Hello, my fellow software engineers. We need to address the decline of free and open-source software urgently. The rise of internet money gurus is starting to undermine our values as developers and engineers.
Everyone admires levelsio, Marc Lu or any other Indie Hacker, but I believe they contribute to the decline of the free and open-source community. Now, I spend at least $100 on subscriptions because everything is profit-driven, not value-driven.
Although I respect these individuals and do not wish to criticize them, I want to discuss and offer a different perspective on the reasons behind this decline, as many developers have shifted their focus from value to revenue.
Profits, profits ,profits
Everyone is becoming a developer nowadays, with the rise of LLM’s creating simple web apps that you can monitize has become easier than ever. Milking your followers is the new trend and they congratulate you as well for showing your profits online.
While most of the software that is being created is actually useful and these people provide value in some form, this capitalist point of view is slowly digging our grave. As a Christian myself I don’t want to allow money be my God. This is what has happened to a lot of people. It is tempting in the beginning because you see your dream life in-front of you but we have stopped caring about what actually matters in this life helping and loving our neighbor.
This is what the free and open source community did, actually helped people and made money on the side as well.
Greed & money over humility and value
We have become soulless creatures driven by numbers on a screen. Engineering has always been a high-paying job. Most real engineers never struggle financially. Many of you work 4-5 hours per day and earn between $30-100K per year on average.
So, why do you want to make an extra $100K on the side? Yes, it would be great to earn an extra 100K on top of your salary, but why not make $30K and also help and provide some value to the world?
I am not saying to lower your prices or offer truly free plans, and not fake free tiers just for the sake of being free. I am saying to make part of your code or even your entire code open-source. Even doing the correct thing for the bad reasons can actually help the community. Zuck the CEO of Meta is open-sourcing everything for the wrong reasons but he has provided endless value to the world.
We have forgotten fun and we have added stress to our lives.
Conclusion
I would like to see the current Indie-Hackers and big Tech to open-source their work, share code from what they do and lower and prices of their products. Yes you will make less money but what role money plays when you lose your soul?
These people don’t care about the world, they care about money and they have made money their Gods. They don’t have fun and they don’t love what they do, profit is their God and only goal.
So I started by creating an open-source software to get things going and make the first move with reporanger.xyz an AI-powered Github leaderboard. You can find the code on Github and contribute to it as well.
Let’s remember the old days were we coding with love and not greed. Let’s start building again and not milking our followers.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at x@sotergreco.com, and I will respond.
You can also keep up with my latest updates by checking out my X here: x.com/sotergreco
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