Yes, I think this sentence oversimplifies things. The conclusions should be divided between:
1) Most open source software written and released today
2) Most open source software you use
The code in category #2 is much older on average.
Most people here use bash every day, but as far as I can tell, there's about one person behind it, who doesn't get paid for it (Chet Ramey).
And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile.
In the "non-company" category, I would put Linux, git, hg, gcc, Apache. A lot of people still use Apache. nginx was in this category too until very recently.
SVN is interesting because it was started by a company (CollabNet), but I believe they diverged and the company no longer had much economic interest in it.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that the story is really complicated. It's not as simple as what's in that Tweet.
> And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile.
I think you used the wrong word here, or at least a misleading one:
Linux, for example, is still free and Free for most reasonable definitions people have of those terms. (Anti-copyleft trolling is not reasonable.) Its development is funded, yes, but that funding doesn't give IBM, for example, special rights which a sufficiently determined individual hacker couldn't also have: Both have the ability to have an idea, code it, and get the code accepted, and IBM isn't immune to a Linus veto just because IBM's poured money into their team of kernel contributors.
I rant, but it's an important distinction between Open Source and closed source. It also reminds me of an old joke: Back in the 1990s, Apple, bereft of Jobs and nearly dead against Microsoft, was moving towards IBM in terms of strategic partnerships. So, the joke went "Apple + IBM = IBM", as in, if you move too close to IBM, IBM engulfs you and you lose your identity. My point is, IBM can't engulf an Open Source project unless absolutely nobody outside IBM cares about it and all the repos outside of IBM's purview utterly stagnate.
> In the "non-company" category, I would put Linux, git, hg, gcc, Apache. A lot of people still use Apache. nginx was in this category too until very recently.
I don't know if you noticed, but you put Linux in two different categories.
> SVN is interesting because it was started by a company (CollabNet), but I believe they diverged and the company no longer had much economic interest in it.
Yes, there are a lot of dimensions, hence Linux falling in multiple categories. It was started by an individual, but many of the current contributions are by people who are paid to work on it.
The story isn't simple for any big/successful project I can think of:
1) Started by a company for profit, vs. an individual for fun, or maybe profit.
2) Where the current commits come from, regardless of how the project started (contributor is paid or not paid)
I didn't mean to suggest that "free" and "commercial contribution" are mutually exclusive. The distinction I meant is whether the contributor is part of an organization that makes money from the software.
3) Whether the project was forked. WebKit was forked, LLVM was shepherded by Apple into a huge project, but Apple didn't start it. CyanogenMod was forked the other way (from a company to a commercial effort), and then turned back into a different company.
Additionally, some people might start a company to make open source software. And some employees might be paid more making proprietary software, but choose to work somewhere where they can work on open source.
So yes it's very complicated. This quote:
It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes.
isn't useful, except for the very small number of people who think that "open source == free == no profit".
1) Most open source software written and released today
2) Most open source software you use
The code in category #2 is much older on average.
Most people here use bash every day, but as far as I can tell, there's about one person behind it, who doesn't get paid for it (Chet Ramey).
And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile.
In the "non-company" category, I would put Linux, git, hg, gcc, Apache. A lot of people still use Apache. nginx was in this category too until very recently.
SVN is interesting because it was started by a company (CollabNet), but I believe they diverged and the company no longer had much economic interest in it.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that the story is really complicated. It's not as simple as what's in that Tweet.