As the title says, a sizable number of people here might seethe with hate towards capitalism, but what if the supposed downsides created a positive effect in the form of successful FOSS projects like Blender, Krita, and others?
- What if companies never bought out their competition and instead focused on innovation, where would FOSS be today with no ability whatsoever to keep up with the commercial offerings (since the commercial vendors would need to pour a lot of money into development to stay in business)? That would also assume that FOSS projects would be unable to reach the critical mass needed to have sustained, rapid development (which under this scenario would be quite plausible).
- Dovetailing on the first point, FOSS solutions would also become far less relevant due to the resulting price war bringing software prices low enough to be in reach for hobbyists, where would FOSS be if not for such a yawning price gap in some areas like creative software?
- What if companies always focused on listening to consumers instead of pleasing shareholders, the commercial vendors then would actually do a better job of listening than FOSS, and why would people switch to or develop for FOSS programs if the commercial environment was so friendly to them?
- FOSS in general tends to start thriving when the commercial world stumbles and causes mass frustration among their userbase. If companies only cared about the greater good when creating software and made them accessible to hobbyists and pros alike, why would people go to that site with the little FOSS program and use that instead? For example, with such amazing low-cost alternatives to Photoshop these days (that believe in permanent licensing to boot), why would any professional user want to use GIMP? Why would you want to use LMMS when there’s some good DAW solutions around and under 100 bucks?
Case in point, it could be said that a major reason why Blender does so well today is because of how the Autodesk monopoly slowed down the pace of innovation in 3D (on top of killing the most innovative solution in the field), and another reason being how DAZ scooped up the field of lower-end 3D solutions and brought their development to a standstill. This allowed Blender to become a more appealing alternative (thereby attracting users who then started developing and donating) and on top of that, made it far easier for Blender in the earlier years to keep up with development. You could say that if Max, Maya, and XSI were still alive under their former companies, and if Carrara and Bryce were still thriving under their former companies, Blender may still be struggling to find relevance today as a notably weaker software solution.
Something to think about at least.
