Apple doesn't love you back. Amazon doesn't love you back. Any company that seems oh-so-awesome, but makes their software proprietary, does not love you back.
You are never going to fix the problem of centralization of wealth if you keep thinking that is a matter of "unfairness". (Much like Socialism and central planning), as long as people give in their freedoms to big central entities for the immediate benefit they offer (shiny hardware, low TCO, whatever) economies of scale lock-in and then it becomes almost impossible to get these entities back under control.
As long as there are people that think that it is okay for us to spend our resources creating private software we will get companies exploiting trying to extract value from software developers, and especially so from those that work on FOSS
Even though I believe it is more about the principles than the economics, where am I saying otherwise?
The problem I am talking about is the asymmetry: Apple (Amazon, Google, MS, etc) can create value from the work from FOSS developers, but FOSS developers can not create value from the work of Apple (Amazon, Google, MS, etc).
I would say that developers have been able to create a lot of value building on top of Android (Google), Flutter (Google), and .Net Core (Microsoft).
I could probably dig up specifically an Amazon open source example, but I think you can convincingly argue that devs have created a ton of value building on top of the work on AWS.
First, creating value on top of the platform is not the same of extracting value from it.
Second, the examples you give are not part of the core value of the companies. They are commoditizing their complements. [0]
When Google releases a self-hosted version of their search and adwords programs, when Amazon makes AWS products compatible with OpenStack or when people can run iOS on any hardware and have access to the source, then I will start believing they are willing to give back proportionally to the amount of value they extract.
> Developers have made massive gains overall by commoditizing their complements
Sorry, I am not following. What is the implication here, that application developersand Free Operating Systems are complemetary products?
> How many fewer developer jobs would there be now if every OS installation cost what Solaris used to cost?
Of course the market would be much smaller without FOSS, but how does this relate to what I am talking about?
I wish we had more FOSS, not less. I wish people were willing to refuse the short-term apparent benefit/convenience of closed source and started at least hedging their investments on FOSS alternatives.
It's not application development that is complementary to OS. It is the applications themselves.
Anyway, the point from Joel's article that I think so many people miss is that *every smart business should try to commoditize their complements". If you are an OS developer, you will try to commoditize you hardware, If you are an application developer, the smart thing is to commoditize your OS, and so on up the stack.
So, I don't understand the remark about Linux costing as much as Solaris. I am not expecting the final consumer to look at Windows and Linux and say "yeah, we need to pay for Linux". What I do believe is that smart application developers would never voluntarily lock themselves into a closed platform.
> If you are an OS developer, you will try to commoditize you hardware, If you are an application developer, the smart thing is to commoditize your OS, and so on up the stack.
Both applications and hardware are complementary to an OS.
So if you are an OS developer and are following this logic, you'll also try to commoditize the applications.
(And see eg the Apple app store for an illustration.)
You are never going to fix the problem of centralization of wealth if you keep thinking that is a matter of "unfairness". (Much like Socialism and central planning), as long as people give in their freedoms to big central entities for the immediate benefit they offer (shiny hardware, low TCO, whatever) economies of scale lock-in and then it becomes almost impossible to get these entities back under control.
As long as there are people that think that it is okay for us to spend our resources creating private software we will get companies exploiting trying to extract value from software developers, and especially so from those that work on FOSS