Comment by dartos
> Why would you spend hours slaving over a buggy wifi driver when you could try your hand at writing a mobile app instead, which might make you rich?
People do get paid to write Linux WiFi drivers. Especially for embedded devices. But honestly, some people just like that stuff. I’ve watched a twitch stream where a hobbyist reverse engineered the wireless protocol that the valve knuckles controller used.
He spent hours sifting through bits in wireshark.
Some people see a problem and bash their heads against it until it’s fixed. Torvalds is one of those people and I’m sure many open source contributors are too.
Kind of an aside, but what was really cool was that the creator of that protocol was in chat dropping hints.
IMO the big failing of the open source community is selling out too much and not attracting as many enthusiasts as career programmers (not that there isn’t overlap)
Alan Perlis has a quote that goes like “I hope we keep the fun in computing” and I think we failed at that.
My outlook isn’t as bleak. I think Linux is here to stay. I don’t really see a proprietary OS that is as robust and runs on as many different platforms taking Linux’s thunder.
Mobile and VR has android.
Even on desktop, the seam deck is pushing it forward, though it will forever probably remain niche on desktop.
Sure, but the only reason Linux wifi drivers are open source is that Linux was born at the start of the GNU movement and Linus picked the GPL. If he had picked a BSD license, or LGPL for drivers, then people would still get paid to write them but they wouldn't be open source. What you see nowadays is that the GPL is long since abandoned, I don't remember the last time I encountered an open source project that was GPL outside of the few big ones that survive from the 90s.
With respect to maintainers getting old, I guess your example is kind of on point. It used to be driven by ideology or the practical desire for a home UNIX. That motivated people to spend the long evenings alone working it out. Now it's driven by building a Twitch audience, and the hobbyist was even getting help!
I guess with respect to stealing Linux's thunder, I feel like that happened 20 years ago already. When MacOS X came out there was a long stream of people 'defecting' to it from the Linux community. It separated those who just wanted UNIX from those who had the ideology and a lot of the energy dissipated from Linux at that time.