alt Hacker NewsFOSS is a legal and political tool that removes catastrophic dependency risk.
It's not something that exists simply because software developers had free time to waste.
FOSS is a legal and political tool that removes catastrophic dependency risk.
It's not something that exists simply because software developers had free time to waste.
You can have commercial software with source or with reverse engineering rights. You can also just illegally reverse engineer it anyway - only matters if you get caught, and companies will only suffer civil penalties (fines).
FOSS is now mostly sponsored by commercial enterprises. The part that isn't sponsored is dying or has died. Linux was a silly project by one guy, where are projects like that now?