other.li Forum

if your idea of open source is a bunch of companies shaking hands and playing nice with eachother i regret to inform you that the greatest fear of pretty much anyone in charge of an open source foundation or project with corporate involvement is quite literally that the corporation leaves.
because at the end of the day corporations only start working on these things once it's been proven to them that it's profitable. and time and time again, new projects and ideas have to come from hobbyists for the simple fact that they don't have to justify a cost benefit ratio and can just sit down and do the thing. you think then that corporate entities are the ones driving any of this?
they pay people's bills. they don't create projects.

i'm going to be real with you
have respect for hobbyist developers.
I don't care about what people's takes on sustainability is here, that's not relevant to whether you should be taking a hobbyist developer seriously. the entire kernel is literally just a hobbyist project that got big. dozens of graphics drivers that are fully khronos compliant (NOT just asahi!!!) started as hobbies. Panfrost was a hobby project until it wasn't, freedreno was a hobby project until it wasn't, nouveau was a hobby project until it wasn't, radeon.ko was a hobby project until it wasn't, and some of those hobby projects getting the blessing of companies doesn't change that.
open source literally thrives on non-profitable ideas