this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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I'm surprised that other people are surprised that for-profit companies constantly try to increase their profits; such companies only contribute to FOSS when that's more profitable than the alternative. The Linux kernel, AMDGPU, Steam, etc only exist because some part of the software/hardware stack is proprietary (which becomes a more attractive product as the FOSS portion of the stack improves).
I'm definitely not justifying the "rug-pulling", but people need to stop supporting projects with no potential for long-term profitability unless those projects can survive without any support from for-profit companies. Anything else is destined to fail.
You see the contradiction here right?
I don't. Could you elaborate?
Open source projects have no potential for long term profitability unless those projects get support from for profit companies, thus compromising the nature of open source.
Not all FOSS projects need to be profitable to survive. IOW if a project cannot survive without being profitable and it cannot be profitable long-term, then it cannot survive long-term.