regularly netting 6-7 figures a year. They are doing so utilizing a variety of business models, proving that almost any kind of solution can be made to work in some format, provided it's something people will pay for. There has always been some push back for the GPL, especially by designers, in the WordPress space. Despite that things are working. We have an entire commercial themes market that is selling GPL based themes, with many successful authors raking in money. Some people thought it was crazy, but theme sales are sky high. The only reason some developers aren't making money there isn't because GPL, it's because the competition is strong and the work is hard and some people can't or won't adapt.