FOSS
Does anyone know if there's conversations ongoing in the free software community around *why* software isn't free?
Like stallman is all "closed source is bad ethics m'kay", but makes it seem like a choice which is where a lot of people seem to be. Ignoring how market competition makes closed source not only appealing, but an actual advantage to competition.
Like yeah you can make your shit open source and it's still possible to make a profit. But you can make way more if you monopolize platforms/code.
re: FOSS
@nergalur I don't think most people in the free software community are interested in making the maximum amount of money. If they were, they'd probably have chosen other jobs.
If I were to guess why some proprietary programs are better than their free counterparts, I'd say that's probably down to FOSS not really being a thing amongst designers and UX/UI creators. Wherever there is only a marginal user interface, FOSS is usually dominant.
re: FOSS
@ctrlaltchaos @nergalur Lacking in UX/UI folks is a part of it, but only a small part, I think. Bigger reasons why proprietary software can often be more usable, more reliable, etc: Money. I truly believe that paying people lots of money to complete certain tasks ends up producing good results. Also project management. This is often overlooked or even looked down on in FLOSS, but having _good_ project managers make executive decisions about a project can save time, and increase quality.
re: FOSS
@dvn @nergalur I disagree to some extent.
People in creative/brain intensive jobs are usually not motivated by money.
That said, developers in quite a number of open source projects do get paid, at least in projects of interest to big companies.
So yeah, making sure that motivated people can work full time on a project is helpful. IT doesn't need tons of money, but people will have to be able to feed their family. We'd have to figure out a way to do that for applications not needed by a big company.
Regarding project management: Most projects with a lot of contributors do employ project management. Not every project is so big though, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create a project management department for a three person project.
It probably comes down to getting the right people interested and making sure that they can work full time.
re: FOSS
@ctrlaltchaos
Def did not want to imply open source work is paid, just trying to say it's really only for certain stuff (usually infrastructure related from what I can tell). The full thread goes more into detail
It is true though that not every project needs to be that big which is part of the reason FOSS exists at all.
@dvn
