The betterment of the human species is more important by far than maximizing the profits any particular individual can earn. Once a work is created the marginal cost of reproduction is close to zero. Software is valuable. A copy of software is paradoxically worth nothing.
It's true that software developers need to eat too but we need to figure out a way to do so without making the world more cumbersome, transactional, and shitty.
Betterment of the species?This is another conceit a certain segment of the SE community has. You aren’t physicists, engineers, biologists or chemists; nor are you artists or philosophers.
I’d estimate something like 99% of all software development (especially, perhaps, open source) is either for toys or else actively harmful. “Betterment of the species” indeed.
How do you reason? Are Linux, sqlite, LLVM, or OpenSSL actively harmful? KDE? Blender? Those are obviously not "toys" and each seems genuinely helpful and useful to me.
Most things that most people contribute in life are small in impact. We could stand to give away more things of higher impact too instead of maximizing profit.
Yes, I understand that point, but it's not really what I was getting at. My point is that most software, even or especially open source, isn't even "small impact" (in a positive sense). It's just toys, learning experiments, or used for active harm, etc. Almost no software written today contributes to any "betterment of the species," no matter how small.
If software engineers want to contribute in that way, they should support the research efforts of individuals in the areas I mentioned. Those projects are meaningful and impactful. But they're a tiny fraction of software developed.
It's simply an incredibly ignorant conceit to fancy oneself as providing even small impact simply because one writes some software.
It's true that software developers need to eat too but we need to figure out a way to do so without making the world more cumbersome, transactional, and shitty.