Is free and open source software (FOSS) at risk? Just as at some point we thought that the Linux permission system protected us from computer attacks, Today we are convinced that the 4 principles of free software and the different licenses of the Open Source Initiative will guarantee that our favorite projects are always with us. Maybe with just a name change and developers.
However, there are those who think that again we could have a dislike.
An analogy to understand the problem
To try to better explain what I mean, let me make an analogy.
In the 80s I got tired of hearing that there were four economic models in the world; Capitalism, Communism, Japan (That without natural resources became a world power) and Argentina (That having an abundance of natural resources, it is still Argentina)
Obviously nothing is that simple, but for the sake of the article, grant me that the claim is valid.
There are even those who found an explanation with historical and sociological roots. For a long time the basis of the Japanese diet was rice. The rice fields are close together and require a lot of care. Any disease that affected someone's plantation ran the risk of spreading to the rest.
The Japanese lived in houses of wood and paper. All very close. In case someone was irresponsible with fire, it could be a disaster.
Argentina is a very large country with fertile lands and suitable for growing livestock.
In the first case, the Japanese were obliged to show solidarity with each other and think about tomorrow. Argentines could afford to ignore their neighbors, take what they needed and not worrying about replenishing what is consumed. Until one day, you start to consume more than what is produced and the decline begins.
A developer makes a warning about the use of free software
Baldur Bejarnason is a web developer and consultant, in addition to being profitable in open source projects. He ago a description of the behavior of users of free and open source software and its use in the web development market, which in our analogy we can relate to that of the Argentines.
People don't appreciate how much web development involves extracting value from OSS, both individually and corporately. Almost everything we do in web development exists as a thin layer on top of open source software. Servers, building tools, databases, authentication, client-side JavaScript code execution, web browser - we are all building on a vast ocean of open source software work without returning even a fraction of the value obtained.
Baldur complains that since users assume that someone somewhere has to be paying, they behave as if they were paid clients of proprietary software. The OSS maintainer is supposed to serve them as if they made a living rather than volunteer collaborators.
The Icelandic developer cautions that projects are increasingly being abandoned due to lack of financing and the depletion of maintainers. Open source grows only from initiatives that are part of the business strategy of companies. But, even in this case the financing is not complete.
Open source software is a strategic lever for large technology companies. They finance when it helps their core business and stop when it doesn't. Cloud hosting has slowly been ushering in an era of extraction, where tech companies are specifically targeting open source server-side projects that they can leverage with little investment. Large sections of server-side software are under-funded.
May I recall that the Heartbleed bug was the result of a patch to OpenSSL uploaded by a volunteer developer on New Years Eve.
At any rate Article, whose reading I recommend, ends on an upbeat note.
Sustainable open source seems possible if it manages to balance the uninteresting aspect for big tech, but interesting enough to generate revenue. As WordPress shows, it can be quite large while remaining mostly uninteresting to the tech giants.
It is a difficult needle to thread, but it seems to be entirely possible.