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Comment by ronilan | Hacker News Reader

Next tweet: “We sell a thing that prevents this kind of mistake ...”

Just sayin.

I think that’s the perfect opportunity to let people in the enterprise world you have a solution for their problem. I wouldn’t expect any software targetted so specifically at enterprise to be free, and reaching the IT department of big companies to sell them your solution is a real pita.

So, good job.

They're a little SMH'd over this. And they have to pay their lawyer to deal with it. This cost them money so it is completely appropriate to mention Enterprise.

Naw, the bank probably thought “wow, it’s a good thing we have lawyers on standby for dealing with this kind of thing”.

How would you prefer free software be funded? :-P

OSS developers should just work for free, and live in destitution. Obviously. ;)

Everyone should live in destitution. Then they'll be free, just like their OSS.

We are a little tounge in cheek here, but I’ll take this question seriously. While it is great that NPM can develop new and more reliable products, is would also greatly benefit them and everyone else, if enerprises of certain size or stature would be required, legaly or regutoraly, to pay for software they already use. So say you are a bank, and there is a list of regulations that you have to comply with, so here is a new one. FTC (or California law makers) can figure out the mechanics and JP Morgan will write the check. Then NPM will already have a solid foundation to build on, some indie will have a windfall, and the big software guys might say hell yes, that’s a new business model. That’s what I’d prefer, but no one but you is asking me ;)

I'm not sure we need another incentive for large companies to not use best-practices and modern technology.

As mentioned already, it wasn't that long ago when big corps like banks didn't touch open source or free stuff with a stick. People who worked at those big banks, companies like Oracle, etc, back then will be able to tell you that almost everything was built in-house.

The problem NPM solves isn't a particularly interesting or challenging problem to solve if you don't try to solve it at scale. They'd just build their own. Then for the couple of packages that are hard to replicate, they'd find a way to sign some papers to get access to the code and push it to their own registry. For everything else they'd just rewrite it from scratch. Short of things like React, it's not all that hard for places with the resources of these big corps to rewrite bundlers, web servers, and utility libraries.

People have enough native productivity that they are able to feed, clothe and house themselves, generate their power and treat most of their ailments with no outside inputs required. In the resulting utopia people write free software in their free time because it is fun.

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