Open source needs the corporation

Contributing to open source means a lot of evening hours spent in front of a computer, that I could spend doing something else - spending time with my wife and daughter, playing music, sports, whatever. Of course, open source is based on passion and that's what drives me.

But the point is that the time spent coding for open source is *unbilled*, meaning I'm not directly making a living from it. I might be re-using open source software for my professional work, but typically the code that I write for paying customers or for my employer is not contributed back to the community. And when I do contribute it back, it needs significant refactoring - done after-hours, again.

I suspect many open source contributors are in this same position. And this means that open source is directly relying on the existence of corporate institutions - clients or employers - whose values might be antithetical to those of open source. To me, that poses a worrisome question as to the sustainability of open source as a movement.

All is not lost however. My solution has been to find clients or employers that are sympathetic to open source, and who rely on it in their business. This redresses the balance somewhat.