Because open source is not just about the code and the license. It is first and foremost about a community of people who want to make software better for everyone, not just for themselves or a select few. The code and license are ancillary to this goal.
I won't get into this discussion again. I'll just say that if you think otherwise, whatever good you think you're putting out into the world, is not much better than keeping the software proprietary.
Everything else in open source is a cultural projection entirely ancillary to the code and the license.
> I'll just say that if you think otherwise, whatever good you think you're putting out into the world, is not much better than keeping the software proprietary.
I have never seen someone so entirely miss the point of open source. This is not a house party, this is not a community support network. There are genuine disagreements about open source philosophy, if it should be more focused on user freedoms or developer convenience, but they are all incompatible with the idea that open-source licensed code in and of itself "is not much better than keeping the software proprietary".
Stallman did not invent the GPL because he wanted an issue tracker and complete documentation from HP. He invented the GPL because he needed to fix his printer drivers.
A ton of very important open source code was thrust into the world, created immense value, but was never further supported or developed by its original developers. Off the top of my head: git, Doom, Bitcoin, and basically everything Fabrice Bellard has ever done.
Licences also existed before FOSS, but open sources licences enabling the kind of freedoms that they allow did not exist. And as it happens, a license is not a technical artefact but a social contract. Stallman is activist, not simply a neutral combination of a technician and a lawyer.
The social contract and political vision are consequently not ancillary, but core to FOSS. Code is the medium, but the license is the innovation. Without that social contract, 'open' code is just abandonware.
The community doesn't need to be a 'house party,' but the license guarantees the right for a community to form when the original author walks away.
- https://www.postgresql.org/list/
Though I have to be very charitable to grant your point.
Even your examples support their point of "people who want to make software better for everyone, not just for themselves or a select few". Stallman just cared about code, like fixing his printer, and not a whole social movement?
> The community of people cannot exist without the code and the license.
That is obviously false. Communities form around any common interest. They also exist around proprietary software, where no code is shared.
When code is freely available, it is the community of people who make the project successful—not the code, and certainly not a piece of legalese text.
> The code and the license can and often does exist without dedicated communities.
Technically true, but such projects languish in obscurity. They're driven by the will of a small group of people, often the original lone author, and once that diminishes, they are abandoned and forgotten. The vast majority of software which can technically be described as "open source" is mostly inconsequential to computing or anyone's lives. It once scratched the itch of a single person, and now sits unread on some storage device.
Thus, communities are what make software successful. Not just free software, but software in general. We write software for people, and we publish its source code to help others. We do so because software is better when shared and improved by a community of passionate users, rather than written by one or a few people who wanted it to exist.
It's wild that you would bring up Stallman as an example, since everything he's done goes completely against your point. That printer story served as a good example to illustrate to others why free software is necessary—not just for him, or for the team and company he worked with at the time, but for the world at large. He didn't need to invent a social movement and philosophy to fix his printer issues. He probably could've hacked around it and found a solution that worked for their specific case, and called it a day. And yet he didn't. He believed that software could be built and shared in a different way. In a way that would benefit everyone, and not just the people who wrote it. He believed in the power of sharing knowledge freely, of collaborating, and building communities of like-minded people. The source code is important, and the license less so, but it is this philosophy that brings the most value to the world.
> A ton of very important open source code was thrust into the world, created immense value, but was never further supported or developed by its original developers. Off the top of my head: git, Doom, Bitcoin, and basically everything Fabrice Bellard has ever done.
Whether the original developers supported it or not is irrelevant. All of the examples you mentioned are projects supported by someone, and have communities of passionate people around them. That is the point. Individuals may come and go. The author is no more important than any talented and passionate member of the community. But someone cares enough to continue maintaining the software, and to nurture the community of users around it, without which none of these projects would be remotely as successful as they are today.
