There's always going to be some tension between people who push free and open source software for ethical or political reasons, and those who push free software for technical and practical reasons. This article seems to give a very unfavorable view of the latter, suggesting that the primary purpose of the "open source" movement was to make free software more palatable to corporations. Well, I believe that it was largely for that purpose, but when you put it that way, it misses the point, I think. The average enthusiast of the "open" movement sees openness as a major advantage in and of itself, for a variety of practical reasons, and the potential benefits in terms of user freedoms are largely just a consequence of that, whereas free software enthusiasts generally seem to be mostly concerned about the movement as a solution to the problem of software that doesn't respect the user's freedoms.

I don't have any issues with the concept of free software, or having strong ethical convictions, or anything like that; however, I am not convinced by the arguments the FSF and Richard Stallman have made on a philosophical level, and frankly, as a programmer, I largely don't even really care to spend much more time worrying about the philosophy of it all. I am glad somebody does, but it's not for me, at least insofar as much as I can avoid having to do it.

And that's okay, because I don't really have to. The fact is that many of us have always preferred open source software primarily due to the side effects that having software with permissively licensed source code available has: the freedom to fork, the ability to audit code, fix bugs, re-use code for new purposes the author did not foresee, and of course, the fact that it is also typically free-as-in-beer. The funny thing about this ad-hoc list of benefits is that it is exactly the same for corporations as it is for users; the reason why so many startups release open source software is because it is a good way to gain trust and goodwill early on. Companies and their employees are more willing to adopt open source solutions because of these things, even if they don't necessarily intend to exercise all of the options it gives them.

The reason why open source is somewhat lopsided, e.g. it's obviously better for corporations than users in many cases, is because the arrangement in which there is no discrimination on who can use something for what yields the maximum utility for everyone. The moment you add even a single restriction, such as "People named Rick are not allowed to use this software", it opens up a world of complexity. Open source licenses can get a little complicated, but the broad strokes are so much simpler and easier to reason about. Think of the complexity that unfree packages place on Linux distributions.

And honestly, the discussion of the "for hackers, by hackers" mentality doesn't really seem fully baked. What does it even mean to be a "hacker" anymore? What identity are we asking people to assume?

I have another theory for why the Linux desktop and Firefox are not winning: it's because they kinda suck. Don't shoot just yet; I use Firefox and Linux all day, every day, and Firefox is in relatively good shape nowadays despite Mozilla seeming to always piss away any opportunity and goodwill they have. But, for-profit corporations have more money, more people and move faster. Competing with Google and Microsoft is hard. Open source can never beat Microsoft and Google at their own game.

However, what open source can do is beat them at games they're not playing. While corporations move fast, open source endures. In the longer term, I believe many prominent open source projects will rise to the top, as we've seen with a select few. Look, I don't expect a "year of the Linux desktop", but if it does happen, it won't be what most people were expecting in the 2000s. Microsoft's enshittification will most likely just lead to a situation where Linux wins by doing nothing, so to speak... I think we're going to see a lot more of that as the software industry slows down.

But honestly, the fact that these behemoth projects exist is a testament to it's success. I don't expect an offshoot to be able to replicate its success, less surpass it. Before people jump on board, I think there really needs to be some more convincing arguments for why we should abandon a movement this successful for an unproven alternative. It's not unfathomable... but personally, I remain unconvinced.