Post #1544291

2026-04-22 10:57 UTC

#OpenSource: Free for You, Profitable for Them. OpenSource means: #software where the #sourcecode is freely available and often costs nothing. Sounds great, but there is a catch. #Companies like #Microsoft, #Google and #Amazon fund large #OpenSource #projects not out of #idealism, but because they build profitable #cloudservices on top of them and pocket the money. Small #developers who charge for their work barely stand a chance against &quot;free&quot;. Yet thousands of hours go into these projects. The #maintainers, the people who keep these projects alive, often work unpaid until they hit #burnout. #Free does not automatically mean ethical. It is often just convenient. #FOSS #FreeSoftware #BigTech #Digitalization #Privacy #Linux #Community #Tech #OpenSourceSoftware

Replies (3)

@bms48@mastodon.social 2026-04-22 11:00

@73CC Seen Bruce Perens' stuff? @pluralistic @ludicity @DianeBruce https://postopen.org/ Full disclaimer: Apple, Inc. are my economic free rider. Every time someone turns on an iPhone, some of my code runs when a network connection is enabled, and I don't get a royalty. All I got was 2.5 cackhanded, abortive recruitment attempts by them, first in 2005 when they found what I'd drafted to help the Xen folk. I made more money as a high-tech mercenary for financial traders in 2010 anyway.

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@retrimental@mastodon.social 2026-04-22 11:04

@73CC FOSS devs should have a Patreon or something.

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@dexter@bsd.network 2026-04-22 14:36

@73CC It is exciting to consider open source a zero-sum game with a handful of “big players” but that is disingenuous to the countless efforts that do not fit into this simplistic view. Open source is paradoxical is many ways but that is its greatest strength, not weakness.

Open ##1837008