Hacker News Reader

> OSS model, unfortunately, is broken.

I don’t think this is true. The mode works phenomenally well (eg, Apache, Linux, Postgres, etc).

But it doesn’t work for all projects and isn’t the same as commercial software. If I create a project with the goal to make lots of money, then I probably won’t succeed.

Conflating “doesn’t work for me” with “broken” is not using all the available evidence.

View on HN

It shouldn't be about making lots of money, personally I find it great that most good software engineers aren't primarily driven by money, but that mindset shouldn't imply exploitation. It's just a fact that large corporations and companies in general benefit disproportionally from OSS. The value that open source software creates stands in no relation to the price that companies pay for it, even if the maintainers of some projects are perfectly happy with the compensation they receive. If you don't need a large part of the money that your work justifies, then just give it to charity, but don't allow companies to take it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com