I was reading an article this morning. As I was reading the following passage I had a memory about a conversion with a previous boss some 20 years ago.
Thus, as Mark Atwood, an open source policy expert, pointed out on Twitter, he had to keep telling Amazon to not do things that would mess up FFmpeg because, he had to keep explaining to his bosses that “They are not a vendor, there is no NDA, we have no leverage, your VP has refused to help fund them, and they could kill three major product lines tomorrow with an email. So, stop, and listen to me … ”
I had found some open source software that I wanted to use and could not convince my boss it was a good idea. I now have the thought that he might have foreseen an issue where the company relied heavily on the software that was no longer maintained and could not be updated without significant cost.
As we barrel forward through technology, issues brought forth as indicated in the article cause me to pause. What systems do I use now that rely on the kindness of strangers whom are maintaing their projects out of passion? What if that passion fades? We're already seeing this in video games. Some publishers decided to make their cames function only online and as new games come out, the servers that power this game gets used less. This causes them to shut it down due to costs to maintain. They game you paid $80 for 5 years ago is now useless, save as a coaster (if it's a disc) or a curiosity. Meanwhile we have games that are literally 40 years old that run just fine (as long as you have the original hardware in good working order and your TV has the requisite interface to dispaly the video signal from the hardware). Still, not-so-old TVs have the ports, and most of the vintage consoles I own still function just fine.
I used to claim that I had technolust. Now I'm older, perhaps a little wiser. I still like new tech and get excited about the possibilites afforded by ever advancing technology. I think Open Source software is awesome and will continue to use it. I am grateful for the authors and maintainers who keep that software running. I wonder if maybe it's advancing too quickly.