The first time I understood there is a systemic problem was years ago when I started attending investor events and was pitching my open source software to tech companies and investors and they were all asking me "But what are you selling?" and I kept telling them "I'm not selling anything, I'm just looking for adopters of my open source product." and I was shaking hands with every person in the room.

They couldn't understand. They must have thought I was crazy. But the thing is, I couldn't even sell it for free. Even though it was provably useful and many similar companies did use my product successfully, at scale. It really felt like "It's a big club and you ain't in it."

It was like; they couldn't believe how much work I was putting in to give away a product for free. I think it might have made some people uncomfortable even.

And although I am more honest and cynical now about my own intentions, I still think that 'making money' was not and is not the primary goal; it was always a secondary goal which I planned to attend to later if/when the conditions would be right.

I was literally just trying to get big companies to adopt so that other smaller companies would look at them and tell themselves "Look, it's OK, big company X is using the product, so I can use it too!"

My goal was not to sell anything, it was to dismantle systemic taboos which worked against me as a small contributor.

10 years later, the taboos are worse than before! I don't know how anyone can start an open source project without the badge of corporate sponsorship these days.