FOSS isn't entrenched in any meaningful way. No one forces or even guides people to make FOSS. People choose to opt into FOSS, and choose to work on it for nothing.
As an alternative, there are millions of commercial software vendors out there, and they predate FOSS. They weren't forced into some FOSS hegemony, because that doesn't happen.
If people don't want to work on FOSS, they can do what everyone else does and start a company, and charge for their work.
The thing to avoid is starting something that's totally free, watching people pick it up because it's free, keep using it because it's decent, and then assume that those people owe you money. They may well have done something else if they'd known they were making a purchasing decision from day 1.
I do think there's an opportunity somewhere for GitHub, that owns most of the infrastructure for Javascript OSS development, to do something for JS developers. For example, they could do what YouTube does with paid accounts and distribute some of the monthly fee to creators proportionally based on watch time.
(Note: that wouldn't be righting an injustice, although I'm sure their marketing would make the most of that instinct in people. It would just be adding a proprietary marketplace to monetise OSS creators. But it might also alleviate the problem.)
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FOSS isn't entrenched in any meaningful way. No one forces or even guides people to make FOSS. People choose to opt into FOSS, and choose to work on it for nothing.
As an alternative, there are millions of commercial software vendors out there, and they predate FOSS. They weren't forced into some FOSS hegemony, because that doesn't happen.
If people don't want to work on FOSS, they can do what everyone else does and start a company, and charge for their work.
The thing to avoid is starting something that's totally free, watching people pick it up because it's free, keep using it because it's decent, and then assume that those people owe you money. They may well have done something else if they'd known they were making a purchasing decision from day 1.
I do think there's an opportunity somewhere for GitHub, that owns most of the infrastructure for Javascript OSS development, to do something for JS developers. For example, they could do what YouTube does with paid accounts and distribute some of the monthly fee to creators proportionally based on watch time.
(Note: that wouldn't be righting an injustice, although I'm sure their marketing would make the most of that instinct in people. It would just be adding a proprietary marketplace to monetise OSS creators. But it might also alleviate the problem.)