Open source covers a very tiny set of use cases for software. How many paid products have an open source competitor at all? How many have a credible competitor (GIMP isn’t a credible alternative to PhotoShop for the people who pay for it for example).
It is far from rendering paid software obsolete.
And not nobody. Virtually nobody. Yes open source exists. Out of the hundreds of devs I have worked with, I know one who meaningfully participates. Say 1 in 100 devs does open source. The other 99 not writing code would lead to a massive fall off in software written.
> GIMP isn’t a credible alternative to PhotoShop for the people who pay for it for example
Weird take. GIMP's been good enough for professional work for more than a decade, and lots of professionals use it. I paid for Paint Shop Pro ages ago, because it was better than Photoshop for my use cases. GIMP progressed and became better than PSP for the same. I've used it ever since. It's even been used for major motion pictures.
In the same way that software is eating the world, Free and Open Source software is eating software. Every year it does more and better. If GIMP doesn't work for your use case today, it likely will tomorrow, or the day after.
Some open source tools, like Blender, like Linux, exist at the top of their respective foodchains. Proprietary tools are working to try to compete with them.
> Some open source tools, like Blender, like Linux, exist at the top of their respective foodchains. Proprietary tools are working to try to compete with them.
> How many paid products have an open source competitor at all? How many have a credible competitor (GIMP isn’t a credible alternative to PhotoShop for the people who pay for it for example).
I'm not sure how we could figure out the numbers, but this just doesn't feel right. A lot of important and key paid products have open source alternatives. Some examples:
* Windows/macOS -> Linux
* Microsoft Office -> LibreOffice
* Adobe Illustrator -> Inkscape
* AutoCAD -> FreeCAD
* SecureCRT -> PuTTY, Urxvt, etc.
* Maya -> Blender
* ESXi -> Proxmox
* VMWare Player -> VirtualBox
Whether they're "credible" depends on the user and their use case. I'm sure there are plenty of things the paid products do better than their open source counterparts, but at the same time, there are likely plenty of users who don't need those features and are perfectly fine with the free alternative.
I don't doubt there are more closed source projects than open source, or that there is closed software with zero open source alternatives - just that the claim that open source is a tiny set of all software use cases doesn't seem right.
>> It is in nobody’s interest to do any hard work. If you don’t reward great effort, virtually nobody provides it.
> And not nobody. Virtually nobody. Yes open source exists.
In 2018, GitHub reported on their blog [0]:
> Today we reached a major milestone: 100 million repositories now live on GitHub. Powering this number is an incredible community. Together, you’re 31 million developers from nearly every country and territory in the world, collaborating across 1.1 billion contributions.
I think it's safe to say there's more than virtually nobody doing hard work in the open source world and creating gratis software.
It is far from rendering paid software obsolete.
And not nobody. Virtually nobody. Yes open source exists. Out of the hundreds of devs I have worked with, I know one who meaningfully participates. Say 1 in 100 devs does open source. The other 99 not writing code would lead to a massive fall off in software written.