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On Open Source and the Sustainability of the Commons (ploum.net)
submitted 2 years ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@programming.dev
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Much have been said about the need to pay Open Source developers for their work and the fact that huge corporations use open source software without contributing back.

Most articles I’ve been reading on the subject completely miss the mark. Plenty of commentators try to reinvent some kind of "free software but with forced contributions" or "free software but non-commercial". Those are naive and wrong. If you impose limitations, it’s, by definition, not free software anymore.

The problem is not about Open Source or Free Software. The problem is everything else.

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[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 3 points 2 years ago

The way to get money from libre software is to sell support services.

[-] anzo@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago

That, and sponsoring, are the current and main avenues. Yet, it's been shown they're not enough. Hence, the discussion...

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think that many developers are poor at or unwilling to work on marketing efforts or creating independent business relationships, so getting hired by a company like RedHat, Microsoft, etc. to work on a project is the way they sell their services.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
19 points (95.2% liked)

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