Slashdot Mirror
The Complicated Economy of Open Source Software (vice.com)
An excerpt from a report, which looks at the complicated business of funding open source software development: On the surface, the open source software community has never been better. Companies and governments are adopting open source software at rates that would've been unfathomable 20 years ago, and a whole new generation of programmers are cutting their teeth on developing software in plain sight and making it freely available for anyone to use. Go a little deeper, however, and the cracks start to show. The ascendancy of open source has placed a mounting burden on the maintainers of popular software, who now handle more bug reports, feature requests, code reviews, and code commits than ever before.
At the same time, open source developers must also deal with an influx of corporate users who are unfamiliar with community norms when it comes to producing and consuming open source software. This leads to developer burnout and a growing feeling of resentment toward the companies that rely on free labor to produce software that is folded into products and sold back to consumers for huge profits. From this perspective, Heartbleed wasn't an isolated example of developer burnout and lack of funding, but an outgrowth of a systemic disease that had been festering in the open source software community for years. Identifying the symptoms and causes of this disease was the easy part; finding a cure is more difficult. Further reading: How Does Heartbleed Alter the 'Open Source Is Safer' Discussion?
At the same time, open source developers must also deal with an influx of corporate users who are unfamiliar with community norms when it comes to producing and consuming open source software. This leads to developer burnout and a growing feeling of resentment toward the companies that rely on free labor to produce software that is folded into products and sold back to consumers for huge profits. From this perspective, Heartbleed wasn't an isolated example of developer burnout and lack of funding, but an outgrowth of a systemic disease that had been festering in the open source software community for years. Identifying the symptoms and causes of this disease was the easy part; finding a cure is more difficult. Further reading: How Does Heartbleed Alter the 'Open Source Is Safer' Discussion?
I've been working on a project for almost 20 years at this point, and I definitely feel the same as what's reported here. As the project has gotten more popular and more users come on board, there is now much more demand on our team. And some companies have noticed the usefulness of the project and used it in commercial products. Not that I'm against that (as that's what the GPL basically encourages), but it would be nice at times if there was more contributions back from those that benefit from it.
And I don't necessarily mean money either. Extra help in coding, testing, etc would be nice too. But I suspect that people get used to a product being free, and then asking for anything more once it becomes popular is out of the question for them. But in the long run, it really leads to developer burnout, as more people want more and more, and can't (or won't) contribute. I know I am personally feeling the burden and looking at burnout soon.
Anyway, long story short; I can sympathize with developers in a similar situation.