“Open source” is not broken

And by broken, you mean what?

I think you're missing the point here.

People's time is valuable, especially expert developers.

The 'Code' only part of the issue with respect to input cost. Someone has to maintain that dev. account, maintain their skills, stay on top of distribution policies, probably take on some legal risk, keep the build kind of up to day.

That takes skill. We mostly want it that way so that distribution is clean and clear and reasonable for those involved.

If it's a niche product, then $20 is not going to add up to a lot of money.

If it's a professional product, then $20 is basically $0 for all intents and purposes, it's the cost of a stapler on which case cost should not be a problem.

The AppStore is generally an open market, if $20 price is too high and someone is raking in big profits, someone can publish the same thing.

In the end, what we want to achieve is a price point that matches the material value creation involved in the 'maintenance of the build and distribution aspects'.

That's actually efficient, and what we want.

There's no such thing as 'free' - it's all time and labour and there are number of issues involved.

FOSS should be considered 'volunteer labour' which makes the underlying costs more apparent, the code and licensing is a distraction from that.

You're describing two legitimate worlds, the Ivory Tower and the Marketplace, let's call them for short, but I don't think the error is conflating them. I think the error(s) arise in the intersection between the two realms. The Internet was a-commercial or even anti-commercial at first (having gestated in the Ivory Tower) and retrofitting it for commerce and industry has been, um, a wild ride. Kind of a gold rush.

Copying and running code is (effectively) free, developing, maintaining, and auditing code is still expensive. Folks who want to use software without paying the costs get what they pay for, eh?

I feel that if there's anything the community is doing wrong, it's in the emphasis on new and shiny rather than mature and stable. I feel we should be entering a "contractile" stage of (global IT) development, with consolidation and convergence of software and hardware replacing the wild burgeoning and rampant growth of complexity.

"Like, complexity is an existential threat, man..."

> It feels like we moved from a world where open source software was develop by a community, to one where most of us are just consumers of the code.

Are you sure that's even a contradiction? I mean, if you start with a developer community, and add a lot of people who simply had not been exposed to / using the software, you get to the situation of "most of us being just consumers of the code".

Now, you could argue that communities have been fraying/weakening over the past few decades, but that would be almost an orthogonal argument.

> That mean that all the companies who have been relying on open source need to allocate time to community work.

We need to funnel some social resources into building and maintaining such communities. If companies were to do that, then great, or rather, not great but sort-of-ok. The thing is, they aren't doing it, as they are fundamentally motivated not to: It hurts their profitability (except perhaps for vague extra-long-term concerns). So, it's not useful to say that "companies should do it".

> Hey, what are your thoughts on the OP's argument, though?

An ad-hom insult doesn't make an argument. OP isn't bashing open source, OP is bashing for-profit companies using it without contributing as an overall system, and OP's website isn't a for-profit company, so even the "OP is a dumb hypocrite" isn't only an insult, it's also wrong.

> "There is no obligation or anything to encourage anyone to donate to the authors, most people don't care."

My long term simple answer to American's "tipping problem"[1] is that if you want money, charge money. This emotional manipulation guilt tripping "you don't have to pay, it's free" "my children, think of my dying starving family, I need money" "oh but it's free honestly I do it to contribute to others" "but listen to the crying of my wife as she scrapes together the last of our posessions to take to the pawn shop" "no really, I encourage everyone to make and use free software (but you should FEEL BAD if you do what I encourage)" "but it's free, check out that license" "I'm only saying I was hoping you would behave like a decent person and not take advantage of me while I lie about my motives to your face and emotionally manipulate you" "btw don't even think of holding me responsible for any problems in the code, I disclaim all responsibility to the maximum amount permitted by law and offer no support for any problems" is just not a good or honest way to go about things.

You want money, charge money. Code as an employee, be a consultant, be indipendent and sell your thing. You need money, charge money, there's multiple ways to do it, people have been doing it for years. Why aren't you able to charge money? At least partly because of all the people giving away the equivalent for free. Why would someone pay for your library when they could get a free one? If guilt tripping is the only answer, you need a better answer.

If I plant a tree for everyone to have a bit more oxygen in the atmosphee, will you pay me for the oxygen you're using from my efforts? Of course not.

[1] that's not to say I don't tip, it's to say I hate the design of the system and think it leaves the majority worse off and far more stressed, so the minority of attractive people in rich areas come out far ahead.