Since we as a society rely on open-source enormously, it seems to make sense to try and allow as many people as possible to contribute as much as possible. And that requires giving up on antiquated notions that “only unpaid open-source is real open-source!”. Wouldn’t you agree?
We already do, anyone can do it and we shouldn't restrict that; that's the point.
> And that requires giving up on antiquated notions that “only unpaid open-source is real open-source!”. Wouldn’t you agree?
Not GP, but I most certainly don't, nor is it antiquated. For that matter, calling volunteer work "antiquated" is... A bit cynical, to say the least.
I also don't see how this follows from what you said before, could you walk me through your reasoning?
I emphatically did not say that volunteer work is antiquated! I myself do plenty of it - but I also acknowledge that I’m privileged to be able to afford it. What is antiquated is the notion that only unpaid work is authentic open-source work. It’s important to realize that providing unpaid labor is a luxury. If you exclude or devalue paid work, you exclude and devalue the people who cannot afford to do open-source work for free. As it turnd out, that’s the majority of people.
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2017/10/2017-linux-kern...
No, it's not a community service, not really. It's a happy byproduct of some very powerful companies.
Instead of paying LF to hire devs, they hire devs who write code that is contributed to Linux.
Because, in your analogy, the librarians are all volunteers. That’s how we got here. If the pain of not having a problem solved is great enough the volunteers will fix it. Or they won’t. If you feel like the pain level is high enough. Hey maybe YOU should try volunteering to solve it.
This is what makes OSS powerful. It is a community service. If you aren’t happy with the service p become a member of the community and contribute.