I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody argued that writers (or programmers) shouldn't get paid; just that writing (and programming) also exist outside the realm of monetary compensation. People write (books and code) for many reasons: because they are passionate about it, for the recognition by their peers, because they want to enter a contest, because of vanity, and yes, because of money.

Getting paid is fine and dandy. What's false is that "without a business model", nobody would be "insane enough" to write books (or programs).

The conflation between doing a thing and getting paid for doing a thing -- or even worse, claiming that without monetary compensation said thing wouldn't exist -- is annoying and misleading.

Let's! Arguably the software world would be much better. Nobody would write shit to spy on us or push ads everywhere if they weren't paid.

The best software is usually already the one written by volunteers.

> The best software is usually already the one written by volunteers.

You mean written by people who are not professional software developers? I highly doubt that. Can you provide some examples?

That's not what I meant. Obviously someone who really likes developing software is likely to make it their job if it's possible, hence the current non-professional developers are not representative of those in a world where there were no software development jobs.

I meant the best software is written without expectation of remuneration.

The Mac was developed by salaried employees, so was Unix and C and all the Xerox PARC stuff. The internet and the web was developed by people getting paid for it. Knuth is a professor, he didn't have to do his work after hours for free.

My impression was that most successful open source projects (Linux, Mozilla etc) are driven by paid contributors.

I'm sure you can find some examples, but depending on your opinion on what the "best software" is, I doubt most of it is developed by people working for free.

I write and maintain a lot of open source software for free.

I do, too. I also write software for money, as a way to finance my living expenses. When I write software for free and distribute it freely for others to use, I do it on my own volition. The day someone else decides for me that the development work I do for a living should also be free, I will have a serious problem.

Neither the_af nor I are saying that all the writing should be done without the authors being paid for it. We asserted, twice!, that professional authors and publishing industry are OK. What we say is that the published authors who earn a living by writing are not the only source of writing. If all the publishers, the whole industry, would go bankrupt tomorrow, the Web novels would still get new chapters, new fanfics would still get written, new essays would still be put on blogs, new comment threads would still appear, and so on.

Being paid for writing is great. It's just that the paid writing is not all writing - some people write simply to be read, without needing or wanting to be paid for it.

Writing code is different, because it's a means of self-expression only in small part.