The Last Mile
The Last Mile - The problem with FOSS This article is about FOSS (free and open-source software). The expression "The Last Mile" refers to supply chain or delivery services that get the products or packages into people's hands. A larger company or service may produce it and ship it across the world, but it is usually up to a local company/carrier to bring it the last mile. I see FOSS as having a "Last Mile" problem. The problem is that it's missing proper incentives to maintain/finish/optimize projects which become important to a large set of computer users. Occasionally I benefit from this problem - I optimize other people's software for a living; some of that software starts out as an open source project. Problem #1 (lack of upstreamed improvements) A few years ago I optimized a FOSS tool (ETCPACK - Ericsson Texture Compressor) for a large Silicon Valley company. This tool is used for compressing RGB images into a lossy texture that GPUs can directly