Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (08 Dec 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

  • poopkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    11 months ago

    Pride unfortunately doesn’t pay the bills. It’s terrific that you contribute to open source, but not all commercial software can be open sourced.

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Popularity opens other ways to make money. Open source is profitable for GNU. Cory Doctorow does fine.

      • poopkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every commercial product to find profitability through exposure. I can attest to this first hand as I had published an open source Android game that was republished without ads. This led me to ultimately make the repository private, because I could not find a way to remain profitable while offering the source code and bearing the costs of labor and various cloud services.

        On the flip side I guess I can take credit for the millions of installs from the other app… except they didn’t publicly acknowledge me.

        • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Was it under a “copyleft” licence (like GPL) that forces the other one to also be open source? Did you use a licence that requires you are acknowledged?

          If you did the first, you at least pulled someone else into open source work

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Most people who work on open source projects have a lucrative job and work on Open Source on the side. I also volunteer, but I still need a job that actually pays me as well.

      Reading some of the comments here it feels like speaking to little children who believe money magically appears on their account.