[immibis]

Yeah. Because in capitalism you need to have a way to make money if you want to continue existing. Therefore all the developers who exist have ways of making money. It's not rocket science.

In not-capitalism, there's a possibility this might not be true. Open source developers MIGHT NOT need to earn a living doing something else.

[uraniumjelly]

Let's say everybody gets a UBI or whatever the heck. A standards organization would still need someone to give it that money to function/exist. This would be true in any economic system.

>there's a possibility this might not be true

Zero, zilch, nada. People will not do grunt work for free because it's not fun.

[robomartin]

> In not-capitalism, there's a possibility this might not be true. Open source developers MIGHT NOT need to earn a living doing something else.

That's all well and fine. Except this is a fantasy. It has not existed ever in human history, does not exist today and the laws of physics say it cannot exist in the future.

If we limit the discussion to reality, well, FOSS isn't even close to free. Before a person can devote effort to working on FOSS, they have to sustain themselves.

Look, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with this reality. FOSS has gone incredibly far and deep under this model. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that FOSS exists due to what one might call charity. It's people working at whatever they do who then donate some of their free time to whatever they care about in the FOSS domain. And that's fantastic. Let's not pretend it's free though. It costs every single contributor a non trivial amount of time to participate in the effort. And that isn't free for anyone on this planet.

What I am saying is that this isn't a bad thing, yet it is a reality that should not be swept under the rug.

[account42]

> It has not existed ever in human history, does not exist today and the laws of physics say it cannot exist in the future.

FALSE, FALSE and FALSE.