Comment by jillesvangurp
1 day ago
While a lot of this involved volunteers and people taking initiative, a lot of this is also people working and being paid to do so. Linus Torvalds was getting paid to work on the Linux kernel from pretty early on, for example. And a lot of contributions made to Linux are done by software engineers working for a very wide range of companies that each have their own commercial interest in moving the Linux kernel forward or getting their drivers or whatever.
Decentralization does not imply charity. You see the same around openstreetmap. There are a lot of organizations that benefit from their data that actively contribute to it or make donations to keep development funded. Same with Wikipedia.
OSM has _just_ managed the balancing act of getting corporate funding without becoming beholden to the funders or adopting a corporate ethos. (The corporates have gone off and founded their own project, Overture, and everyone is the better for them doing so.) But it has required a lot of pushback over the years against people trying to “professionalise” us, and I can’t say we’ve won every battle.
Money is necessary for many projects and people but this hides a lot of the charitable motivation. Circa 2000s, it wasn't clear at all what a good fit for Torvalds was and he talked about visiting Apple and talking to Steve Jobs (and being unimpressed with Jobs' smugness) [0]. There was a stint at Transmeta until, ultimately, a non-profit organization was setup pretty much for him/Linux so that he could focus on Linux development solely.
Many software developers are 'subsidized' by their employer in that they're allowed, or encouraged, to contribute to FOSS development (kernel development, etc.) but I would bet that this is the result of advocacy and desire of the software developers, not so much of the organizations they're part of.
Demand side value of open source is estimated at $8T+ [1]. It's hard to argue what might have been but I think there's a very real argument that Torvalds walked away from being a billionaire and settled for being a millionaire to work on Linux.
[0] https://www.bwass.org/bucket/Just-for-Fun.pdf (pg 150)
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-...