> Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest of the developers.

While I know that is true first hand, I think that's largely due to network effects.

You've most likely built your own open-source project on top of other existing open-source projects, an existing free platform. That means that there's a big bootstrapping cost you didn't have to pay for in terms of commercial software or developer-time (if you'd instead had chosen to make that platform yourself).

And since you got off so lightly, it's easy to think "I'll just give this away too". What if making that first release had cost you 10x more effort, or hundreds of dollars?

But now your project is FOSS and you get the benefits in the terms of people using your software and submitting patches back. Do you think you'd have something equally compelling to offer if you had to make it all from scratch? Or do you think you'd get contributors if using your product depended on a wide range of other commercial software?

Basically, your open-source project "works out" because of other open-source software. Even as a developer, you should be thankful for free software developers.

Just how much free software do you depend on? A text-editor? A programming-language runtime and toolchain? A operating system for that to run on? A platform SDK for the developers of that platform? A kernel surely?

And for each of those "high level" concepts there, you probably need to account for the very same thing recursively and more: server-software running their project's webpages and mailing-lists and other developer infrastructure. Plus whatever that recursively depends on.

The amount of free effort involved seems to defy enumeration. I guess it is turtles all the way down.

I think open-source today has come a long way compared to where it was a couple decades ago, and can't imagine how much perseverance and persistence this has required from how just many people. It's an enormous achievement.

My hats off and thanks to all of you, everywhere :)

Turtles all the way down, yea. The comment that I made IMO applies to each of those turtles. OSS is sometimes done out of a selfless sense of public service, but maybe more often just for the sheer cognitive/emotional drive to solve a problem and/or to create for its own sake.

But the way that plays out just so happens to yield positive benefits not just for the community who are free recipients of the software, but for the developers as well.

It's a great thing, though I don't think it's possible for us all to just hold hands in a spirit circle and develop all of the world's software for free without any care for profit. The modes are synergetic but OSS can't stand alone.

I agree, however: > Just how much free software do you depend on? A text-editor? A programming-language runtime and toolchain? A operating system for that to run on? A platform SDK for the developers of that platform? A kernel surely?

there are many people who use closed source editors (sublime/VS), on a nonfree tool chain (VC++) on a nonfree OS (windows) with a closed source SDK And kernel.

What about the servers you deploy to? What about the toolchain used by the upstream platform developers you depend on? What about the software powering their CI-systems?

Whatever free software they depend on, you indirectly depend on too.

Not everyone works on web applications, and I don't claim to have any knowledge of the platform that they develop with.

My point wasn't that I don't depend on free software (I absolutely do, and I do donate to the software I use every year), but that it is possible to be a developer and have very little interaction with free software.

But the projects you do depend on probably have web-pages, even if none of you are into web-development primarily.

And thus more open source dependencies unravel :)