Recently, I watched a video from JSConf.EU by CJ Silverio on the economics of open source development. She recounted the story of the start of Node.js and the Node Package Manager (NPM), and how the creator of Node.js gave the source code to the Node Foundation, but the creator of Node Package Manager retained all rights and created a company to continue development of NPM and took VC money. The video is a good watch, with lots of excellent examples on how business get value from open source software, but don’t (in general) pay anything for the software (either development or support costs). My additions to this video: (1) people who want to make money from the software they create should think hard about how they are going to do that before they start releasing that software, and (2) people who use open source for profit should invest some of their profits in keeping the wheels of progress turning (pay the developers something), otherwise the supply may dry up.
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💬 Andy