11–20 of 105 posts
If you're going to try to argue Debian is worth $30 billion then I'll try to argue that it's generated $30 billion in free publicity.
One other option for giving back - just send an email saying thanks, and that you love the project. I get such an email once or twice each week for my open source project, and it really brightens up my day. I'm lucky enough to not really need any donations, but everybody needs their spirits lifted from time to time.
Knowing that your contribution has made a positive impact on someone else's life is a powerful thing, and from the user's perspective costs very little to do.
Just to put it out there, Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made. There are a few asterisks though, most notably support life for the OS. My 2009 MacPro won't run the latest OS for no other reason than Apple decided it couldn't (end of life)…
I think that misses something of the ethos of free software. It's not like somebody donating their valuable time to work in a soup kitchen. It's much more like somebody too lazy to spend thirty seconds doing a menial task like everyone else, so they instead spend three months creating a program that automates that thirty second task-- with the side effect that the rest of computer-using humanity gets out of doing that menial task, too.
So in a way it does require a thank you. But in another way releasing it as free software is the least they could do given all the time they wasted just to get out of doing work.
Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest of the developers. In terms of networking with other developers and building a resume which leads to real jobs with real pay. Not to mention the value of real world developer experience. Be thankful, yep - but as someone with a background in OSS, I'm quite happy with the intangible dividends it's already paid.
While I know that is true first hand, I think that's largely due to network effects.
You've most likely built your own open-source project on top of other existing open-source projects, an existing free platform. That means that there's a big bootstrapping cost you didn't have to pay for in terms of commercial software or developer-time (if you'd instead had chosen to make that platform yourself).
And since you got off so lightly, it's easy to think "I'll just give this away too". What if making that first release had cost you 10x more effort, or hundreds of dollars?
But now your project is FOSS and you get the benefits in the terms of people using your software and submitting patches back. Do you think you'd have something equally compelling to offer if you had to make it all from scratch? Or do you think you'd get contributors if using your product depended on a wide range of other commercial software?
Basically, your open-source project "works out" because of other open-source software. Even as a developer, you should be thankful for free software developers.
Just how much free software do you depend on? A text-editor? A programming-language runtime and toolchain? A operating system for that to run on? A platform SDK for the developers of that platform? A kernel surely?
And for each of those "high level" concepts there, you probably need to account for the very same thing recursively and more: server-software running their project's webpages and mailing-lists and other developer infrastructure. Plus whatever that recursively depends on.
The amount of free effort involved seems to defy enumeration. I guess it is turtles all the way down.
I think open-source today has come a long way compared to where it was a couple decades ago, and can't imagine how much perseverance and persistence this has required from how just many people. It's an enormous achievement.
My hats off and thanks to all of you, everywhere :)
> It means that someone has just donated hundreds of hours of work for you. Free of charge! I think that misses something of the ethos of free software. It's not like somebody donating their valuable time to work in a soup kitchen. It's much more like somebody too lazy to spend thirty seconds doing a menial task like everyone else, so they instead spend three months creating a program that automates that thirty secon…
I installed some package recently that fucked with my X config, or my kernel modules, I don't know. But my hybrid graphics is now fucked and I have crazy artifacts all over my screen. The default install of this distro does not result in a working config, and I had to spend three days to figure out the insane set of software and configuration I needed to make it work last time. (Also, I added extra RAM, and now hibernating doesn't work)
There is no commercial support for this laptop running this distro. My free software has no "revert to a last known good working system state" button, like some non-free software. Doing all the work to fix the graphics again may literally be more expensive than buying a new Windows laptop.
Thanks, Free Software.
Free non-commercial and non-free commercial software are both wildly different products in practice. I installed some package recently that fucked with my X config, or my kernel modules, I don't know. But my hybrid graphics is now fucked and I have crazy artifacts all over my screen. The default install of this distro does not result in a working config, and I had to spend three days to figure out the insane set of s…
Instead of whining that not enough volunteers provided free labor to make whatever laptop you already invested in work better perhaps buy machines that are well supported or even better ones which come with Linux.
This approach has worked well for me for 14 years.
Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest of the developers. In terms of networking with other developers and building a resume which leads to real jobs with real pay. Not to mention the value of real world developer experience. Be thankful, yep - but as someone with a background in OSS, I'm quite happy with the intangible dividends it's already paid.
> Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest of the developers. While I know that is true first hand, I think that's largely due to network effects. You've most likely built your own open-source project on top of other existing open-source projects, an existing free platform. That means that there's a big bootstrapping cost you didn't have to pay for in terms of commercial software o…
But the way that plays out just so happens to yield positive benefits not just for the community who are free recipients of the software, but for the developers as well.
It's a great thing, though I don't think it's possible for us all to just hold hands in a spirit circle and develop all of the world's software for free without any care for profit. The modes are synergetic but OSS can't stand alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I was mainly talking about the free as in beer. Not as much free as in freedom regarding Apple's stuff. Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing that. I think Lion was the first free OS upgrade. I credit FOSS for Microsoft giving a real copy of Visual Studio away for free. They've done it in the past, IIRC, but it was so hobbled, it was useless.
>Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing that. I give the credit to Microsoft's market share. The fact is ~99% of Mac switchers like me previously owned Windows boxes and ran mostly proprietary Windows software. The free applications you get with a Mac are a way to cushion the blow of giving those up and in some cases offer features you just can't get direct equivalents for on Win…
And now it's mostly proprietary macOS software. As you mention, the hard hitters in Apple's lineup are proprietary (Time Machine, Photos, iTunes, etc.) and the average user doesn't care that they can use BSD utilities on the command line. It's not dissimilar to the PS4, Switch etc. not being OSS consoles despite running a BSD kernel. Just because they use some FOSS parts for their OS, a FOSS ecosystem doesn't automatically appear.
I also think there's very little to no real community around Apple's FOSS, at least for their homegrown projects, not counting e.g. CUPS or KHTML/WebKit where they got the community for free when they took over or adopted the project. Note that even that didn't go without problems (e.g. with the KDE project) and Apple first had to learn how to behave as a good FOSS citizen.
Other community bits weren't as successful. OpenDarwin for example has shut down and PureDarwin needs a release still. Swift might be an exception and maybe we'll see more of that. I may also be very wrong here, I don't follow their projects too closely.
To even develop on macOS "officially", you need Xcode, thus an Apple ID, thus there is forced registration. You're transmitting your personal details to a US company and you agree to their terms and conditions, which can already be a problem. Are Iranian developers excluded? Cuban ones? Oh, it depends on the whims of the current US administration, you say? The GPL for example does not tolerate such limitations.
I don't know, but I think the atmosphere on macOS today is more like FOSS is present, but not really encouraged by the platform owner, and that's important. It's not like it was when macOS was still OS X and everyone was all "ooo, look, Ruby comes preinstalled!". Now that they managed to attract some critical mass of developers for macOS to be viable, they don't seem to care that much about FOSS anymore.