If you want to build something cool, push MIT licensed code to Github, or write a kernel module for FreeBSD. The complaint that businesses are in it for the cash doesn't make sense.
You're under the impression that "something cool" is strongly typed to code. In reality, there's much more that can be done. Building an organization to make something happen is much more difficult than pushing to GitHub and usually requires outside investment.
At the end of the day, we all could have chosen med school and a life working for Partners in Health in Haiti, so this seems like a slippery slope argument.
I want to build something cool/useful and also enjoy the process of building. Your argument makes it sound like do something useful just for the sake of it. You ruined the whole argument buddy
Businesses exist to make money, and cease to exist if they don't. We all get that.
On the other hand, I'd rather not work next to a guy who'd stab his grandmother in the heart to get a small promotion because he feels that he has to make VP/Eng by 30.
Because that's the comparison here. Between the "few good startups that exist", as you said elsewhere in this thread, and the rest of them that are run by people waiting for the opportunity to stab their grandparents for a title bump.
