this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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Because there are companies who would to pay no dev costs, slap their branding on something, and monetize it, but who will also use their market clout (or walled garden control) to not provide a better product, but just make buying it from the actual developers less convenient, or limit interoperability with the original product.
We do not live in a world of conscientious consumers who will go out of their way to pay the developers who actually made something, we live in a world where whoever's version is at the top of the app store gets the most downloads.
This is just ridiculously naive. When Bob is actually named 'Amazon', 'Microsoft', 'Google', etc, people will trust them more than random app developer company.
Go ahead and tell me one piece of FOSS which was maintained by one person and got screwed over by MS/Amazon/Google. These big companies will more likely than not just hire the dev than trying to outcompete them.
On the flipside, tell me how many huge VC-funded companies started with "real" open source and then switched to a "source available" license after they acquired customers and favored profits over community goodwill?