> I believe in a strong, centralised product vision and execution
Fair point! I'm reminded of this quote from Jaron Lanier:
> Why are so many of the more sophisticated examples of code in the online world—like the page-rank algorithms in the top search engines or like Adobe’s Flash—the results of proprietary development? Why did the adored iPhone come out of what many regard as the most closed, tyrannically managed software-development shop on Earth?
>An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open approach has been able to create lovely, polished copies, it hasn’t been so good at creating notable originals. Even though the open-source movement has a stinging countercultural rhetoric, it has in practice been a conservative force.
I love free software, yet most of the software I use is proprietary. (I consider my own apathy as contributing to the problem...)
As for this point,
- The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous people who will not contribute back
an interesting example is Jason Rohrer, who has open sourced all (?) his games.
The way he got around this is that he made a multiplayer game, where the $20 in effect gave you access to the main server. People indeed repackaged his game, sold it on other platforms etc. Yet last I checked, he was doing better than ever. (Probably cause he keeps pushing out updates to keep the game interesting.)
Not sure how well this works for "single-player software", although Aseprite seems to be doing all right. (Though technically not free software anymore, despite being open-source...)