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Comment by ajross

> "almost" is the load bearing word here, and/or a weasel word. Define what an "economically important project" is.

Linux, clang, python, react, blink, v8, openssl... You know what I mean. I stand by what I said. Do you have a counterexample you think is clearly unfunded? They exist[1], but they're rare.

> Is "povertyware" what we call software written by people and released for free now?

It's software subject to economic coercion owing to the lack of means of its maintainership. It's 100% fine for you to write and release software for free, but if a third party bets their own product on it they're subject to an attack where I hand you $7M to look the other way while I borrow your shell.

[1] The xz-utils attack is the flag bearer for this kind of messup, obviously.

parent ajross 9 months ago

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