What if every software became FOSS? Who would put in the free labor to write the software

The implication that we can make all software FOSS and have nothing else about the world change is a textbook example of putting the cart before the horse. It's like asking "what if everyone became vegan, who would pay the cattle ranchers?"

The world FOSS strives for, the world where it is the norm, has a fundamentally different economy from our own.

It's not a valid thought experiment to ask "what if all software was FOSS (but nothing else changed)?" because that creates a hypothetical world that has a fallacy at its core. A world where entire social movements can blink in and out of power without regards for sociological and historical factors is a world unconstrained by logic as we understand it. The correct framing should be: "what would our world have to change to enable FOSS to be the norm?"

The distinction is subtle, but cuts to the core of the contention betweem movements aiming to change the world in radical ways and their detractors offering criticism that boils down to "but the future you propose doesn't integrate seamlessly into the present state of affairs."

We all want change, we just don't want it to change things.

That's an interesting take on FOSS - that's it's a free buggier alternative to "mainstream" software?

Linux is ubiquitous across many devices (you won't even know you're using it) and servers yet it's all based on FOSS. There isn't an alternative for many of those usage cases.

Browsers like Firefox are FOSS. The alternative is not less buggy, but it is less private and sells you to advertisers. But even propriety software like Chrome is based off an open FOSS codebase from Chromium.

Other software has no better alternatives. Look at VLC (for video), OBS (for streaming and video capture), Calibre (for eBook library management). There are arguably all the best in their class and they all FOSS, and that is just scratching the surface.

Tools like WINE are FOSS only but they are revolutionising gaming having been repurposed into the Steam decknfor example.

Eveb the software that might be characterised as "alternatives" to thebincumbant proprietary software servers a major purpose. GIMP (alternative to Photoshop) and Libre Office (alternative to MS office) are free but also now increasingly important do not require any online subscriptions and data sharing with big corporation. For many people that's hugely important - why pay money and subscriptions for things you can get for free at high quality?

FOSS is a huge ecosystem of software, all of it free to use, change and share.

There's no single goal to FOSS. I write software for my own needs, and it literally costs me nothing to give it to other people. It makes no difference if I give it to one person, or one million, or one billion - it's no harder, or easier, than giving it to no one. Other people seek recognition or the approval of other people. There are probably as many goals as their are FOSS authors.

Financially, you either try to support yourself by soliciting donations, but that just makes it work, and - for me - imparts a sense of obligation to my users. But, yeah, most people have other jobs.

I think you may be misunderstanding the "free" part of FOSS. FOSS - also known as free software - is free as in freedom, not beer (this confusion is also why I refer to it as libre software). It has nothing to do with money - it is all about having control over the software that you use.

Some here have already pointed out the massive proliferation of libre software that forms practically the entire foundation of the Internet, but I would also like to mention that there are some projects that might even say that being libre software has made it more sustainable; for example, here's a talk about how the GPLv3 (a copyleft libre software license) keeps the Samba project alive.

There are certain monetization approaches that are infeasible with libre software, yes, but I would argue that this is only ever the case with practices that are anti-consumer. Games as a service is a good example of this; I think it's absurd you can buy a game that you should rightfully own indefinitely, only for it to become literally borked because it was specifically designed to always be connected to the game company's servers which could be taken down at any moment. With libre software? You have access to the source code, so it's not impossible anymore to get your own server running if someone else hasn't already made the necessary modifications to make it happen.

The philosophy of (and reasons to care about) libre software isn't quite the topic of this post so I won't elaborate too much on it (unless you want, of course), but feel free to take a look at this page which discusses just that if you're interested.

In addition to advancing freedom, it's also genuinely advancing the technology of the human race. Both philosophically (as any other tech is simply what they PERMIT you to do), and practically… as even the worst technofacist vendor-lockin saas'ers build their empire on the backs of open source stacks.

The goal is to collectively free humans from the enslavement and dangers that proprietary computing represents.

It's a collective fight for freedom. Then of course we must continuously question and revise the tactics, and invent new ways of funding, sustaining, supporting, etc… the goal.

Richard Stallman listed four freedoms essential to software users: freedom to run a program for any purpose, freedom to study the mechanics of the program and modify it, freedom to redistribute copies, and freedom to improve and change modified versions for public use. To implement these freedoms, users needed full access to the source code. To ensure code remained free and provide it to the public, Stallman created the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allowed software and the future generations of code derived from it to remain free for public use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition

In my words: It gives back control to the consumer. Instead of the big corporations effectly being in control of your computer, smartphone, the internet platforms, what videos you get to see. And which updates from your friend's will result in a notification and which of your friends to drop. And they'll happily sell your personal data, track you, show massive amounts of advertisements to you and program their software so you get manimpuated into staying longer than you would have wanted on their platform and manipulate you into buying and doing what they like. The Free Software movement is trying to give control back to you, so you can't be exploited.

There are ways to combine free software with making money. For example by selling additional services, consulting and maintenance. There are more and it's a complicated topic.

And there are other challenges. For example our way of using technology today, mainly 'the cloud' makes things even more complicated.

Projects get donations and grants, some developers are on salary at corporations that contribute to open source. Even if you're developing a small project that doesn't generate any money, you're getting paid with experience that can help you grow as a professional. Some people simply enjoy what they're doing and that's a great return.

Lemmy development is partially funded by the NLnet Foundation:

financially supporting organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It funds those with ideas to fix the internet.

https://join-lemmy.org/news/2020-06-23_-_NLnet_funding,_and_Lemmy_v0.7.0_with_new_image_hosting!

Good question, I was thinking about this the other day. The reason being that development of several fediverse apps has seemingly stalled because the previously active developers have life issues. (I’m not moaning about it, just a straightforward account)

It seems to me that FOSS developers wouldn’t want their projects to be popular. Because that comes with pressure to constantly improve or expand and it takes up more time. So they start a Patreon or similar but that adds more pressure.

When projects are community developed then I see disagreements and personality clashes which increases stress for lead developers.