It's a race to the bottom, largely because developers aren't unionized. Developers who would do work under the GPL get undercut by those who are willing to do it for free.
[0] Or whatever, if it's a small library maybe $50k or maybe something that scales with market cap, etc. Throw lawyers at it.
low complexity, low decision making overhead. it wouldn’t help for small or very specialized open source projects but the big ones that keep the world running are probably used in some way in all the big companies anyways so the total should come out somewhere in the range of 1-2 developer salaries (adjust the 10k above to match. no idea how many trillion+ companies there are right now)
edit: I overestimated how many there are. With 10k one would get to 50k this year. Numbers must be adjusted a bit :)
I think you're confusing open-source with visible-source.
Other "open source" companies are somewhat more realistic and honest about the term and it's history: https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/open-source/what-is-open-so...
I'm not saying the OSI's objectives and motivations are bad, but they did not invent the term "open source", they were not the first to use it, and their ongoing attempts to gatekeep it's usage are - at least to me - tiresome.
(Having said that, I also find rms's hardcore free software stance tiresome, but I'm glad he chooses to dig his heels in so hard there, as an opposite-end-of-the-bellcurve outlier to counterbalance the vested commercial interests trying to extend and embrace the free software movement for commercial greed...)
But that's not what that's defined as.
The OSI defines open source one way, and I just defined open source another way. This is an inconsistency that trips up lots of people on HN and elsewhere. There isn’t one definition, there are many, and calling “anybody but the mega-rich can use this for free; they have to pay” open source falls within some definitions but not others.
The OSI's definition is the widely accepted one. If you mean something else, then make up your own word. To redefine open source like you're trying to do just makes communication more difficult for no benefit.
Why shouldn't they be the ones required to "make up their own word"? "Open source" has a reasonable plain english meaning which doesn't automatically include all the requirements of OSI's "definition". I don't see why the simplest plain english interpretation shouldn't be considered "the real one".
You say OSI's definition is "the widely accepted one", I'm 100% certain that's not true if your sample group is representative of "english speakers" instead of "hacker news readers".
(And I'm pretty sure your linked xkcd supports my argument here more than yours.)
That's "source available"
But if it is a choice, then it's a choice that undermines fellow workers. By working for free, you're taking away jobs from people who might genuinely need them and be unable to work for free.
In this way, OSS work can serve to entrench inequality by giving a hiring advantage to those with more time and resources, while reducing the salaried jobs available for others in the industry.
Which top jobs require you to be a widely-publicized OSS author?
I've only ever heard this to be a plus (which I believe is fair), not a requirement.
That said, RH hires key contributors all the time (as do many companies), so being the maintainer of a project is definitely a plus.
Because they can just... stop maintaining it if they wanted. They are completely free to do so.
Many developers like to feel useful, feel like they are solving an important problem in a suitable way. Some even want the fame associated with it, or the doors having such (a) project(s) opens (you use X? I wrote it, and maintain it - or people hunting you specifically because you are known to have created X).
The point is, the tradeoff between the feeling of being taken advantage of and feeling useful and fulfilled because of solving an important problem in a suitable way is controlled directly by the author / developer! If they feel it is not worth the effort, they can just stop!
Having a permissive license helps you gain popularity. Many people won't touch GPL derivatives for their business / side-project-that-might-turn-into-a-business so such a license can have an inhibiting effect in adoption. Developers generally aren't stupid, they know that and they choose more permissive licenses, because they want to be seen, they want their solution to be used. They maybe want the fame and open doors associated with having such a project take off. It is a trade-off under their control. They can stop with maintenance any time. Hell they can even change the license of future versions (if they have not started with a GPL-like license) if they want. So I don't see the problem here. Everything is under the developer's control. You can't have it both ways: The boost to popularity by having a no-strings-attached license, but reaping proportional profits from such an endeavor as if you had a restrictive license protected by a business entity.
If you give money (value) away for free, you'll be pretty popular. "I want to be easily popular as if I'm giving money (value) away for free, without actually giving money (value) away for free" does not make much sense.