Comment by jampekka
17 days ago
The post mentions this:
> Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity.
I'm all for non-monetary motives, but the reality is that most people have to work for a living, leaving quite limited time/energy for volunteering. The scale of OSS that we have today would not (perhaps sadly) be possible without OSS development paying the bills.
> Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity.
I read that. That statement is technically true but I don't like that they put a negative connotation around it. Apologies if they didn't intend it like that.
But I'll say that there is nothing wrong with charity. Some devs will do open source with hope to monetize. Some will do it for charity. Both are equally valid motivations.
Wealthy devs context is also foreign to me. I started to open source my code way before I was making any money. I just did it because I saw no reason for it to be closed sourced. It would only benefit me. But in the open it can benefit many people without taking anything away from me.