Open-source Exploitation
The exploitation of open source has got me thinking. I don’t think everyone has to make their product, code, or whatever open source. I think it’s fine if something is for profit. What becomes dangerous is large corporations using open source with bad intentions. I can see why Richard Stallman crashed out and if you look at his website, he makes his stance very clear on why he doesn’t like certain brands or companies.
Anyway, I’ve noticed companies will release products under the guise of open source and either be a) not ACTUALLY open source but claim they are or b) use open sourcing their product/tool/software to control the market and set the standard.
Certain companies will use this open source strategy to become the industry standard. But where are their contributions to the community? Just because you make something open source doesn’t mean you are doing in the spirit of open source.
Maybe some of these companies have engineers with good intentions and genuinely want to give back to the community. Underneath a large corporation, these intentions become lost and twisted unfortunately. When was the last time we heard x, y, z company do something for the developers who maintain the tools and code engineers at Fortune 500 companies use? Have we ever seen x, y, z companies give back to the community by contributing to a pre-existing project?
Look at Valve (creators of Steam), they’re a great example of open source with good intentions and they’re not even an open source company! They support the Linux community through other means. With Wine (a way to translate Windows to Linux), they put money into the initiative and even hired the developers to continue developing it. When did Valve make something open source? NEVER but they don’t have to because I think there’s a fine balance. If you’re a large corporation pulling in millions or billions. We should expect them to. If you’re a small business, community, group, I don’t expect you to because they’re not profiting off utilizing tools, code, or products through open source whether it be directly or indirectly.
Commercialization of open source resources have gone down hill fast. We need more people to advocate the meaning and the importance of open source. It drives innovation, community, and knowledge. All in all, I think there’s a deeper question of “can open source be commercialized?” There’s definitely ways to do it but maybe open source was never meant to be because of the conglomerate of unique and special perspectives. That’s what makes it special.