The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded. Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers, people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches, etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts of the BSD TCP stack in their operating systems and have an interest in contributing and keeping it up to date.<p>But open source didn&#x27;t depend on these funding models in the 90s&#x2F;2000s did it? I did a whole post on the philosophy of open source a while back:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;penguindreams.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;penguindreams.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;the-philosophy-of-open-source...</a><p>..but one of the things I didn&#x27;t find enough sources on where a lot of funding came from (And percentage of volunteer contributors).<p>This recent Redis things reminds me of the Caddy controversy, and maybe even more recently, how Win&#x2F;Mac Docker binaries are behind a login wall.<p>What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley&#x2F;West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance&#x2F;resources?