Bizarre Argument Against Open Source Software

The recent discovery of security vulnerabilities in the Log4j library has resulted in a lot of ugliness in the online software community. Some proponents of languages like Go and Rust are using the opportunity to attack Java as a whole.

Of course it is the hapless maintainers of the library who are bearing the brunt of the criticism. A few people have tried to defend them by pointing out that they are not being financially compensated for their work. In a thread on Twitter along these lines, I came across a curious argument against open source software. A person was making the case that by releasing the library as open source, developers were being denied the opportunity to be paid to write and maintain similar software.

Here is a list of reasons why that doesn’t make sense.

• Developers can still offer to patch and enhance the software to anyone willing to pay for it. The open source license specifically allows that. In fact there are many companies that are built on that business model.
• Log4j is not the only logging library that exists for Java. It may not even be the most popular one. So no other products are being locked out of the market.
• A major reason why open source libraries exist for common functions like logging is that businesses are not interested in spending money on software that is not unique to them.

The real question is are there any developers who are looking for work given the extremely high demand for their skills in the current business environment.