>Everyone is contributing what they can for free to the common knowledge base and can use everyone else's stuff also for free.
Not necessarily. In reality the flow of IP-value is largely one way.
Many corporations have done incredibly well out of FOSS without offering much in return. Just because Famous Router Company puts up source code of firmware it has glued together from various FOSS projects doesn't mean FRC has made a significant contribution. (Some corps do, of course. But even there they don't share other core IP as they would in a genuinely flat FOSS economy.)
In fact FOSS is about commodification, not innovation or invention. If innovation happens, it's usually in developer-land. FOSS culture doesn't seem all that interested in solving new classes of problem in user-land. So "according to his (her) needs" is very limited and partial.
Just because we have this conversation and there is some indignation over companies not contributing back to the projects they use shows that we expect them to contribute according to their ability.
I agree that it isn't perfect like every other implementation of communism because some people don't contribute back. But we can just pretend that their ability is zero. Then it still works.
Not necessarily. In reality the flow of IP-value is largely one way.
Many corporations have done incredibly well out of FOSS without offering much in return. Just because Famous Router Company puts up source code of firmware it has glued together from various FOSS projects doesn't mean FRC has made a significant contribution. (Some corps do, of course. But even there they don't share other core IP as they would in a genuinely flat FOSS economy.)
In fact FOSS is about commodification, not innovation or invention. If innovation happens, it's usually in developer-land. FOSS culture doesn't seem all that interested in solving new classes of problem in user-land. So "according to his (her) needs" is very limited and partial.