open-source-is-a-restaurant

Link: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/open-source-is-a-restaurant/

By Chad Whitacre

#article#opensource

Chad Whitacre makes a great analogy around when/how software gets paid for, vs food.

Open Source is a restaurant. At a restaurant, you eat your meal first, and then you are expected to pay for it. Yes, we could dine and dash. But we don’t. When presented with a tab for a meal we have just eaten, we pay the tab.

Open source is not a grocery: pay first, and then eat the food
Open source is not a soup kitchen: not donations or charity — it’s not someone else eating the meal, you ate it