The CEO at a company I worked for a few years ago suddenly one day discovered open source. He decided that we were now going to be a software company and "the nerds will do the work for free!" Not even paraphrasing there, that's what he said at a companywide town hall meeting. He thought he was brilliant for discovering open source and that he was the first to think of exploiting it for commercial gain.
Bankruptcy reorganization took longer than expected but he's still CEO, so I guess it didn't impact him very much but lots of people lost their jobs and everyone who owned stock was wiped out, which included a good chunk of the employees.
The problem is your CEO was right. Exploiting open source is the right move. Instead of hiring engineers to write an operating system you guys likely exploited Linux and a bunch of other free tools.
100 percent: open source has contributed to less demand. It's the only logical conclusion.
The thing is that supply is so low that even with less demand it still outstrips supply.
Here's the the thing we should be cautious about. Times change. Technology changes, the culture changes and interest rates also change. Demand may not always outstrip supply.
No, the CEO was wrong. You're conflating a serendipitous use of open source software with a targeted exploitation of it. People decided to open source Linux, GCC, and other tools. So developers at companies use them, because they are available. This is not exploitation, though, it is the intention. Developers made these tools specifically for other developers to use them, even at their jobs.
The CEO, however, wants to convince developers to work on software that would drive value for the company. In essence, the CEO wants to trick open source developers. This is clearly doomed to fail.
I know commercial products where the code is open source (and largely useless to anything except the product) and people contribute. Decent Espresso is one. It is insane anyone contributes but they do. Rich owner gets tons of free labor.
You are getting your emotions mixed up with facts.
When you use open source you are exploiting a resource as there is no fair trade. It's not a crime nor is it immoral but because no fair trade occured it is technically an exploitation.
No CEO tricked open source developers. Open source developers create open source as a charity to society that's all. They aren't tricked. They willingly choose to allow others to exploit their goodwill as a resource. Many people choose not to exploit them and donate money for their efforts, but most don't.
Put it this way. People can be aware they are being exploited and people can be unaware that they are exploiting others. Knowledge of the action is independent of the action of exploitation.
If I gift you resources, the trade is fair. This is you putting your own emotions into it, and projecting. You don't get to tell me what I do with my resources, and my labor and time has no intrinsic value.
Even with your description of things, you still have the wrong way of things. The CEO in the description obviously wants to make open source developers build _something new_. That is, something they have not decided to gift to the community already. We can argue semantics of the word exploit, of which I think you're being ridiculous, but even with your definition the situations are different.
A gift isn't a fair trade. That's why a gift is not called a fair trade. There's such phrase: "fair gift".
> You don't get to tell me what I do with my resources, and my labor and time has no intrinsic value.
I never did tell you what to do with your time and resources. Why would you assume I did something that never occurred? I think your emotions are saying this.
>The CEO in the description obviously wants to make open source developers build _something new_. That is, something they have not decided to gift to the community already.
No exploitation doesn't just involve that. Even taking something already built without a fair trade is still exploitation.
>We can argue semantics of the word exploit, of which I think you're being ridiculous, but even with your definition the situations are different.
Not only CAN we argue this, we are arguing this. This is the central point. And it's not about MY definition either. It's about the colloquial definition of the word exploit. If you google it, you will see that I am right.
There is no different "situation" here. You're simply offended by the word "exploit" because you have preconceived connotations attached to it. I don't have any skin in the game, I don't have to adjust vocabulary or my interpretation of the English language to justify my place in the world.
That CEO is strategically making the best decision by "exploiting" open source. Anyone following that plan is also making the most cost efficient strategic move. He may be acting like an ass about it, but logically his strategy is correct. That's just reality.
This. I asked a question regarding this on a forum and I got downvoted to oblivion just because I said a manager/CTO/CEO could see this as an opportunity to lay off people, cut salaries, etc...
I am skeptical that this will happen but if it does it seems to me it will still be a short term situation. I don’t believe the world’s need for software, especially high quality software, is anywhere near met. There are many problems waiting to be solved with software that just aren’t due to cost or time of implementation. The outcome will be more software and more complex software, you may as an individual engineer be expected to manage and produce more software then before but the demand for software engineers will not be reduced because all of the sudden there is much more software in the world.
I mean how you perceive the tool is relevant as well. It's just self delusion and denial.
It's obvious if your productivity increases because of AI it diminishes the need of another person's productivity. You give everyone more AI tools you could increase productivity to levels beyond what is necessary. If some productivity isn't necessary it's laid off. Simple logic.
It's quite obvious. It's just people have a fascination and love for this technology such that they need to construct a delusional narrative that validates their love and validates their moral imperatives. But deep down they know, because it's really really straightforward the consequences of any tool like this.
This paradox only occurs if every resource is abundant. We tend to see it a lot (especially in the last decade) because of the easy money policies by the Fed in the last decade or so. Following your example, if we have unlimited money and gas prices are cheap, we buy more gas. But with limited money, when gas gets cheaper, we don't buy more gas, we usually allocate more money for more essentials.
The scenario with a bankruptcy is largely parallel to what we're seeing recently with interest rates and the lay offs. Free money is being tightened. With limited money the paradox no longer functions. Big tech is not going to hire people to write existing software they can get on the open source world, so they let go of a bunch of people.
You can literally see the two curves correlate ever since interest rates started to rise... Open source projects are going up right now while lay offs are also increasing... violating the paradox.
The Jevons paradox was noted in the 19th century when the world was far less wealthy than today. Recent American monetary policy has little relevance.
There’s many more examples if you look up induced demand - a similar effect is the Downs–Thomson paradox, where adding more roads increases traffic congestion in the long term. You may see a short term improvement (the same way a struggling company that increases productivity will let go of employees) but eventually a new equilibrium is reached.
The problem is how your CEO, not an engineer, perceives the tool could be useful.