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Comment by c0balt | Hacker News Reader

That value and cost-factory is likely a higher multiple when talking about infrastructure. If everyone had to pay for Windows (or a similar OS) instead of Linux and numerous other systems (PostgreSQL, OpenLDAP, Nginx, ...) our costs for hosting services would move up at least an order of magnitude.

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And you also would have to factor in the negative externalities of giving the profesional managerial class like Bill Gates more money and power.

How does open source avoid that? Red Hat, which got bought by IBM; both of them have executives in spades, as does Google and Meta, both of them are huge supporters of open source. (Not including Llama. Fsck Mark Zuckerberg for co-opting the term Open Source for llama when it isn't)

RedHat is a pretty small % of total linux installations. I think you're reaching a bit with this general line of argumentation.

Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu is no less an executive than Matt Hicks if you'd rather use that distro instead.

Mozilla has a CEO, and arguably if they paid better they'd have a better one at the helm.

In fairness to your point - Ubuntu is a very, very strange company with wildly absurd hiring practices. Ubuntu + RedHat sells your position well.

Of course we should acknowledge that there are many viable Linux distributions out there which aren't part of bloated dysfunctional organizations. But I do fear for Linux itself after Torvalds.

Worked out great when gnome blew all their money with the shaman

Of course, the PMC, being the parasites they are, will try to siffon value from everything they can. My point is merely that it's more difficult for them with Open source because quite often no money is changing hands. I don't pay for my operating system, I use Fedora. If I were to pay for it the rent seeking PMC will take their cut of what I paid, and most likely the largest cut.

OSS contributors choose to give their work away, including allowing it to be sold. The "PMC" (sigh at othering term) can only make money by creating value. Their customers choose them over free because of that value.

You are more like the "PMC" in your statement than they are, because you just use other people's work. At least they add value.

Sorry, Bill Gates is not PMC - if we're going with a neo-Marxist analysit of class, Gates is firmly Bourgeoisie, while all of us operating the business machines of the day and using our intellect to help organize and manage the resources of society are the PMC.

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