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The issue with is that if you substitute social norms with money; it is hard to return to social norms later

I.e., if you start paying; you have to continue paying.

Predictably Irrational http://whistlinginthewind.org/2013/01/15/predictably-irratio...

What's wrong with continuing to pay? All the time companies pay for support for open source software because they want the "insurance" of having someone to call when the $hit hits the fan.

You don't want to pay anymore, go back to glibc...

True of an individual company or business unit and its major tech decisions, but businesses ultimately die. Thus we have a world where Cobol coexists with Node.js - companies saddled with old software never pay for a new system until it's "beyond too late". But a company with a greenfield project can come in and use whatever hot, hyped-up thing is out there, and it usually in their direct interest if it's free, because at that point they probably aren't terribly concerned about software quality.

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