The longer I'm involved in FOSS, the more suspicious I am of devs who don't ask for payment.
The profit motive is the purest motive.
Discussion
Some folks just want to give
But they must support themselves somehow so I agree there is a limit to the giving without asking for at least bare minimum in return to support what one is doing i.e. food shelter internet etc (to keep giving)
No, it goes deeper than that.
Refusing to demand payment keeps the users in the position of being receivers of charity, rather than customers. Beggars, not choosers.
Also, how old are we, that we still believe in Santa Claus? 😂
No, nobody just likes to give. Every interaction is an exchange. What are they getting in return, is the question?
Because, they are definitely getting something from us, but it isn't money.
If it's not for money, then it's to boost the ego and this is quite complex and can have many facets.
I want to disagree with you so badly...but you convinced me. There's a lot of truth in this statement.
And further, payments make a market. If someone gives their stuff away for free, they prevent competition from arising.
They can therefore more-easily maintain a monopoly and keep the users as a captured audience, while the quality declines.
This is how communism works, after all. Who will build a car, when someone else is giving them away, for free?
Foss development can be pure fun. Just scratching an itch.
Making it a consumer product takes dedication... And responsibility 😂
What you're saying kinda doesn't make sense.
It's like you wish BitTorrent was never created so people could charge money for what it does, or you hope no more free open source projects like it will be created so future plans can be expected to make money without competing with freeware.
Generally the "Who will build a car, when someone else is giving them away, for free?" is true, but things can get so bad that people will pay. Canada gives away healthcare for free, but it is so poor and wait times are so long that well-to-do Canadians frequently travel to the US and pay out-of-pocket for treatment for serious conditions. Some years ago, their head of the Department of Health (or whatever they call it in Canada) flew to the US for his treatments. When people found out, there was a big stink.
Yes, a handful of people can escape the Free Shit Orgy trap, and eventually the whole thing collapses under its own idiocy, but I don't know why we should ever build such a trap.
Not a dev, but as a contributor to nostr's community in general, I won't feel comfortable asking for support for food shelter internet etc unless the deep state goes so long without killing me that I actually run out of money, or projects I work on get too big for me to fund alone
Yes. But doesn't have to be so direct. E.g. bitcoin. Everyone profits.
The purest motive is the ideological one
Most FOSS devs would agree with you.
I'd rather just pay and skip the ideology. I have my own opinions.
Sorry but it's fun
Am I ok because I'm not a dev?
Most developers monetize their reputation and don't directly ask for payment
It is still a profit motive
Yeah, but that shows that their focus isn't on the product and its users. That's why they so often give bad service and ghost.
You get what you pay for, still applies. Direct payments from users focuses attention on those users.
The customers for "open source " are not the end users ..
Your customers are the people who fork your code (or ideas) ..
Examples
#bitcoin is valuable because the idea is copied ( forked ) by 15 k shipcoins ..
#Linux is valuable because kernel is assimilated into hundreds of distros ..
#nostr is valuable because hundreds of clients built around it ..
Everytime your code is forked , you get elevated in value ladder .. it converts into money or recognition or influence.. whichever currency you like ..
I have to disagree. There is a fundemental difference in how software gets designed when there is a profit motive. I don't have anything against profit, I'd like some myself, but there are stages in development where it cannot be a motive if you want the architecture to be correct.
I am a bad developer. I have been working on freedom tech for about 7 years and have little to show for it. I blame raising kids, but if I needed the money maybe I would have got something done.
I keep hoping that various projects will be the answer that I want for myself so I don't have to be the one to code it. Every year or so I'd hear of a new promising project. I'd get excited that someone else recognized the problem and was doing something about it, but then I'd dive into the details and discover that, once again, profit motive drove them to make protocol level decisions that allowed them to remain special.
It doesn't matter what that is. Maybe your company does nothing other than verify usernames. Maybe it started the block chain that will be used. Maybe it hosts the TURN servers that are hard coded into the client. It doesn't matter, if the design makes you special it also makes you responsible and you will end up with both the power and the requirement to censor.
It is possible that a developer could be far sighted enough to build an ecosystem in which they are not special in order to create an environment where they can thrive selling value-add services. For instance nostr could have been designed by someone who wanted to sell student-record Management software to schools. It would have been harder to do it right but it could be done.
All that to say, yes profit can be a useful feedback mechanism for positive development, but it also eventually drives companies to make anti-competetive decisions that create lock-in and stagnate development. Look no further than Adobe.
I didn't say they demand payment for the basic code. I meant, the ones who don't expect individual users to ever pay for anything and who claim to just be building for "humanity".
Just look at Nostr and the massive gap in quality and service between the profit-motivated ones, who have a real business case and offer concrete things you can pay for, and the rest.
I'll just believe my lying eyes, on this one.
Open source was never - not for profit ..
FREE is NOT as in free beers ..
#Linux project is probably the most profitable project ever undertaken .. if we consider "recognition and influence " as another form of money !
So is #bitcoin as well as #nostr ..
You have to be sure the incentives are candid.