Eh, people are allowed to disagree or challenge Cormack, it doesn't bother me that they brought up that worry despite knowing he is an experienced respected person.
I do find it notable how many of my peer computer programmers/software engineers no longer believe in open source though. 15 years ago it was very popular to believe in open source, as a way of combating the power of giant corporations.
The dislike/distrust/desire to combat large corporations is still there, but there seems to be a popular and growing opinion that, as they have seen big corporations get only more powerful while using open source, this must mean that open source serves big corporations, and we should be anti-open source if we want to combat big corporations. So it's still anti-corporate, but now much more popular to be anti-open source.
The difference I guess is that now the idea is that open source privileges big corporations against smaller for-profit concerns, that it hurts the kind of "entrepreneurs" that the speakers want to be, hurts their ability to become rich themselves. Whereas before the idea was that open source would help "the people" against the corporations, not help some entrepeneurs get rich themselves.
ANYHOW. This is definitely a thing. Anyone who's been in this "scene" for 20 years is seeing it.
Is anyone writing more about it and what's going on?
Focus changed. The 90's was the rise of the PC, the 00's the rise of the web, and the teens rise of the money making mobile platform.
The rise of the PC is what sparked open source as we needed cheaper (free) tools. Once the tools were free it accelerated the growth of the web which was built using said free tools (remember LAMP stacks?). Mobile built on the web and used the same free tools allowing more money to be made. It basically put a computer in everyone's pocket in two decades which is no small feat.
In the end open source did win in a way. We still use open source tools. Linux powers most of the web as well as Android. Much of iOS/MacOS is built of/with free tools (GCC/clang, BSD, etc). But OSS remains a beast of burden which powers money making platforms. And there's a lot of money to be made on those platforms so focus has greatly shifted.
Reminds me of a phrase used to describe the evolution of Jazz music: "Born in a whiskey jar, grew up on pot, and died on heroin." Open source was born in that whiskey jar of general purpose beige boxes. It grew up during the wonky web years and showed great promise. Now its highly addicted to corporate money and slowly fading away.
There was a lot of money to be made on the platforms that OSS ran on from the very beginning of OSS. That's not a change. It wouldn't have been an issue if there wasn't.
In the eyes of original generation of OSS supporters, the 'lot of money to be made' was what made OSS important, to ensure that people access to software that served them as users, instead of just being made to make a lot of money off of them.
Arguably, despite the takeover of open source, that vision failed.
So, now, rather than opposing "money to be made" with the "interest of users" those opposed to open source (while making a case that they are the ones really more "in the original spirit of open source" than open source itself)... say they are sticking up for the ability of the small entrepeneur to make money not just the big corporation.
That's the change, not that there's a lot of money to be made from software. From the start of the OSS movement there was a lot of money to be made off of software, if there weren't OSS wouldn't have been relevant in the first place. Original OSS said if making sure users have the freedom to do what they need with software reduces the money to be made off of it... that's fine. New line says the thing is to reserve the right of the small entrepeneuers (or those who can convince the internet mob that they are smaller and more deserving than Amazon anyway) to make money off users, and try to prevent big corporations from getting a piece of the pie that rightfully belongs to "deserving" businesses, who are deserving because... they're smaller.
I have some ideas of what the differences actually are, I think it's not about how much money is to be made, but how the actual individual software engineers made money; who their employers were and how those employers behaved. I think it has to do with both greater "austerity" and "efficiency" among large employers, and greater dreams of getting rich as an "entrepeneur" among individual developers.
Carmack is clearly still in favor of open source, he just wishes he had gone with BSD. And it doesn't sound like it's because he's anti-corporate. It sounds like it's because he works for a mega tech corp and his mega tech corp hates the GPL so he has to do a ton of paperwork to use any GPL code there. (which is the same as working for any tech corp.)
Right, I wasn't speaking of Carmack as part of the trend. Carmack still has an old-school relationship to support of open source. I was speaking about the increasing number of people opposed to open source, saying things like that it's clear that the reason someone supports open source is because they "work for a mega tech corp", you illustrated the trend I am speaking about, precisely. Support for open source is now seen as the side of "mega tech corps", and in fact open source is decreasingly popular in online developer communities. With people accusing those of supporting it of doing so only because they have been bought off or tricked by large corporations. Exactly. This is a change.
The crux of his argument seems to be that he wants to be able to copy and paste other people's code and create derivative work without the GPL carrying along.
Well it’s also because we didn’t see much done with the GPL’d source releases for his engines, just small improvements and standalone mods (The Dark Mod, Xonotic, etc)
No commercial game developer is willing to ship a game with GPL’d code because the license is incompatible with most middleware and console SDKs. We missed out on what could have been a free and open competitor to Unity or Unreal.
I do find it notable how many of my peer computer programmers/software engineers no longer believe in open source though. 15 years ago it was very popular to believe in open source, as a way of combating the power of giant corporations.
The dislike/distrust/desire to combat large corporations is still there, but there seems to be a popular and growing opinion that, as they have seen big corporations get only more powerful while using open source, this must mean that open source serves big corporations, and we should be anti-open source if we want to combat big corporations. So it's still anti-corporate, but now much more popular to be anti-open source.
The difference I guess is that now the idea is that open source privileges big corporations against smaller for-profit concerns, that it hurts the kind of "entrepreneurs" that the speakers want to be, hurts their ability to become rich themselves. Whereas before the idea was that open source would help "the people" against the corporations, not help some entrepeneurs get rich themselves.
ANYHOW. This is definitely a thing. Anyone who's been in this "scene" for 20 years is seeing it.
Is anyone writing more about it and what's going on?