zlacker

Yeah, I struggle with this conceptually. Projects like Kubernetes cannot be developed without corporations investing their engineers time. For that, they want a say in direction - maybe more fairly put, they want their problems and objectives on the table whether it benefits the project or not. Just reading the top 10 contributors to Kubernetes:

- Google

- Microsoft

- AWS

- Databricks

Most all of these companies have at one point or another coopted a project, sucked its life blood dry for their own means, and abandoned it. It's a weird, toxic relationship that we accept as normal because some projects can't do without corporate engineer time and money.

FOSS is kind of a different ballgame though. When I think of FOSS I think of my AppStore on PopOS; the apps there are sophisticated and useable, but if I'm being honest they're rarely "the best" at what they do. There's never been a FOSS CAD software that rivals proprietary alternatives, the email clients are lackluster at best, even IRC tends to take a back seat. That isn't to say the apps are bad, they're just not going to be "the best" usually.

Ideally we'd have a single license that encourages corporate use, adoption, and contribution but doesn't encourage them to coopt a project by injecting their engineers and interests into the management of said projects. Ideally there'd be a way for corporate interests to make money reselling software while also paying back, in proportion, to the project. That all seems like a very complicated balancing act.

>>oooyay+(OP)
> the email clients are lackluster at best

To be fair, "lackluster at best" describes every email client ever made, proprietary or otherwise (though proprietary ones are better at hiding this under a shiny veneer).

Meanwhile, Kubernetes is probably a bad example, because nobody but large companies need Kubernetes, in the same way that we do not lament that people cannot build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in their garage.

>>oooyay+(OP)
FOSS offerings are almost always worse than their commercial competitors because of one obvious thing: people (that includes software engineers) need to eat and have shelter, and for 99.9% of us that means working for a living. Companies pay people to work on products that other people buy, ideally at a profit for the company. FOSS creators are rarely compensated meaningfully compared to the effort put in. The natural consequence of this is that most good engineers are not going to put much, if any, time in developing FOSS applications. The natural consequence of that is that these offerings aren't going to be as good.

>>sidlls+Rc1
In order to build a good email client application, you need more than just software engineers. You need product managers, designers, usability experts, internationalization experts, accessibility experts, tech writers, manual testers, etc. For whatever reason people with those skills tend to be less willing to contribute free labor to FOSS applications than software engineers.

>>oooyay+(OP)
- Thunderbird is probably the best e-mail client around - Blender is one of the best options for 3D rendering - Linux is the best kernel around - Firefox is for many the best browser you can find

There are several examples of OSS being best in class, it's just not the best in every class (yet, at least).

>>nradov+zu1
That's a great point, too. Software applications are more than the code in them. All those other folks are required to make an application good. I think the "whatever reason" for these people is the same as for the engineers, though: they gotta pay rent, and working for free doesn't do that.

>>ric2b+bM1
I don't know much about Blender, but the other two, at least, have had substantial contributions by paid engineers (at big, well-known corporations), and likely input from non-engineers (e.g. product staff). They're exceptions to the rule of (F)OSS.