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A comment on You use more open source software than you think. Parent comment

Re:You use more open source software than you think by dTal on Thursday June 10, 2021 @03:24PM (#27464533)
>I think what was naive was building OSS around service, support and consulting. Instead it could have been built around mutual benefit as a governing principle.

Free software was built around the principles of mutual benefit. OSS was coined as a "corporate friendly" label, and it is from that culture that the whole service and consulting thing comes. Service, support and consulting is how you make money from it. It wasn't naive at all - it was a cynical co-opting.

(And if you don't see the problem with the maintainers of a piece of software to also charge for support, may I direct your attention to The Shirky Principle [0] - "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution". Software developed under this model will, over time, become byzantine, baroque, and frustrating - because that brings in the consulting cash.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle

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Re:You use more open source software than you think by morelisp on Friday June 11, 2021 @02:04PM (#27476599)
Your characterization of OSS is correct, but free software was built around individual empowerment and equity of access, which are liberal principles, not mutual benefit which is a leftist principle. Stallman is a civil libertarian and perhaps a democratic socialist, but as far as I know has never identified himself as a Marxist nor does his work lean on class analysis.
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