How/why do all the thousands of packages that are available as open source and enable basically everyone to code and make programs stay free? Everything else in the world is turned into a product to make a profit.
This is similar to the extensive resources available on the internet like StackOverflow where people literally give people answers to their problems for nothing. Like, someone could work for a company and use other peoples work and benefit from it.
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ESR’s (long) essays on the subject are *highly* recommended.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
The short version is “it was that way originally, trying to sell software by keeping secrets was an innovation, one which a bunch of smart people didn’t like, so they staged a revolution in the 80s, and the whole thing really took off over the next 20 years”
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