Comment by spullara
4 hours ago
If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't give your software away for free. When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes. If you make open source software that just works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any expectation that they do that.
We can make similar arguments for the corporations: if you want to sell your software in the US market, you need to pay for a VAT for digital services that fund national endowments giving grants to individual US developers that apply to the program.
Corporations should start paying their fair share, they've scammed society enough.
> When they decide it is in their best interest to pay for it they will, i.e. support, bug fixes, changes.
Maybe, but also maybe they just fork internally and fix the bug internally and don't publish the bugfix. And maybe it's never in their best interest to pay for it, maybe it's in their best interest to just freeload forever.
> If you make open source software that just works they are unlikely to start writing checks nor should there be any expectation that they do that.
I think it's good when we expect corporations to write checks to the people that write the open-source stuff they rely on. "A rising tide lifts all boats" is not automatically true in software, we have to choose to make it true. I think a world in which we make that choice is a better world. I'm not convinced we currently live in that world.
> If you don't want to give your software away for free, don't give your software away for free.
I don't, and I spend a lot of my time and efforts encouraging others not to, and doing the work to prove out alternative models :)
https://lgug2z.com/articles/normalize-identifying-corporate-...
https://lgug2z.com/articles/komorebi-financial-breakdown-for...
That is not how people and society function. The status quo and culture is that open source is good for society and all. You are not told about why big corporations can use all this code for free. You’re actually told you’re doing a good deed by making code open source.
Then you jump on to a place like Reddit or HN and you have people mostly supporting the status quo. Of course people are going to do open source more than they should. And then if they complain later on, you will say they chose to make it open source. Reinforcing the status quo by blaming the individual.