Free and open source software projects are in transition
&gt; A majority of the value created by modern software ultimately comes from free and open source software.<p>&gt; From this perspective most VC investments aren’t about creating value but about strip-mining FLOSS projects and communities. The scale is for extraction.<p>As with so many things, I find this analysis suffers for using metaphors about the physical world with software. Strip-mining is a loaded term because it uses destructive means to acquire exclusive access to physical resources, in a way which leaves literally less than there was before, and which can be literally lethal to a literal biological ecosystem and literally toxic to physically proximal human communities. &quot;Extraction&quot; in the literal sense of pulling something out, when dealing with physical material means that others cannot have what you&#x27;ve pulled out; it&#x27;s gone.<p>A company (VC-backed or otherwise) that starts from OSS tools (operating system, languages, build tools, application frameworks, etc) to build their own offering doesn&#x27;t (need to) remove that value in a way which excludes anyone else from enjoying it. To the contrary, building off the OSS ecosystem can make it healthier, if for no other reason than they are cultivating more engineers that know how to use these tools. &quot;Extraction&quot; is not the right metaphor.<p>The issue of adding proprietary features to OSS projects I think we should acknowledge as diluting value, not subtracting it. If the choice is between project development being discontinued at time T with core feature set F, vs continued through time T+K with extended feature set F + G + H where H is proprietary, but G is not, users who won&#x27;t use the proprietary features may still benefit from G, and are still better off with continued development -- but we must acknowledge that it&#x27;s at a slower rate than if H had not been added. Communities should evaluate whether diluted support is worthwhile, or at what point it should be considered abusive, or at least separated into distinct companion projects.