Jacob Kaplan-Moss writes Paying people to work on open source is good actually which very much matches my thoughts so I’m clipping it to my local notes.
I’ll share a handful of quotes:
“Yelling at maintainers who’ve found a way to make a living is wrong.”
“Open source is good for humanity…I want people who want to work on open source to be able to do so, and should be able to live comfortable lives, with their basic needs met.
I’ll even use the terms “open source” and “free software” interchangeably just to hammer home how, in this context, the precise definitions of these terms don’t matter to me
One of the core things that I’m ready to fight for alongside Jacob is that “lower case” open source should be a bigger tent than OSI-approved Open Source™️ licenses, and it’s what I mean when I use the term.
if my sloppy use of these terms bothers you in the context of talking about how people make their living, it implies that you care more about terminology and definitions than about the people, and I’d like you to sit in that discomfort for a while
Read the whole thing.