What comes after open source

Roughly, yes. Or, with slightly more nuance, open source has been synonymous with "uses an open source licence", but semantically, developers are understanding open source to be a more holistic idea of openness, rather than purely a software license strategy. And the licence can't possible ensure that the rest of those ideas are followed.

FYI I edited my comment since you replied, I wasn't done with my train of thought yet :)

Seems like I'm on the same page with you then. I don't really see a way to codify all of the peripheral open source associations in a legal document. A lot of it is very...ad hoc.

Open source was such a powerful movement. In 2011, I was making six figures in a major city for a huge company. Then, I got laid off and couldn't afford rent anymore, so I had to move back to my hometown in another state that same month. I had barely any savings at all due to the relocation costs I just paid to move to said city.

I pulled a 5-year-old desktop computer out of storage, bought a new $50 hard drive for it, put my resume on Craigslist (of all places), installed Ruby on Rails and all my development tools, and within two weeks I had a job working from home for $40 an hour. I didn't have to re-certify, renew any licenses, or pay anyone any fees of any kind. I didn't lose access to any tools I relied on in my previous job. My only expense for maintaining my employability was $50. I have a four-year degree only.

I don't know of any other industry where that's possible, and I don't know if it's possible to do that in this industry anymore. I know it is because of the hard work of the open source movement. I've been thinking a lot about how to preserve that level of economic empowerment in software. I don't think the answer is in licenses, but in something like a union (although you are right in that most developers are rabidly anti-union). Perhaps an alternative corporate structure would have the same result, and that's why I decided to start the first for-profit software collective.

I didn't really get into what aspects of production that developers are thinking about today in the post, because I didn't think it was necessary to make my point. My point is to get some people thinking about this, not decree exactly what I think the issue is.

I do think that open source is working. The question is more of, who is it working for, and why? Could it be made to work for more people? Is it working in the way we want it to work?

For example, your comment is framed about the health of Open Source itself. I see a lot more developers concerned about the health (in many senses) of the developers who are working on open source, over the health of the idea of open source in and of itself. They're also concerned about corporate control (in a steering sense more than a "total control" sense) over open source and platforms that are open source.

Can today's open source sustain itself? Sure, probably. Lots of things that are not fundamentally sustainable manage to last for quite a while. But I do think people are wanting something better, even if they're not totally sure what that is or how to get it. I mean, I don't fully know either :)

You know, sometimes I wonder if this whole conversation really isn't just meant for developers. I ask myself what is the sentiment across the larger population and realise no one really cares. They love free beers. They'd do anything not to pay 0.99 for an app, seeing that as an incredible amount of money to pay for something they expect nowadays to be free. There's a lot to unpack here and I don't think I am in the right mind state to do it now. Good piece!!