There are some - very limited - pieces of code I keep private relating to my consulting business, but I've seen more downside in keeping code private over the years than not. E.g. lots of code I've written that are locked up in companies that no longer use it that I wish I could still use.
The proportion of code I have that would create a moat that makes it worth holding the code back is miniscule.
> Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity.
I'm all for non-monetary motives, but the reality is that most people have to work for a living, leaving quite limited time/energy for volunteering. The scale of OSS that we have today would not (perhaps sadly) be possible without OSS development paying the bills.
I read that. That statement is technically true but I don't like that they put a negative connotation around it. Apologies if they didn't intend it like that.
But I'll say that there is nothing wrong with charity. Some devs will do open source with hope to monetize. Some will do it for charity. Both are equally valid motivations.
Not everyone can or wants to go this way, though, and we got a number of fantastic tools and libraries thanks to people who tried and succeeded in making money from open source. Some folks live off donations, some are paid by their employers to write OS, and some added extra features that allowed them to both offer their tools for free and to monetize them at the same time. It's sad that the last path starts to disappear, at least for some tools. In the end it probably will result in fewer OS libraries, because some number of authors will have to either find another income stream, or abandon their projects.
Why not apply directly to those jobs and doing it for free? That would maximize your usefulness to others, would it not?
I'm actually asking, that's not a rhetoric question.
My point is that I don't see a reason why someone making money off my work that I donate should bother me. But again, this is MY stance, clearly it's not an universal outlook. What I wanted to challenge was underlying assumption that someone making money off your code and not giving you any back is a problem or that is _should_ be a problem. It might bother some, but it's not an universal assumption.