Nobody pays for open source. We can force them to.

The first time I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog post about the economics of open source was 2013, so this post has been in the works a while. The closest I got before today was 2022, when I wrote a stream-of-consciousness rant into my iOS notes that ended with basically "nothing fucking works". And then that sat there for 4 more years, because "nothing works" is too depressing to bother writing 5000 words about. Now, finally, I have an idea. It's gonna take 5000 words to get there, though, so if you don't have that kind of time, skip to the part about registries. Open source is a game with a stable outcome, and the outcome is that free wins I've written before about hawks and doves, which is a model from evolutionary biology. You have a population of animals competing for some resource. Some of them fight for it (hawks) and some of them share it (doves). A population that is all hawks is unstable: everybody's constantly getting hurt, and the first two doves to show up…