> I care that more companies are encouraged to release their software as OSS because they can make money for it.
But they can't! Tell me how many companies make profit off purely OSS... RedHat maybe? What else?
And even if they can, they shouldn't be surprised when competitors use their OSS for their own benefit because OSS explicitly allows for that. Making money off OSS is a red herring, just because it works in a couple isolated cases, doesn't mean it's a viable business strategy.
Fundamentally, there's no "profit" to be made in OSS, nor public goods in general. If you try to charge for more than "at cost", someone else can and will come along and undercut you.
Why the scare quotes? Well, I don't mean all profit according to definition, but specifically the "returns for investors" type. Company profits. Technically you can run a sole proprietorship, and make (say) $100k in profit.. or you could structure as a corporation, pay yourself a $100k salary, and make no profit. It's all the same money, but it's two ways of looking at the portion that I would like to describe as fair compensation to a human for the work they do. When I say "at cost", I don't mean that it's fundamentally impossible to make a living working on OSS; I mean it's fundamentally impossible to get filthy rich with it.
And in my opinion that's a good thing. In my experience, "getting filthy rich" / providing outsized returns to investors almost always comes at someone else's expense. Usually the little guy. It happens when the poor sod paying you can't afford to switch to a competitor, so you're able to wring them dry. The counter-argument goes that we need the "filthy rich" incentive to motivate people to make these things. I think it likely increases the rate of innovation, but I think the amount of cool and useful OSS written by people in their spare time is evidence enough that profit is not a requirement in that area, only financial security.
There is a problem, though, where it's currently very difficult to even make a living wage working on OSS (again, or public goods in general). I think can be solved, and I am working on a project trying to solve this (as a volunteer; we could use help). I'll cut it here (I spent far too much time writing this comment already...), but you can read more at https://wiki.snowdrift.coop
Well past the edit window now, but I discussed this with someone else yesterday and they pointed out the word I'm looking for to describe "at cost, including cost of living", non-exploitative part of income is earnings.
But they can't! Tell me how many companies make profit off purely OSS... RedHat maybe? What else?
And even if they can, they shouldn't be surprised when competitors use their OSS for their own benefit because OSS explicitly allows for that. Making money off OSS is a red herring, just because it works in a couple isolated cases, doesn't mean it's a viable business strategy.