suggesting that it would lead to an order of magnitude increase is surely premature

The US is continuing to worsen in performance on meaures of small business entrepreneurship in essentially all industries in the US, software and software adjacent industries are no different especially if you don’t get distracted by the AI bubble inflating that value of a bunch of illusions claiming to be businesses.

It is easy to see how the inability of the average person to try a new idea, or risk taking on a project that may not pay off immediately translates directly to a lack of available developers for open source software projects.

The impact of Universal Healthcare would be huge for open source development in the US, the amount of programmers that would be pushed over the line from “just making ends meet while having a work life balance” to “ok maybe I could devote some time to open source development”.

Don’t get me wrong though, I think we need to normalize straight up paying developers for Open Source Development. Just because it is open source doesn’t mean it doesn’t take labor, that is not the argument I am making.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2018/oct/affordable-care-act-impact-small-business