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Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

jake Silver badge

I have been contributing to the FOSS world since before BSD was BSD. Quite frankly, I have never thought about getting paid for it for one simple reason: It doesn't matter.

Read that again, it's important: It doesn't matter.

I wrote code, created patches, chased down bugs, wrote documentation, and all the other bits & bobs that go into FOSS because I am extremely selfish. I wanted it to work for ME, my way, in my time. Once it worked the way I wanted it to work, it solved a problem that I had, which more than paid for the time and effort that I put into it.

Then I released it to the wild, without caring if anyone else needed it. It's MINE, it scratched my itch ... now, if you have the same itch feel free to make use of my scratching post. No point in you re-inventing the wheel to do the same job ... and better, it frees you up to work on something to fix another itch.

Thankfully, other people have many other itches. In aggregate, we have created something useful. Without money bags getting under foot.

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