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[mirror] blog and personal website of Drew DeVault git clone https://hacktivis.me/git/mirror/drewdevault.com.git
commit: 7389d4cccb7f61e63afb88f730422d072c986a05
parent 56d7ea6a9f32c0ab01040b1fcbf27b2eccc13ac0
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date:   Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:00:15 -0500

Update gemini article

Diffstat:

Mcontent/blog/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.gmi2+-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/content/blog/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.gmi b/content/blog/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.gmi @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ It further clarifies the commercial aspect of this freedom explicitly: This is an essential, non-negotiable requirement of free and open-source software, and a reality you must face if you want to reap the benefits of the FOSS ecosystem. Anyone can monetize your code. That includes you, and me, all of your contributors, your competitors, Amazon and Google, and everyone else. This is a rejection of how intellectual property typically works — copyright laws exist for the express purpose of creating an artificial monopoly for your business, and FOSS licenses exist for the express purpose of breaking it. If you’re new to FOSS, it is going to be totally alien to your understanding of IP ownership. -It’s quite common for people other than you to make money from your free and open source software works. Some will incorporate them into their own products to sell, some will develop an expertise with it and sell their skills as a consultant, some will re-package it in an easy-to-use fashion and charge people for the service. Others might come up with even more creative ways to monetize the software, like writing books about it. It will create wealth for everyone, not just the original authors. +It’s quite common for people other than you to make money from your free and open source software works. Some will incorporate them into their own products to sell, some will develop an expertise with it and sell their skills as a consultant, some will re-package it in an easy-to-use fashion and charge people for the service. Others might come up with even more creative ways to monetize the software, like writing books about it. It will create wealth for everyone, not just the original authors. And if you want it to create wealth for you, then you are responsible for figuring out how. Building a business requires more work than just writing the software. This makes sense in terms of karmic justice, as it were. One of the most important advantages of making your software FOSS is that the global community can contribute improvements back to it. The software becomes more than your organization can make it alone, both through direct contributions to your code, and through the community which blossoms around it. If the sum of its value is no longer entirely accountable to your organization, is it not fair that the commercial exploitation of that value shouldn’t be entirely captured by your organization, either? This is the deal that you make when you choose FOSS.