> I wonder sometimes about the fact that SW engineers are capable of making their own tools in a way that we are not. Do you think this helps to combat some of the super high pricing associated with their tooling?
I can only speculate, since I am not a software engineer, but I think part of maturing is things get more complex and making things more difficult and expensive. Thirty years ago, someone could say "Fuck it! I'm fucking sick of Unix! I'll just go write my own fucking operating system!" and actually do it. Today, operating systems are so complex and large that this is not feasible anymore. Maybe you can write your own AWS replacement today, but would you able to write a replacement for AWS of 2050 in 2050?
It it one of those things that I would be happy to be proven wrong about, but as of now, I am not super optimistic that the current state of freedom of software engineering tools would continue indefinitely.
I don't think it's about software getting more complex. It does become more complex, but you don't actually write more code or handle a more complex architecture, you just build it from more complex blocks. Those blocks are packaged so their own complexity is hidden from you.
And you can write software on you spare time, and distribute it. Like it was done for Linux, gcc, git, and many other open source software. The other reason we have free software is because many software companies write their own tools and distribute them as Open Source because those are just tools, not what makes them money.
AWS on the other hand, is not just software but it's infrastructure. It's servers that are running, maintained, etc. There are already Open Source alternatives to AWS, that you can install on your servers and maintain, but it's a very different experience from using the AWS tools on Amazon's servers.
I can only speculate, since I am not a software engineer, but I think part of maturing is things get more complex and making things more difficult and expensive. Thirty years ago, someone could say "Fuck it! I'm fucking sick of Unix! I'll just go write my own fucking operating system!" and actually do it. Today, operating systems are so complex and large that this is not feasible anymore. Maybe you can write your own AWS replacement today, but would you able to write a replacement for AWS of 2050 in 2050?
It it one of those things that I would be happy to be proven wrong about, but as of now, I am not super optimistic that the current state of freedom of software engineering tools would continue indefinitely.