This article has a number of fundamental errors, and this leads to inaccurate, or ineffective conclusions. Just a few;<p>>> The current state of software is such that everything depends on everything else.<p>This is not true. There is a hierarchy of dependencies, yes. But the use of "everything" here is not helpful. There are clearly projects that are used a lot (OpenSSL) and there are plenty of projects that are used by nothing. And everything in between.<p>>> since the software is free, you can not sell or license it to make money.<p>again, very not true. RedHat being a prime example, but there are any number of companies selling and licensing open source software. That is explicitly allowed under the various licenses. Mixing the concept of "freedom" and "cannot be sold" is a common FOSS myth.<p>>> So why do people abandon their widely-used FOSS projects?<p>For exactly the same reasons they abandon commercial projects. The vast majority of all projects are abandoned, regardless of license. Because _most_ projects are rubbish. If we narrow the set of programs to "widely used", again there is no difference between FOSS and commercial - DOS was commercial, widely used, and abandoned. (For some definition of "abandoned".)<p>As long as the list posted in the article, there are also many other reasons. Developers lost interest / die / get reassigned / get married / have kids / learn to play golf.<p>My point - talking about FOSS as a single category is meaningless because it spans too large a ground. It's not like there's a single common cause to project failure, or indeed a single common reason they succeed. Do we even want projects to succeed forever?<p>>> Therefore, by donating money to developers, you prevent the project from being abandoned.<p>eh, maybe. For some small number of projects. For a while. Until one of the other items on the list raises it's head. But money is the easiest problem to solve, and in many ways the least consequential.
> thanklessly maintaining for decades with no pay. This is clearly an issue<p>Why is it an issue?<p>This is an assumption. Not everyone who creates and maintains FOSS expects to be paid in money. Many of us got to where we are off the backs of previous FOSS authors freely given efforts and feel that it's our way of giving back to the world.<p>If there is one critical dependency, relied upon by many, where the single author/maintainer is literally crying for help - in that they are unable or unwilling to continue giving their free time - then fine, maybe _that_ project needs outside help or outside funding... but that is entirely subjective.
I ran the TeX archive for a while, so I have some experience answering this.<p>> So why do people abandon their widely-used FOSS projects?<p>The author missed a reasonably common one, that the developer passes away.
Perhaps we've got it the wrong way round, and rather than asking how Open Source contributors can be paid more, what about asking how everything can be cheaper? This is in fact what's happening as Open Source is deflationary. It's the reason that various central banks round the world can print so much money without the inflation rate getting as high as one would expect. I contribute to a few Open Source projects, and that's the approach I favour.
The economics of FOSS is not a solved problem and the author deserves kudos here for asking questions that I don't see asked anywhere else. The examples chosen are maybe not the most current, and there are counterexamples especially in B2B contexts but I'm applauding here and I'll save my more critical review for the book when it comes out.
This article is somewhat interesting but kind of disappointing. I was expecting the author to suggest some policy recommendations based on the observations after the problem and various options were analyzed, but it ended abruptly.
Here some more interesting points regarding the issue.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXdilrbujM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXdilrbujM</a>