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Many of these recent forks are being done because people won't want AWS/GCP/Azure to slap a UI on top of their free open-source product and resell it, making tens of millions of dollars per day in the process. I can't really blame them. I can. Free software is, at its core, wage theft. It is truly unfortunate that so many people don't understand "big picture" economics, not the $2 for a loaf of bread economics, but the creation of value, it's consumption, and allocating resources to maximize creating the "right kind" of value. Most programmers "get" that writing code has value, hell tech companies will pay $5,000/week in total compensation just to do that, of course "coding for money" isn't the same as "coding on something you love", or are invested in, or does something you want. But here is the detail that so many miss, it is still $5,000/week "worth" of value. Whether or not someone is paying you to do it, there is still value there. And when you think about it is it all that surprising that putting that value into a thing doesn't make it something others might value too? Others who don't have the chops or the time to make it themselves? THAT is economics. And there are so many people who can see that value just sitting there and say, "Hmm, I bet I know someone who would value that, and I could get them to pay me some of that value in cash money in exchange for hooking them up." And it's game on buddy. And what is that game? Stealing the 'value' that would have been returned as a wages to a coder if they had been hired and keeping it for themselves. You might as well decorate your front lawn with $100 bills and put up a sign that says, "These bills are decoration I forbid you from using them to go buy things for yourself." Sure some folks would respect that sign but a whole lot more would say, "Uh, good luck with that, and thanks for the cash." If you write code for "free", no matter what license you try to put it under that "prevents" people from profiting off of it, they are gonna profit. You can either make it possible for them to profit and cut you in on some of that, or you can decide for yourself that you're okay with all of that value you created funding someone else's lifestyle. |