Giving permission by saying yes to a “would you mind” question is the hill I die on. Usually I say “I would not mind” but if I’m feeling frisky I’ll say no and watch their brain melt.

Not all FOSS projects need to be profitable to survive. IOW if a project cannot survive without being profitable and it cannot be profitable long-term, then it cannot survive long-term.

I just replied to the other person’s comment.

I don’t. Could you elaborate?

While Linux itself isn’t proprietary, it supports loading proprietary firmware/microcode blobs and running on proprietary hardware. Thus, part of the Linux hardware/software stack is proprietary.

I’m surprised that other people are surprised that for-profit companies constantly try to increase their profits; such companies only contribute to FOSS when that’s more profitable than the alternative. The Linux kernel, AMDGPU, Steam, etc only exist because some part of the software/hardware stack is proprietary (which becomes a more attractive product as the FOSS portion of the stack improves).

I’m definitely not justifying the “rug-pulling”, but people need to stop supporting projects with no potential for long-term profitability unless those projects can survive without any support from for-profit companies. Anything else is destined to fail.

Maybe I’m Jia Tan 😉