> You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable
I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company?
There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven.
The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.
I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company?
There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven.
The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.