HashiCorp, Terraform, and OpenTF

I get that, that's not quite what I'm saying. I'm saying it should be reasonable that the original authors and the maintainers - who have put the most work in - get an 'edge' over others when it comes to commercial exploitation.

The problem is that if we *take away* (by making CLAs and what not taboo) ability for original authors to profit from things from things like side-licensing, is that we're saying the original authors can only profit by doing consulting and support work. The problem with that is that other entities, big ones especially (the kinds with consulting arms, and ability to take existing code and brute-force hack at it without much regard for past or future), come along and just step in and take over whatever consultation and support work was available. Leaving less for the original authors.

If we suppose the "market" of revenue generating activities for original authors of Free Software, to exploit the "R&D" effort they put into creating that Free Software, is composed of:

1. Side licensing
2. Support contracts
3. Contract development

It's fair to say that #2 is intrinsically more difficult for small entities (individuals, etc.) to provide, given there is usually a contractual response time. So that activity is inherently one that is easier and more efficient for large entities to exploit than small. While large entities can do both 2 and 3, and can and /do/ use that revenue to fund R&D, arguably small entities (individuals) independent of large entities have made out-size contributions to the development of /new/ Free Software (not least because many of the large entities have little motivation to allow engineers to open-source new software, indeed many large software entities are actively hostile to any internally developed software being released under Free Software licences).

If you take 1 away (by social taboos, etc.), then the small entities are (realistically) left with just 3.

How are small entities supposed to make a living off writing /new/ Free Software, other than by going to work for the big entities who do 2 and 3 and hopefully be lucky enough to also do some of the interesting R&D?

The number of such entities who /actively/ support releasing new R&D as Free Software is a very low number, and a miniscule proportion of the software generating industry.

This represents a complete failure of the economics of Free Software to me. Much of the Free Software world - if this article is representative - seems to be hostile to small entities being able to make a living off their Free Software work, unless they go work for the soulless, big corporates (how's that working out, RedHatters?).

Exactly. Every time I suggest these companies should have been proprietary from the start to remove any uncertainty about their true intentions, I'm met with shock. It seems people prefer to operate on wishful thinking (or they realize these companies wouldn't even exist today if it wasn't for the companies that have sprung up from the FOSS license)