Monday, 22nd January 2024
We estimate the supply-side value of widely-used OSS is $4.15 billion, but that the demand-side value is much larger at $8.8 trillion. We find that firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software than they currently do if OSS did not exist. [...] Further, 96% of the demand-side value is created by only 5% of OSS developers.
— The Value of Open Source Software, Harvard Business School Strategy Unit
Python packaging must be getting better—a datapoint (via) Luke Plant reports on a recent project he developed on Linux using a requirements.txt file and some complex binary dependencies—Qt5 and VTK—and when he tried to run it on Windows... it worked! No modifications required.
I think Python’s packaging system has never been more effective... provided you know how to use it. The learning curve is still too high, which I think accounts for the bulk of complaints about it today.