“Open source” is broken
No, it&#x27;s not broken -- it&#x27;s thriving.<p>Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money.<p>Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers.<p>Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don&#x27;t have to build everything from scratch. Big companies get tech branding cred and can attract better talent, etc, etc.<p>And yes, maintainers sometimes get burnt out, consumers sometimes act inappropriately entitled, massively profitable enterprises often give back relatively little in return.<p>But that&#x27;s all part of the deal going in, and everyone is fully aware of all the trade-offs straight from the onset.<p>What&#x27;s so beautiful is that there are so many options whenever conditions change for any party.  A maintainer goes to jail for vehicular manslaughter and a bugs needs fixing, no problem.  Stand up a fork and the project continues on.  A company&#x27;s new leadership takes its own source project in a questionable direction and consumers are upset, no problem.  Community forks and the project lives on.<p>And the result is we have this thriving, organic, creative, productive ecosystem which benefits us all in the end.