Subnostr

I think the whole grants thing is an attempt to cover up the truth:

FOSS has no market value.

It's free because it's worthless because it has no scarcity. Only FOSS that hasn't yet been built has value, but how do you accurately judge the worth of something that doesn't yet exist?

You don't.

You judge the person who is offering to build it and you gamble on them. Which means that your judgement is only by proxy, and nepotism and misallocation of capital will be rife. The bigger the lump of capital spent on one person, and the more awarded at once, the larger the misallocation possible.

calvadev⚡️ 1y ago

It's similar to the VC model, just more ideological, with less money and no expected return. Startups have no market value at inception either, but someone has to be willing to missallocate capital for a potential paradigm-shifting innovation to be realized. The grant model has better incentives, imo (customer exploitation is rife when it comes to VC), but there definitely needs to be more of a focus on revenue across the board; otherwise, things aren't sustainable in the long run.

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Discussion

Silberengel 1y ago

Well, I agree with that, but I'd say more of a focus on profits/returns than on revenue, specifically. Not all profits need to be financial, and not all financial profits are direct. There's nothing inherently wrong in being a bit of a do-gooder, but there should be someone on the receiving end of what you built.

There needs to be a handover from producer to customer, with some exchange of value between those two actors.

calvadev⚡️ 1y ago

Completely agree; when I'm referring to revenue I mean a positive bottom line.