I understand that people need money to live, but a lot of the “most useful” software (as in… almost every part of the web) is open source software built by well paid developers.
Your comment might be applicable to an android lemmy client for example, but not to software generally.
Yeah they’re paid but not for open source, but from a company.
I’m no exception, as I do a lot of open source, I would go full-time open-source if I’d knew that I can live from it. But this is just not the case for say ~99% of open source, donations/funding is extremely rare and often bound to specific needs of the company that funds it.
And my answer was exactly pointing towards this, i.e. free software/open source, not software in general.
What you also have to consider is apps vs libraries, libraries are more often funded, but apps often not (and this was what we were talking about).
I dislike the implication that the most useful apps are not free.
I always feel more comfortable using FOSS software, even if it doesn’t look as nice as the commercial option.
I dislike the implication that FOSS software doesn’t look nice.
There are plenty of beautiful apps on f-droid.
Vinyl media player is very pretty.
People have to live somehow, without money - difficult… Unfortunately the will to donate to such projects is still pretty low…
I understand that people need money to live, but a lot of the “most useful” software (as in… almost every part of the web) is open source software built by well paid developers.
Your comment might be applicable to an android lemmy client for example, but not to software generally.
Yeah they’re paid but not for open source, but from a company. I’m no exception, as I do a lot of open source, I would go full-time open-source if I’d knew that I can live from it. But this is just not the case for say ~99% of open source, donations/funding is extremely rare and often bound to specific needs of the company that funds it.
And my answer was exactly pointing towards this, i.e. free software/open source, not software in general.
What you also have to consider is apps vs libraries, libraries are more often funded, but apps often not (and this was what we were talking about).
There are plenty of useful opensource applications, as evidenced by this thread.
How you make a living isn’t really relevant.
My point is, implying that one should be surprised to find that an app is both useful and opensource is a misconception.