Re:Open source takes continued investment, and that must be ...
by chipotle_coyote on Thursday August 23, 2018 @03:31PM
(#17829973)
...but practically how do you do it?
If I had an answer to that, I'd be a full-time fiction writer. :)
Seriously, I suspect most people aren't going to ever make a lot from creative efforts, which we'll lump open source libraries into; the vast majority of us are going to be much farther out along the low long tail of the compensation curve.
I suspect the only thing that will help -- not to the degree that everyone will be able to make a living wage doing whatever they want, but to the degree that more people will feel like they're getting something back for the time they're putting in beyond the Warm Fuzzy Feeling of Sharing -- is a cultural shift of sorts. We need to uncouple the concept of "zero marginal cost" from the concept of "should be free." (I'm aware that leads down a whole rabbit hole about IP and "piracy," but I'm leaving it aside.) In the open source world, we may all say we're here for the free-as-in-freedom part rather than the free-as-in-beer part...but we're sure disinclined to pay for those beers.
If I had an answer to that, I'd be a full-time fiction writer. :)
Seriously, I suspect most people aren't going to ever make a lot from creative efforts, which we'll lump open source libraries into; the vast majority of us are going to be much farther out along the low long tail of the compensation curve.
I suspect the only thing that will help -- not to the degree that everyone will be able to make a living wage doing whatever they want, but to the degree that more people will feel like they're getting something back for the time they're putting in beyond the Warm Fuzzy Feeling of Sharing -- is a cultural shift of sorts. We need to uncouple the concept of "zero marginal cost" from the concept of "should be free." (I'm aware that leads down a whole rabbit hole about IP and "piracy," but I'm leaving it aside.) In the open source world, we may all say we're here for the free-as-in-freedom part rather than the free-as-in-beer part...but we're sure disinclined to pay for those beers.