most open source doesn't depend on companies paying someone to work on it
Not directly, but there is a correlation. For example the amount of open source that our shop puts out is definitely related to workload - as we have shed staff, the remaining people start to burn out and have less time for side projects, "personal development", as well as less energy for coding at home.
Our enthusiasm has not waned, but our ability to tap into it has diminished. I don't recommend it, it's bad for morale. Good devs need room to grow, and open source is a great outlet for this.
If you read the article, I'm saying the rise of consumer internet companies who don't keep up the contract is one of the causes. Just because your company does maintain the contract doesn't mean there aren't 100s more who are doing the wrong thing.
And yes "our" enthusiasm (since I'm one of you) has waned. We no longer have community like in the old days, we have a series of fad driven social ponzi schemes where 10% of the people hope to make money and the other 90% are dupes thinking they are.
I'm not arguing with the point of the article (that there are more commercial companies who "leech" off open source) - I don't have the data to argue against that, and in fact anecdotally I do believe it to be true.
I am just saying that if there is a drop in open source, you don't have enough data to eliminate the recession as a significant factor in the decline.
We no longer have community like in the old days, we have a series of fad driven social ponzi schemes where 10% of the people hope to make money and the other 90% are dupes thinking they are.
I think that's a fantastic insight. This is related to the phenomenon of markets that are mostly-all bubble and reputation based, like fashion models. (There was an article posted here awhile ago, but I don't have time to search for it right this second.) The old-school music industry was much the same.
Not directly, but there is a correlation. For example the amount of open source that our shop puts out is definitely related to workload - as we have shed staff, the remaining people start to burn out and have less time for side projects, "personal development", as well as less energy for coding at home.
Our enthusiasm has not waned, but our ability to tap into it has diminished. I don't recommend it, it's bad for morale. Good devs need room to grow, and open source is a great outlet for this.