You're sculpting out a bit of a zietgeist that has some accuracy and nostalgia to it, but I do think there's more to it. Starting a business and selling software can be a bigger trust signal than free or open source for some kinds of things, for both individuals and businesses depending on what it is.
"I don't have enough confidence in this thing to sell it", or "there might be something wrong with it and I don't want to be on the emotional hook" with actual customers to worry about it. It's not necessarily those things, but those doubts can exist.
There's also a subtle rejection of patent risk in open source, as if you are less encumbered with the stress around having to research what might step on some company's toes. Companies can solve some of that risk with professional liability insurance.
Realistically, I think a lot of people just don't want to run a company, getting committed to something they can't drop at a moment's notice, or they don't know where to start and it's easier to build reputation rather than dollars. It's more complicated than not doing it in many cases, and less complicated than not doing in other cases.
The other side of your argument is that almost none of the big things got into your pocket without some company trying to run a business which gave them the capital to direct that capital towards change. The number of examples of open source or free things that wouldn't exist today if they didn't sit on top of the foundation of a business making money is huge. The world would suck more.
Let me frame it like this. Let's say there is a non-profit organization. The mission is X. They are mildly successful at their mission. They believe in it, they're passionate. It's mostly local, mostly volunteer, the amount of time dedicated to it by all is constrained, budgets are constrained. Demographics mean the people who were naturally interested in the mission are fading off and younger people aren't as captivated by the non-profit.
Meanwhile, some company who has excess capital yet believed in a similar mission achieved 9x the success in that same non-profit motivation, because they could direct the energies they've gathered towards a purpose.
It doesn't have to be an emotional or moral struggle between whether people should be low energy potential and poor, but idealistically purposed, or high energy potential and rich, but lacking in any sort of philosophy as to what goodness is.
We went through too many years of communism in the world that paints dollar bills as having evil fangs on them and I think it rubbed off a little on the internet and some open source communities.
Fundamentally, it comes down to logic. Many things rely on someone else's money to become a success or catch on. In terms of sustainability, in many ways that applies to software as well. If some idea can economically sustain the personal investment into itself, it might grow to reach its potential in a way some weekend warrior project does not after it gets discarded.
At the same time, it is nice and liberating to simply do something fun and interesting, to put it out there like the demo scene or like when bit torrent dropped or some new compression algorithm. When those kinds of things excite you, it makes you want others to feel that way too. It just depends what you're after.
"I don't have enough confidence in this thing to sell it", or "there might be something wrong with it and I don't want to be on the emotional hook" with actual customers to worry about it. It's not necessarily those things, but those doubts can exist.
There's also a subtle rejection of patent risk in open source, as if you are less encumbered with the stress around having to research what might step on some company's toes. Companies can solve some of that risk with professional liability insurance.
Realistically, I think a lot of people just don't want to run a company, getting committed to something they can't drop at a moment's notice, or they don't know where to start and it's easier to build reputation rather than dollars. It's more complicated than not doing it in many cases, and less complicated than not doing in other cases.
The other side of your argument is that almost none of the big things got into your pocket without some company trying to run a business which gave them the capital to direct that capital towards change. The number of examples of open source or free things that wouldn't exist today if they didn't sit on top of the foundation of a business making money is huge. The world would suck more.
Let me frame it like this. Let's say there is a non-profit organization. The mission is X. They are mildly successful at their mission. They believe in it, they're passionate. It's mostly local, mostly volunteer, the amount of time dedicated to it by all is constrained, budgets are constrained. Demographics mean the people who were naturally interested in the mission are fading off and younger people aren't as captivated by the non-profit.
Meanwhile, some company who has excess capital yet believed in a similar mission achieved 9x the success in that same non-profit motivation, because they could direct the energies they've gathered towards a purpose.
It doesn't have to be an emotional or moral struggle between whether people should be low energy potential and poor, but idealistically purposed, or high energy potential and rich, but lacking in any sort of philosophy as to what goodness is.
We went through too many years of communism in the world that paints dollar bills as having evil fangs on them and I think it rubbed off a little on the internet and some open source communities.
Fundamentally, it comes down to logic. Many things rely on someone else's money to become a success or catch on. In terms of sustainability, in many ways that applies to software as well. If some idea can economically sustain the personal investment into itself, it might grow to reach its potential in a way some weekend warrior project does not after it gets discarded.
At the same time, it is nice and liberating to simply do something fun and interesting, to put it out there like the demo scene or like when bit torrent dropped or some new compression algorithm. When those kinds of things excite you, it makes you want others to feel that way too. It just depends what you're after.