I do not, mostly because I work with proprietary software at work.
On my free time I submit bugs on GitHub for the projects I use (mostly small projects), with the technical solution inside, but not with PR (as i feel like the owner may have a broader view, and fix it in a better way).
Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#42I don't because almost all the projects I'd like to contribute to feel like they're far beyond my abilities as a developer. I hope that's just imposter syndrome but it might not be.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#43I'm not contributing to any free / open source projects. I think that that FOSS is fueling the technology monopolies, despite originally aiming at the exact opposite. I think it has driven many software markets in the ground like for example tooling. I cannot believe that we use absolutely horrible software like GDB in 2020. I think there is a lot of left learning ideology behind hte FOSS development and also these t…
Can you elaborate on how foss fuels tech monopolies? I've never understood that argument and would like to hear more.
GP has a good point.
Here is the general FOSS playbook of nearly every Big Tech company.
1 Use FOSS as a way to attract the best talent in addition to the salary. But remember that even a very high salary for a permanently scandalous company like Facebook may not be a good enough incentive, but FOSS will likely push some folks over the fence. ("Yes, I work for Microsoft. But inside Microsoft, I work on FOSS stuff!" - Scott Hanselman).
2 Get a lot of unpaid volunteers looking at and improving your code, not to mention the free documentation and all the free support on the project's GitHub issues.
3 Cherry pick the interesting stuff in the FOSS projects for BigTechCo employees and hand off the more boring plumbing work to the unpaid volunteers, thus massively increasing total FOSS output. This can often be done by simply ignoring the boring stuff for a while since it is quite clear that FOSS devotees abhor the code vacuum.
4 Back to step 1.
Yes, FOSS seems to be perpetuating the tech monopoly.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#44I rarely (pretty much never) contribute, but I write a lot of software and put it in the public domain. Why? What I write has no commercial value (I think), but in case it is useful to someone, I do not want to put any legal stuff in their way.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#45I'm not contributing to any free / open source projects. I think that that FOSS is fueling the technology monopolies, despite originally aiming at the exact opposite. I think it has driven many software markets in the ground like for example tooling. I cannot believe that we use absolutely horrible software like GDB in 2020. I think there is a lot of left learning ideology behind hte FOSS development and also these t…
I hope you walk the talk and don't use any open-source software. But regarding your claim about fueling the technology monopolies. In what way is everyone running Windows or OSX because there are no open-source alternatives less a monopoly?
When did I say I'm not using it? I said I'm not contributing to it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you walk the talk and don't use any open-source software. But regarding your claim about fueling the technology monopolies. In what way is everyone running Windows or OSX because there are no open-source alternatives less a monopoly?
When did I say I'm not using it? I said I'm not contributing to it.
Right, so you use the free fruits of people's hard work.
And then you complain about them and their left-leaning ideology fueling technology monopolies.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on how foss fuels tech monopolies? I've never understood that argument and would like to hear more.
As a manager of a big tech company you are incentivized to increase profit and minimize cost. Might be slightly more painful to use a FOSS toolchain in your team, but your costs are zero. In comparison look at how much does a commercial IDE license like CLion costs per user. It is a zero resistance environment. It gives the opportunity of the small to grow without any costs, but it also doesn't limit how big the big…
Sorry, but that's complete nonsense in every aspect.
No competent manager will skimp on tools when they're paying today's developer salaries because those are the far bigger cost. You can buy plenty of expensive tools from the hourly rate equivalent of an engineer spending hours every week dealing with the shortcomings of crappy tools.
Conversely, a manager whose incompetence manifests as skimping on tools will just choose the cheapest commercial tool when there are no open source tools available, and that is almost guaranteed to be worse.
In fact, it's common for dysfunctional companies to insist on using commercial tools that are both very expensive and much more painful to use than readily available open source tools.
Edit:
> why is noone focusing on the fact that they are using software for free and profiting out of the product?
Because it is much better than having no free software and personal projects, self-study, and bootstrapped startups being only possible for the rich. I mean, there are Copyleft licenses that aim to prevent commercial use of free software, but isn't that exactly the "left leaning ideology" you didn't seem to like much above?
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#48I contribute as much as I can, but I don't usually have much time that I can use at work so 99% of it is done in my own time. Right now I'm maintaining a small project for converting markdown into pdf's[0], and I've picked up maintaining the StatsD project[1].
I do it for two reasons, first the enjoyment. I really like working on problems of a smaller scope, without a full business around it. I love being able to think of something and knock out some code for it and share it, rather than the code coming last.
The second reason I try and contribute is because I generally believe it contributes positively to the world. I'm sure those who've read my code might disagree, but on the whole I think offering free tools to tackle common problems helps everyone. Even if it's not "exactly" how you want it to work, it's at least prior art to inspire new solutions.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a manager of a big tech company you are incentivized to increase profit and minimize cost. Might be slightly more painful to use a FOSS toolchain in your team, but your costs are zero. In comparison look at how much does a commercial IDE license like CLion costs per user. It is a zero resistance environment. It gives the opportunity of the small to grow without any costs, but it also doesn't limit how big the big…
So if I understand correctly, the argument is that it drives down costs as opposed to proprietary alternatives. But how does this lead to monopolies? Is it something like was suggested below by tsukurimashou, that companies takeover foss software so that it is essentially theirs? But I don't see how that is functional ly different from them just developing that software themselves (apart from higher costs for them).…
It is a zero resistance environment. It gives the opportunity of the small to grow without any costs, but it also doesn't limit how big the big ones can get.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?
#50At my company, engineers dedicate 10% of their work time to open source contributions outside of our core products. They are quite free to pick any project they want, as long as it benefits our particular community. Why do we do this? * It's a great perk for engineers. They contribute under their "personal" profiles, improving their own karma. * Growth of the community we come from lifts everyone, including the compa…
Time to reveal the mystery and tell us how this magical workplace is called!
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