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.

Pirate HODL 1y ago

How can something millions of people use every day have no value?

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Silberengel 1y ago

Because it has no scarcity.

The concept might have value.

The work (human or machine) put into creating the original code might have value.

Hosting the service, or some background processing, might have value.

Maintenance work on the code base might have value.

The code base, once it is published, can be copied an infinite number of times. It doesn't even have the scarcity of a nail or a tomato. You might eventually run out of copies of a nail or eat all of your tomatoes, and have to go to the store and spend money to get more.

How much does it cost you, to copy-paste an address, on your computer?

That's what the code is worth. Nothing.

That's how much you can demand for it. Nothing.