Good point
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You'll die of starvation trying to make a living writing it
Here's a quick primer:
* Copyright law says you can't copy stuff without permission from the owners of the copyright. Since the 70s, anyone who creates something that can be copyrighted automatically owns the copyright.
* Most companies require that people working for them automatically assign copyright to them for stuff they are working on. There is a gray area when you build something on your own time but in my experience most just want you to tell them what you are doing to avoid future conflicts.
* Most software is licensed "commercially" meaning you have to pay them to use it. You are not allowed to view the source code. You are not allowed to modify it. This is the "Microsoft" model that Bill Gates created. This software sucks because no one knows what it is actually doing and no one can fix it when it breaks (which it often does.)
* Open-source software may charge companies to use the software but allows the company to view the code and even modify it. It may or may not allow you to publish those changes or require you to publish them under the same conditions.
* "Free as in freedom" software, often licensed under the GPL, allows anyone to use it however they like, allows people to charge for distributing it (IE, selling CDs or such) but requires that the software be open source forever. People who receive a copy are allowed to view the code, modify it, and even publish their own changes, as long as they publish it under the same copyright conditions. People (myself included) are often paid to write GPL software.
* For completeness' sake, there is also software that no one claims any copyright of. It is called "public domain". The problem is if you start using public domain software, you'll find that people have modified versions that aren't public domain. You can't use those modifications unless you get permission from the people who made the changes.
It has nothing to do with communism. Communism would require that the state own all software, or that software be distributed under conditions set by the state or what not. Or it would require that all software developers make the same amount of money or that all of the profits from the sales of software go into the state treasury.
You're not supposed to make a living with it. Much like art, you are supposed to perform some other gainful employment, and work on the project for fun, in your spare time.
Trying to turn 'art' into a profession is similarly disastrous.
The only difference is that you might need a job flipping burgers at McDonalds to pay your bills, while you work on your open source project a few hours on your spare time if you work on a small project that doesn't generate any money.
Which you would have to do with proprietary code as well, when you after a 40 hour work week in the office, among pajeets, doesn't earn enough money to make a living as the pajeets work for 10% of a normal developers wage. So unless you wanna share a 1 bedroom apartment with 20 pajeets, you'll have to take that second job at McDonalds anyway.
Some kid writes some software, publishes it under, say GPL.
The software turns out to be useful. Lots of people start using it.
Company X wants to use his software, but they want to make changes to it. Rather than having their employees work on it, they hire the kid at a decent salary to keep working on it, in the direction they want.
If the software becomes super popular (like Linux) then the kid forms his own company that works for hire for other companies on a contract basis, often selling certification programs or training courses and whatnot, and at the same time, soliciting donations.
This has happened thousands of times to thousands of people in the software industry. Go look up any piece of moderately successful open source software projects and you'll see a success story of the people behind it.
To say there's no money in open source software or call it communism is just retarded.
Communism had no part with it.
It turns out that having everyone collaborate on the Linux kernel made the Linux kernel the best kernel that has ever existed. Who knew?