No I think open source has its place, especially for foundational stuff like compilers and OS kernels.
I’m less sure about the marginal benefit of more open source in the future. IMHO it tends to create an expectation that all interesting and challenging work should be uncompensated, and the role of most software engineers should be to just cobble together open source components to make some clueless SaaS founder rich.
> IMHO it tends to create an expectation that all interesting and challenging work should be uncompensated
The more significant contributor to that expectation is large commercial vendors using open source as a loss-leader or goodwill marketing. Look at the all the assumptions these days that maintainers are customer service, not just people doing their own thing in a workshop with the doors open.
You can add whatever you want in your license and none of it matters unless you are prepared to go to court. Even then, you might have a hard time getting the company to respond if they aren’t based in the same country as you.
For example, Onyx is a Chinese company that makes a line of e-ink tablets (Boox) that are based on open source software. AFAIK, they have refused to honor the terms of the GPL and release their modifications.
> You can add whatever you want in your license and none of it matters unless you are prepared to go to court. Even then, you might have a hard time getting the company to respond if they aren’t based in the same country as you.
It still matters for all practical purposes, IMHO. "Willfully violating terms of a license" results in very very different reputation for the brand than "Adhering to the terms of the license".
In practice, Amazon isn't going to take your "free for non-commercial use" software and try to sell it back to you even though they know you won't sue them!
Sure, some companies will do that, but lets be honest, if they are prepared to violate the license for FLOSS products, they'll violate it even if you didn't release it as open-source.
IOW, pirates gonna pirate; the license terms are irrelevant because they are pirates.
I think the main discussion here is big SaaS companies using peoples' FOSS without giving anything back, either feature or cost-wise. No solution is perfect, but at least this would give you the ability to push back on a company that is trying to "sell your own product" back to you.
I’m less sure about the marginal benefit of more open source in the future. IMHO it tends to create an expectation that all interesting and challenging work should be uncompensated, and the role of most software engineers should be to just cobble together open source components to make some clueless SaaS founder rich.
Not saying I know what the solution is though.