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The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software is Unsustainable
(trstringer.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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The bigger issue isn't compensation but rather the number of corporations who profit handsomely off of the labor of Free Open Source Software developers.
It's okay if FOSS developers don't get compensated, that's part of their ethos.
It's not okay for corporations to be like "thanks for this free thing, we're going to take all that profit that your ethos makes you not care about, and what we give back to the open source community will pale in comparison."
Of course that's not always true, a handful of companies really pay FOSS developers really well. Valve for example. IBM/RedHat for another.
But for every company that respects where it's code comes from and wants to support those developers, there's several more companies that just use FOSS as 'off-the-shelf' components with no intention to do anything but use it, set it, and forget it with intent to make profit.
One way to ensure FOSS developers are paid well is to spend money at businesses who pay FOSS developers well and keep them on actual payroll.