FOSS Strategies: Why does Big Industry work and Big FOSS ecosystems don't?

BI in the title refers to Big Industry. Just for shits and giggles, some food for thought. Isn’t it fascinating to consider:

  • Why Volkswagen can have huge factory plants, deliver multiple car models in rapid succession, customized for the cllient. All done on a hyper complex coordinated production line, depending on a huge supply chain involving 1,000’s of vendors from across the world? → Then be perfectly profitable thoughout that entire chain?

  • And on the other hand compare that to a modest FOSS project with a good team of maintainers and contributors and a mid-size community → And hardly earn a dime? Let alone be in any way sustainable.

We might ridicule Elon Musk for being a narcissistic egomaniac (which he is), but he pulled off multiple huge industry challenges (I know there’s background story… OT here).

Why is this the case?

  1. Evil capitalism fault? → Yea, plays a role… only in part. Principles + values roadblock only?
  2. FOSS project’s fault? → Yea, most projects govern mostly the tech side, not far beyond.
  3. FOSS people’s fault? → Yea, as projects show, tech gets most attention, biz-savvy lacking
  4. FOSS community + ecosystem fault? → Wouldn’t here be a lot of under-attention?

How would you hang percentages on these bullet points?
What other high-level causes are missing in the list?

Aaand → How would you build such LibreFOSSWagen supply line? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Just joking. Forget the supply line and the scale, but:

Imagine how would we get to similar amounts of collective collaboration based on grassroots dynamics of the Commons? Is that possible even?

Wait, not Business Intelligence? :confused:

Related read might be

Part of the Open Organization series over there.

I unsubscribed sadly, when more Web3 articles appeared lately.

Gist is: Open Source components are usually not high value to business. Instead, they are common challenges that are better tackled in the open with more hands available.

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Good article. There’s indeed a bunch of decision-making criteria mentioned that will play a role in e.g. the auto industry in similar ways. And there are ties with those and what strategic ecosystem alliances should dedicate to, in order to gain benefit / deliver most value.

Example: How do you decide having a dependency on an external library and its FOSS project, where the library is missing some features?

  1. Contribute PR’s?
  2. Fork, extend and maintain
  3. Strategically cooperate (a less walked path, imho)

If choosing 3, and doing it for many dependencies/projects, then how do you manage it best? → Ecosystem alliance is about finding the optimum for all members.

I had and have to work in automotive industry but my contract forbids me to share details :crying_cat_face:

I have rephrased this thought experiment to fit into a toot:

And here’s that text again (bit more than 500 chars):

Why is it that Big Industry can profitably exploit large factory plants producing highly complex products that require huge global supply lines to numerous external parties …

And yet small initiatives struggle to keep afloat, in ever harder conditions to be able to eek out a decent living. An upside-down world where Big is profitable, Small seems unsustainable.

Hello everyone.
Just jumping in quickly in the conversation.

My two cents is :

  • capitalism, with the big and stable salaries that it can offer, is able of taming the egos.
  • FOSS (and any other alternative movement in other aspects of life and politics), is based on egos and incapable of taming them.

That’s why we fail.

Advocating for freedom, diversity, grassroots, bottom-up, democracy, anarchism (you name it) is just synonym for “i want to do only what i want” and the “cooperation, community, collective, coming together” wrapping around it is just a fig leaf, and cannot infringe on my rights to freedom and self determination, and I prefer to be poor, miserable and isolated, than to compromise with others, or with capitalism.

That’s a very harsh depiction of the situation, but if you look at it closely, maybe it isn’t that far from reality.

And don’t get me wrong. I am anti-capitalist, FOSS enthusiast, myself deeply involved in it, poor and happy about it as long as I can eat and have a roof over my head, but I am also very concerned about our many failures, specially in guaranteeing a safe today and a bright tomorrow for our people, and of course, alarmed at the enshittification of everything on earth. And also, yes, I am anarchist, anti authoritarian, freedom fighter, ecologist, activist, etc…

But.

I can tell, that everywhere I look, unchecked egoism is the root of the problem.

And that even if capitalism is based on egoism (Musk and Bezos, I am looking at you), it doesn’t change the fact that for the extreme vast majority of the people enslaved at all levels in the capitalist system, their ego is tamed !!! They are forced into cooperation. They have to abide by rules coming from above. They have to accept orders and execute them. They don’t have a say on everything, and they don’t know about everything that is happening. They do their job. They do their job well. The best that they can. They will get promoted if they do so. And they contribute to the whole cogwheel that we call capitalism, that is producing ALL the material goods and providing ALL the services that are currently needed by the whole humanity, and even more and in surplus. And yes, we destroy ourselves and the environment in the process. But it works.

And as long as we cannot understand that the ego needs to be tamed, we will never achieve anything great.

And the best would be if people could start to understand that they can tame their ego by themselves, and they don’t need an oppressive system in order to do that.
Self-limitation, humility, and voluntary obedience, are qualities that are nowhere to be found naturally in humans, and especially not in the free and open source movements, or any other alternative movement whatsoever.

Capitalism is only great at one thing: forcing people into useful cooperation.
The deal is: if you don’t accept the hierarchy and to cooperate with other, you won’t have to eat and a roof above your head.
Pretty brutal.
But works for millennia by now.

And I say that with a lot of pain.

Why aren’t we capable of self-taming our egos and voluntarily engaging in fruitful cooperations ?? and why do we only accept this to happen if we get big bucks in exchange?
Isn’t our cause important enough so we could do that by ourselves?
Aren’t our ideals strong enough to force us, voluntarily into submission to a greater good?
Open questions i guess.

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