TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.
He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they’d fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that’s usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.
It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.
What are your thoughts on it?
Depending on the nature of the changes, it might be more advantageous to tell them that it’s easier (i.e. cheaper) to contribute changes upstream, rather than maintaining them separately forever. Also, the good will and reputation boost involved can be significant.
Don’t say it if it isn’t true or anything, but in a lot of cases it’s true.
They didn’t ever touch the open source code. They’d just open a bug or feature enhancement. Why it annoyed me so much. I believe open source is best when everyone contributes something. Either time, money, or something of value.