The cloud czars gorged on free software, starved the projects that sustain it, and are shocked the open source commons is starting to break.
Open source is a set of principles that make no economic sense in this greedy, messed-up world of ours.
It’s free to download and free to use. You are free to change it and often free to profit from those changes. There are no legal obligations beyond this.
Moral obligations are supposed to keep open source going. But big tech companies have no moral obligations. The only obligation they see is to their “shareholders,” in other words themselves. Big tech is nihilism writ large, a Nietzschian world in which only they exist, and the rest of us must make do.
This routine theft from the commons is now breaking open source. The biggest tech companies have contributed just $12.5 million to the biggest open source foundations, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes.
Today’s technology is built on open source. Systems like Linux are inherently more stable than Windows, whose code can only be seen and edited by a handful of people. Yet the companies that built our 21st century world insist on treating the commons like a freeway underpass.
It’s the same way big tech owners treat states that provide real services, like California. They use the infrastructure, the education, the public safety, and the clean air, then move their money to Texas where poorer people must pay for these things.
This is Unsustainable
As with everything else, big tech expects “the community” to pay for things, while denying their own obligations as community members. In the case of open source, this has foundations like Linux considering charging for downloads. It sounds like a violation of open source principles, and it is, but it’s either that or go broke.
Centi-billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg are shocked to find juries ready to treat their companies like tobacco merchants. Elon Musk says he can’t get a fair jury because everyone hates him. They’re shocked, shocked, by the public’s attitude toward them, and seem to think throwing money at some lobbyists will turn it around.
This is the great delusion of our time, the idea that money can control attitudes. It’s an authoritarian impulse. Tech companies have made themselves the enemies of the commons, the enemies of government, the enemies of democracy. They have only begun to reap the whirlwind.
If they want to know where that started, it started with open source.
Dana Blankenhorn is a technology and business reporter based in Atlanta. He has made his living online since 1985 through news services, online publications, print publications and blogs. His latest book, “Living With Moore’s Law” summarizes a lifetime study of history, politics, and business, giving you tools with which to understand the past, present and future of technology. Follow him on Substack.
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