“With the success of various IPOs lately, there are a lot of new
millionaires in the Open Source community running around. It’s
heartwarming to those of us with long-standing roots in Open Source
and a deep commitment to it to see this “validation,” of sorts,
towards the ideals that we hold dear. Unfortunately…it also
fosters some resentment. Will Open Source’s own success
destroy the grass roots effort that forms its foundation?”
“This isn’t some idle speculation. Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, PHP
and others depend on the wide and varied developer community in
order to grow and develop. People who helped got some ‘Net notice,
their names in the contributor lists and a warm fuzzy feeling that
they were helping the effort. But now people are seeing companies
and individuals making staggeringly large amounts of money, and are
asking “When am I gonna get mine?” Not that they were/are “in it”
for the money alone, but, after all, they think, “others are making
major bucks.” Some other developers are asking themselves why they
should put forth so much of their own time and effort to simply
benefit the corporate bottom line of a company that, they feel, has
deserted the common Open Source contributor.”