this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Pick one. Capitalism cannot abide anything not being commodified. "Corporate open source" is an inherently contradictory term.
I’m not here to defend capitalism, only to say that capitalism and open source have had a more complicated relationship than that.
The Apache HTTP Server was the preeminent dot-com era open source project. It’s hard to imagine the dot-com boom without it. People seem to forget that it was corporate open source. It was “a patchy server” developed (from NCSA HTTPd) and maintained largely by internet startups like Organic, Inc. Many other critical components of the dot-com tech stack were similarly developed.
This is what I mean though. Most groundbreaking development is done voluntarily or with public funds. It is antithetical to capitalism.
Capital comes in AFTER it is proven useful and/or profitable.
Open Source has been historically tied to corporations. It kicked off with Netscape opening their browser. Eric S Raymond was a major player behind the term, and he's explicitly right-Libertarian.
Free Software, OTOH, is a different matter. I think the two are overdue for a divorce.
I happen to like the term FOSS and would like to keep it around. It’s catchy.
Definitely time to kick out the corporatists though.
No, open source has been historically exploited by corporations.
By design, yes.