Agreed
22
80
21.6% 78.4%
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Discussion (4)
...then how did they come to such prominence in the past decade?
It certainly /helps/ to support them...
I don't think they will cease to exist without it though. Some people code, enjoy coding, code for other reasons, and they may not want to do so commercially.
In addition to Mattj's reason, companies like IBM sponsor many Open Source projects and I think that is the way they will and should be funded as companies are the ones that need the software most.
The ordinary person will get by without a piece of software if they have to (in most cases) but companies need reliable software with good support so Open Source projects need their support more than average Joe's.
An individual developer may stop developing a particular project, or give up programming altogether, if people do not support him, but open source programmers as a whole won't disappear: most open source projects start when a single person needs a particular tool, so there will always be new ones starting up.