[bolt7469]

Contracting requires the devs to get up to speed on the software and your company needs. On the other hand, a private company selling commercial software has a comparative advantage in already knowing the codebase and user needs.

10 companies each contracting 1 dev for an open-source project is a less-efficient allocation of resources than 1 company hiring 10 devs for their commercial software project.

[mixmastamyk]

Lost in the noise when the community is large enough.

[bolt7469]

I'd appreciate it if you could provide some evidence for your claim that comparative advantage is "lost in the noise."

Efficient allocation of scarce resources is best achieved with comparative advantages. A commercial software team has shared context, management, and knowledge that cannot be as efficiently achieved by a decentralized community of contributors. So the commercial team can produce the same software at a cheaper cost. This is a good thing for the economy.

[mixmastamyk]

Design tools are a multi-billion dollar market in just the US, and useful worldwide. Potential resources are not even a bit scarce.

Figma already did the hard work of prod/tech design and fixing browsers, meaning followers will have a much easier path. https://madebyevan.com/figma/building-a-professional-design-...

The same short-term thinking has been espoused at the dawn of every innovation. Thankfully some folks don’t listen.