Sure, I agree that consumers use video games, for example, for personal enjoyment, whereas cloud providers use OSS to make millions.

But that difference does not change the market dynamics in any way. In both cases, the effects of a near unlimited supply of creators is having the same effect, regardless of how their creations get used.

Perhaps the difference changes the ethics of the situation, I don't know, but I remain equally skeptical of "business innovations" being able to help the OSS creators as I am "business innovations" being able to help aspiring rock stars and shortstops.

Except games either (1) are pay-per-purchase, or (2) are free-to-play and subsidized by whales. In both cases, high usage games tend to make enough to justify the economics of continued support and development.

That's almost exactly the opposite of very popular OSS software, which generates an endless wave of free users. And generally no whales. And high demands for bug fixes. And serious temper tantrums (this has happened to me too) when you explain to users of your free software that you owe them exactly fuck. and. all. and won't be hopping-to in order to fix something for them.

> In both cases, high usage games tend to make enough to justify the economics of continued support and development.

Sure there are some runaway indie hits that make money to cover the development. And Linus Torvalds gets paid $10 million per year to work on open source. But nearly all indie game developers never make anything from their games, same as OSS authors. (Indie games are an the appropriate comparison since we are talking about independent OSS authors, not Facebook developers working on React).

In any case, I am not arguing that all of these endeavors are equivalent in all ways. My only point is that all of the fields have an oversupply of creators. The result is that creators don't have leverage over consumers. To really spell it out: if OSS library creators try sticking the commons clause or other "innovations" on their projects, most businesses are just going to go find another library that does the same thing, without the restriction.

Perhaps a good open source analogy might be libcurl. And just take the many ruby bindings. Since about 2007 or so I’ve maintained a libcurl ruby binding. Other than perhaps using it in some of my own commercial works - that project has netted me $0 and yet has plenty of alternative open source libraries that compete with it for the mind share of the ruby community.... I want great open source projects to prosper so that we can use them to build cool things solve real problems and make real money

The big difference is that those Indie games make money for no one. It isn't like there is some giant cloud company hosting your indie game and selling it to consumers and cutting you out of the equation. There is no demand for that game. On the OSS side there is often huge demand with no compensation to the developer. I'm not making a judgement on whether that is good or bad, I assume most OSS developers know that is the way it works, but I am saying that it isn't comparable to a bunch of games that have no demand and people are making them for their own satisfaction.

I have an OSS project used by 1000s of people and many huge companies. I don't get compensated for that directly and I don't expect to. I'm just happy to be able to use it on my own projects no matter what company I am working with.

Because none of those cases have people giving permission for their work to be used by others to make millions of dollars. If someone gave their work away into the public domain, and then someone used that work to make millions, their shouldn't be an expectation that the other person somehow owes the other money.

If you think your code is worth money, sell it.

LGPL/GPL/AGPL exist for a reason. Not my fault you used BSD/MIT and didn't consider what you were explicitly allowing and encouraging people to do.

> their shouldn't be an expectation that the other person somehow owes the other money.

There btw.

Also, it would be common decency but we live in an era where if something cannot be enforced in court then you should not be surprised somebody is [not] doing it. Oh well.

By the way.

Agree 100%.

What about college football players, Mid-tier content creators, etc?

These are people who are providing a service, potentially because it’s a passion, but other entities soak up the profit.

You seem to be arguing that these people (in the grandparent comment and my own) do get paid, but my understanding is that they don’t, or barely do.

There are lawsuits pending on the issue of college players not getting paid. It is a problem and it is going to get sorted out soon.

That is a better analogy imho.

That's the whole point, isn't it? That's a good thing, right? Of course society at large should incentivize and facilitate the creation of open source software, but it seems the alternative you're suggesting (that the people making millions must financially support the original creators) would render the software proprietary.

As a matter of fact yes, if I were an OSS creator and people made millions from my work, some basic appreciation would be quite nice actually. If companies X, Y and Z make $10 million a month and this is partially enabled by my software, giving systemic donations in the orders of $10k - $20k a month would only be common sense in my mind.

(And I know I would have a "donation budget" if I was a businessman because I am not stupid and I know the work of which people outside my company facilitates my business further.)

But appreciation is not what businessmen do. 99% are cut-throats in all areas of their lives.

I don't really think that. I just think that the comparison is faulty as there is just no demand for the failed artists work.

Thats the deal with open source. Don't like it commercialize and see if you can make it your day job. You'll have to pay programmers too though, no more free work from the community.