The current model for funding advancements in tech in the 21st century is: quantitative easing-doped venture capital hungry for investments -> startup uses initial money to make actual tech advancement (this is the good bit) -> hypes up idea, does IPO -> ideally market monopolization and vendor lock-in -> which allows them to enshittify and extract arbitrary rent from both the supplier and consumer side of their user base and return money to the investors, for ever.
The fact that this funding model applies to tech in general is demonstrated by the broad range of fields where it has been used:
- for software, things like Figma or Medium
- for hardware, things like the Juicero (a great example of how venture capital values trendiness (juicero was wifi-connected, required an app, god forbid if AI existed at the time) over real-world utility (the juice capsules could be opened by hand))
- for biotech, things like GMO golden rice, where Monsanto disabled propagation so that farmers would have to come back to them for seeds (that’s not exactly what happened, but I’m trying to make a point).
The obvious alternative to this is touted to be open source, ie. people making things for free and sharing it with others.
Unfortunately, the amount of things you can achieve for free, possibly relying on donations, is very limited. If you want to become a serious business, you need a serious funding model. I am convinced that the choice between open source and the Sillicon Valey model is a false dichotomy, and other ways of funding advancements in tech must exist (after all, the Sillicon Valey model has not always been the modus operandi).
Are there any hybrid business models for funding tech developments, that eg. even allow the developed tech to be open source? Has any research been done into the design of novell funding models?
For hardware it is relativly simple, as paying for that is normal. Raspberry Pi is a private company, but produces open source hardware. Probably the way to go, is to force all companies to do so. Right to repair is imho a good starting point.
For software the key seems to be large government or private customers. They do have a lot of money and the system not running costs them a lot. Hiring experts themself is also not always posdible. So buying in service from companies developing open source is an option.
For R&D a lot of that is done by universities and research institutions likr NASA today. That seems to me to be a good solution.