It would be silly for me to be "pissed" about something that is not true.

You are missing the point. Programmers, we love what we do. I know that. I know it makes us happy to write good software and to tinker and experiment. I do it myself. I give away work all the time. I find bugs, I fix bugs, I give away code I've written in community forums and talk to people and help them find solutions to the problems they run into.

When a business person comes up to you and says, "Why should I pay you when I can get it for free?" That means your work has been devalued by a free version. The person writing that free version feels good because more users are on the system, but more users on the system does not pay the rent.

The current system of open source is flawed at its core. It means that people's skills are not sufficient to feed them.

Take the example of social networks and free websites. How many have gone bankrupt and had to lay off all their employees?

Imagine if actors in hollywood worked for free? Writers worked for free? Singers and directors and bar tenders worked for free? There'd be no movies or only the movies on Youtube that people put up there to see how many hits they get.

Can't you see that mathematically the equation doesn't balance?

Imagine if bankers on Wall Street worked for free.

Just because we love what we do doesn't mean it that work should be given away for free. Someone in another thread mentioned this very hacker news site is open source and yes I know that and I also know that pg has a bazillion dollars in the bank. Why isn't he paying someone to build it? Because he loves hacking, I know, but he is taking a job from someone. He's making the world a better place, yes, I do not discount that.

I do not discount that the world is a better place -- right now -- for many because of free software. I would say it is disporportionately better for the business commmunity that doesn't have to pay the billions of dollars their software is worth and worse for the programmers that are now being laid off in silicon valley because no one needs them to write software they can get for free.

It doesn't work.

Did you know Computer Science graduation rates are on a steady decline? Why? Because the jobs are too hard and they don't pay enough? Why? Because the products those college graduates would get paid doing don't exist because they products can't be sold for wages that can support them.

The very foundation of our society is in jeopardy because we are not paying for the work that is increasingly more relevant to its existence. Not only are college graduation rates in the computer sciences declining, but employers are complaining about the quality of programmers they are seeing coming out of colleges.

As long as we give away our labor for free, this trend will continue. There are good examples of successful quality products that have come out of the open source community and great things have been done with those products that improve many lives. I do not discount this.

What I am saying is that if this trend continues, salaries will continue to decline and those who could get paid decent salaries that could feed a family and allow them to concentrate on building the information infrastructure our world needs to continue learning, asking questions, sharing and gaining knowledge will stagnate because the individuals with the capacity to be creative in the industry will take higher paying jobs in other industries like banking and finance and look what high paying jobs in those industries gets the world.