we can't have negotiations with all 100k library authors between themselves
Yeah, it's the "nobody is ever going to pay for bash, vim, top, netcat, ..." problem.
Apple has found a good middle ground though. Pay developers millions of dollars internally (infinitely growing stock) then they release what they work on as open source code. It solves the (reasonable) compensation problem for individuals while letting new software spread purposefully throughout the world.
We're just missing a middle ground where you can write open source software while not being owned by the most valuable company in the world.
> Pay developers millions of dollars internally then they release what they work on as open source code.
What do they release as open source code, apart from TextEdit? I am really surprised by your comparison since it seems to me that the two (bash, vim, top, netcat… and Apple's open source code) do not compare at all.
Apple "owns" LLVM which has changed our computing landscape from the bottom up in more ways than I can count. GCC was happy being stagnant until LLVM came along and GCC could finally see how awful and behind the times they had become. Now there's at least some competition again.
(competition-free platforms are never a good thing, no matter how many times you pray to your zero-to-one god)
Yeah, it's the "nobody is ever going to pay for bash, vim, top, netcat, ..." problem.
Apple has found a good middle ground though. Pay developers millions of dollars internally (infinitely growing stock) then they release what they work on as open source code. It solves the (reasonable) compensation problem for individuals while letting new software spread purposefully throughout the world.
We're just missing a middle ground where you can write open source software while not being owned by the most valuable company in the world.