> It seems like one possible future here is that open source becomes less like passion projects that scratch an itch and more like driving for Uber.
Is that a future we want? I would much rather work towards a future where everyone makes enough at their day job and can work on passion projects on the side.
Why are we okay with the idea that in order to get by, we should have to do work in our supposed off time as well? Uber/etc love to bring up the fact that it's often their drivers' second job, as a defense of their independent contractor status and pay. Which is, to me, a pretty damning indictment of how we've structured our society.
Maybe the quality would improve? There's a condition I call "open-source-itis" that a lot of projects suffer from, where tons of new features (usually of dubious merit) get added but nobody ever bothers to fix bugs or make sure the foundation is actually solid. It makes sense, because that's unsexy work that people generally don't want to do and they're all working for free, but it makes a lot of open source software really crap.
However, if people were getting paid for fixing bugs and cleaning up old code, maybe that'd improve.
In my line of work there are perverse incentives for hyping up new stuff and then not dealing with bugs and problems. It's not been me doing that but I've suffered by comparison against others who embraced that dark pattern.
Complaints are publicity. They bump internet discussions, create buzz, and often go along with protestations of 'I really love (FooBazBar), I promise it's the best thing ever, now if you would only fix this bug…' and then angry flames over the bugs and defenders coming to protect the honor of FooBazBar.
Fix bugs and people are happy and stop talking. They return to happily using the product. Again, we're talking perverse incentives for just the sort of obnoxious behavior you describe, or worse.
It seems like one possible future here is that open source becomes less like passion projects that scratch an itch and more like driving for Uber.
Maybe that is good. Maybe GitHub just took a step toward becoming Fiverr. I really don't know.