I think the author thinks the primary motivation for open source is companies making a donation out of the goodness of their heart.
While that does happen, i dont think that is the main cause. Most companies participate in open source for their own selfish reasons. Sometimes that is to attract talent, sometimes it is to attract people to their propreitary platform, sometimes it is to commodify the parts they dont want to compete on, sometimes its something else. The companies do get benefits here. They are probably going to continue so long as the benefit > costs.
As for non corporate open source. It may not be a healthy hobby, but i dont see anything changing here. If people have been doing it as a hobby for the last 20 years, why would they stop now?
That's the thing, while there is value in investing in open source (for corporations and individuals) that value is often speculative and hard to quantify. When times are tough, people tend to focus on short-term, concrete benefits.
This, I don't think open source can be properly characterised through the lens of capitalism. There will always be students, academics, and people who don't work in software at all, willing to try their hand at developing something for their own use, which may or may not get traction in the grander scheme. It doesn't have to be an "unhealthy" hobby if you pace yourself and draw lines around what you're willing to do or not.
I also think there will always be people who really like software development but aren't able to fit into the corporate world. The article mentions rich devs with too much time on their hand, but i've also seen some open source devs who are actually quite poor and underemployed, that simply, for whatever reason seem incapable of thriving in traditional corporate software jobs.
I think the author thinks the primary motivation for open source is companies making a donation out of the goodness of their heart.
While that does happen, i dont think that is the main cause. Most companies participate in open source for their own selfish reasons. Sometimes that is to attract talent, sometimes it is to attract people to their propreitary platform, sometimes it is to commodify the parts they dont want to compete on, sometimes its something else. The companies do get benefits here. They are probably going to continue so long as the benefit > costs.
As for non corporate open source. It may not be a healthy hobby, but i dont see anything changing here. If people have been doing it as a hobby for the last 20 years, why would they stop now?