a probable banger of a post from classic baldur bjarnason!
he argues that foss (free and open source software, ie, software from which no profit can be made) is a function of industry and labour surplus: - industry has high margins and easy access to investment, because investors imagine it is exponentially profitable for a long time (lmao) - developers end up being relatively high-income middle class with a lot of spare time and access to “liquidity options” (ie, they benefit directly from #1)
foss makes a lot of money – does it?? i guess yeah from the pov of, like, curl and php and signal and so on. not ‘consumer’ open source projects. and the costs are entirely absorbed by the makers.
but… - high interest rates reduce investment, - ai ai ai ai - covid growth reverting to mean causing layoffs - industry management has decided to increase unemployment, so less free time for oss unless the oss helps you get a job - foss burnout and no regular supply of fresh developers to take over - companies cutting costs, not funding oss development.
as the market gets tighter, it becomes less tenable to compete with aws, or spend all your time working on foss software and not be compensated for it. ai/vibe-coding and so on reducing demand for extant, competent, projects >:( and there are better hobbies, like touching grass.
bjarnason predicts this leads to a shrinking of the oss ecosystem. less developer-hours available leads to poorer quality software, which is less suitable, and less used.
e.g., npm is funded more or less entirely by microsoft via typescript, which microsoft currently figures makes them money elsewhere. how long will they figure this for?
good points. what do i think? - i think the distinction between foss for consumers (krita, inkscape, mastodon, g2s) and developers (Python, curl, php) is important. i think they are differently vulnerable to a squeezing market (less reliance on corporate sponsors vs. harder to get excited about) - i think the argument about foss fundamentally being a product of developers being paid a lot (historically) and having a lot of free time is basically correct. yeah. - do i think any part of this is wrong per se? not reallyyyyyy.