is it unrealistic to think the companies that benefit from orgs such as this could donate a fraction of a percent of their wealth to keep them going? the responsibility always seems to fall most on those with the least resources.
It seems the open-source experiment has failed. Hundreds of billion-dollar companies have been built on millions of hours of free labor, on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers. Yet, apart from token gestures, these exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back.
For the next generation of OSS, it would be wise to stand together and introduce a new licensing model: if a company builds a product using an open-source library and reaches a specific revenue threshold (e.g., $XX million), they must compensate the authors proportional to the library's footprint in their codebase and/or its execution during daily operations.
People have been saying this since the 80s. Reality is that without open source, this industry would be tiny compared to what it is. So many times open source has enabled an entire sub industry (i.e. ISPs in the 90s, Database, SaaS in the 2010s, now AI). And most of it is someone solving a problem that was worth solving for their own use, and for whatever reason made no sense to commercialize by selling licenses.
> on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers.
Money isn't the motivation for most "free" open source. If it was, the authors would release as commercial software and maybe as "source available". That someone can use open source to build businesses has been the engine for the entire industry. In other words, the thought that maintainers quitting maintaining is some problem that can be fixed if we only paid them is non-sequitur. A lot of it is that people age out, get bored with their project, or simply want to do something else. Not accepting money for maintaining open source is a good way to ensure it stays something you can walk away from and something where the people attached to the money have zero leverage.
I do think that a lot of maintainers struggle with pushy and sometimes nasty people that take the fun out of what is a "labor of love."
> exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back.
If I want to make money, I sell commercial software, SaaS or PaaS.
> they must compensate the creators proportional to the library's footprint in their codebase and/or its execution during daily operations
One of the more interesting uses of open source is to level the playing field. For example, there was a time when database was silly expensive. Several open source products emerged that never would have been viable commercially without the long term promise of "free" and the assurance of having source code. To have a license with a cost bomb on it would just ensure that people would use another choice.
we have a solution for that: GPL + commercial dual-licensing. the problem is that a) there is an entire anti-GPL crowd; although I'd just not give a shit about them, it's worth mentioning, b) who's gonna enforce the license?, c) how are you going to monetize internal use? what if your tech (e.g. a build system) is only really useful internally?
The AI companies claim that training is fair use, so no license can prevent what is happening with AIs. It would require a clarification in copyright law that AI models are considered derivative works, and that AI generated code is a derivative work of the model and the prompt. That seems unlikely to ever happen though.
> Especially as the cost of producing code drops, the value of libraries decreases.
Does it? If the cost of slop that (1) no one understands, and (2) no one can be sued for if it misbehaves drops to zero, what have we gained? A "library" is code plus reliability and accountability. (Yes, GPL disclaims liability, but that's why consultants exist.)
And then you'd be getting things like Hollywood accounting, where companies will claim that the "footprint" is not that large or simply find ways to hide their usage of FOSS.
Without teeth (and the resources to initiate the bite), companies will just freeload. Any attempts to monitor will require some degree of telemetry or proprietary solutions, with the associated blowback that generates.
The only model I've seen work in reality is open core (aside from the very few projects that have been successful with patronage)
Keep in mind giving stuff away for free is going to be much more popular than any other price. Don't discount that these projects are popular _because_ they are OSS, and if you introduce another model then one potential outcome is that no-one with money actually uses them.
There are licenses like that, just don't call them open source. They're just another form of proprietary software albeit sometimes also being source available.
If you want to make money, make commercial software and sell it. It's funny to see people complain about people taking what they gave out for free, it's like having a lemonade stand with a huge sign saying "free" and being surprised people take the lemonade.
The decision of the market seems pretty clear. We've been able to co-operate and build a software commons for decades, iterating on and improving shared infrastructure and solutions to problems common and niche. The work done for these commons, though, benefits everyone, and that's a hard sell for a profit-driven organization. So the commons are enriched with
a) volunteers
b) brief windows in which corporate decision makers are driven by ideology and good intentions, where those decisions carry momentum or license obligations (see Android, and how Google tries to claw it back)
c) corporations attempting to shape the larger landscape or commoditize their complement, see Facebook's work on React, or contributions to the Linux kernel
Of the above, only (a) or rarely and temporarily (b) are interested in collective wellbeing. Most of the labor and resources go into making moats and doing the bare minimum to keep the shared infrastructure alive.
Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it. Why use a standard solution when what used to be a library can now be generated on the fly and be part of your moat? Spot a security bug? Have an agent diagnose and fix it. No need to contribute to any upstream. Hell, no upstream would even accept whatever the LLM made without a bunch of cleanup and massaging to get it to conform with their style guides and standards.
Open source, free software, they're fundamentally about code. The intended audience for such code is machine and human. They're not compatible with a development cycle where craft is not a consideration and code is not meant to be read and understood. That is all to say: yes, it is unrealistic to expect companies to donate anything to the commons if they can find any other avenue. They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
> Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it.
This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.
> They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".
The longevity of code depends at least on whether it's a product or a service.
Services are what the majority of devs already work on and maintain. There's almost no incentive for anyone to use LLMs for that outside of startups. They do indeed last a long time because the code is as fundamental to the recurring revenue of the business as their legal or accounting or marketing. Devs make changes according to the evolving needs of the business, and "productivity" isn't as much of a priority as accuracy and reliability. The implementation details are very relevant to the business, especially for B2B services that need to meet compliance requirements.
Products, however, have always been disposable code written by people being thrown into a meat grinder. I don't think LLM-generated code is better, but it's probably not that much worse either.
> This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.
I agree. I'm just observing what they're doing.
> I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".
I doubt there's any one thought driving things. I didn't mean to imply the existence of some grand strategy or scheme. The preference I speak of isn't of any person, it's the direction pointed at by incentives and circumstance. Companies will make decisions to steer clear of helping competitors. Separately, they signal great interest in replacing costs spent on labor with costs spent on services. See the transition to cloud. The result is the preference of a world where code is like gasoline, purchased from a handful of suppliers for metered cost.
We really need to stop this misconception about FOSS. Free software is provided as is, with no obligations on either party (minus the viral clause of copyleft). The user is not obligated to "contribute" in any way, and the provider is not obligated to support in any way. It is a single one off donation of work from the author to the public.
