> it's no coincidence that corporations that own proprietary code don't have this problem.
I would argue they have a similar but worse problem. Someone at google creates an awesome product. They get promoted and leave the project. Someone else is assigned to maintain the product, which slowly gets worse over time either a) because the new maintainers are less skilled/driven or b) because programmers perceive themselves as being paid to write code, and it's fun, so they're going to change things even if nothing needs to be changed.
I've seen so much commercial software get worse over time. I'm not sure if I have the causes right, but there's definitely something wrong with the model. In contrast, I've found open source software to be far better for far longer. It might stop being maintained, but it almost never gets worse in my experience.
> it's no coincidence that corporations that own proprietary code don't have this problem.
I would argue they have a similar but worse problem. Someone at google creates an awesome product. They get promoted and leave the project. Someone else is assigned to maintain the product, which slowly gets worse over time either a) because the new maintainers are less skilled/driven or b) because programmers perceive themselves as being paid to write code, and it's fun, so they're going to change things even if nothing needs to be changed.
I've seen so much commercial software get worse over time. I'm not sure if I have the causes right, but there's definitely something wrong with the model. In contrast, I've found open source software to be far better for far longer. It might stop being maintained, but it almost never gets worse in my experience.