Thank you @carlosjmelgar for picking up on all these good points made by our great community.
Iād like to confine my comments to my question about OSS & Eth Infra (though am intrigued by the Community & Education discussion thread, too!).
My additional thoughts are these:
We have a compelling example of how an open source tech project can be easily privatized by acquisition from a savvy player (OpenAI). So a tech build project getting its genesis funding as an open source project does not guarantee it will remain that way.
In fact, I am prone to see it this way: That if the core/ genesis build team of a project, esp software or Eth Infra, are given the means to build a (temporary) moat around their work, they will be more incentivized later, at the post Beta stage, to flip it open source.
Why?
Because when devs, creators, builders are given the means to profit from their hard work and efforts at the beginning, we are more likely to HAVE the means to turn the project open source once it passes a certain stage.
Itās the basic tenet of āput the oxygen mask on yourself first.ā
Since I am wont to imagine IRL equivalents to exemplify scenarios, here is one for this instance. What if you are planting a vegetable garden. You have your small plot of land and you till the soil, you nurture it, you fertilize it and then lovingly, you and your family plant the wonderful vegetables you know will help nourish yourselves and your kids. However, for some odd reason, this little plot of garden has been mandated to be āopen sourceā. Even though itās your hard work, your money, your inspiration, your creativity that has gone into developing it. As such, right at harvest time, a swarm of laggard extractors come along and pick off all the good vegetables, the ripe tomatoes, the fresh cucumbers, the wonderful squash and spring onions. And leave you with nothing but the seeds.
What do you tell your kids at the dinner table then?
Sorry, kids. Because itās an āopen sourceā garden, we get to do all the work but arenāt allowed to enjoy the harvest?
IMO (humble) I believe we need to re-think this. I also believe, as mentioned above, that Open AI is a good illustration of what āopen sourceā can become. I feel we need to remember that humans require compensation, remuneration, and incentivization. Otherwise, in certain cases, we are vulnerable to the highest bidder.
MEME that I am certain you are all more than familiar with. (The tiny brick at the bottom - in case you are wondering - is the Gitcoin Grantee from Eth Infra who is not allowed to build a moat around their work at least up until post BETA).