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Give away your code, but never your time

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Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#171

Post by dagw »

ScottBurson wrote: post #139
isaaclyman wrote: post #29

Devil's advocate: How about an issue/PR tracker that lets users pay for priority? A simple bidding system. If BigCorp International is willing to pay $200/hour for IE10 support, they can be next on your list. And afterward, an bug with significant community support totalling $50/hour, pledged by 50 different users. With allowances for your own preferences as maintainer and the needs of the community, of course, but g…

I built a site like this a few years ago, got absolutely no traction, and shut it down. I'm very open to the possibility that I went about it the wrong way, but I don't really know what I should have done differently. Maybe it could have worked if I had done a lot more evangelizing -- I admittedly didn't do much, but what I did do was so poorly received that I gave up.

I think something like this has to be integrated directly into github or the project's issue tracker to have a chance to gain any traction. But honestly, even then, I'm not sure it would work.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#172

Post by icebraining »

imtringued wrote: post #161
metafunctor wrote: post #48

I led a small open source project more than a decade ago. Most people involved had more time than money. I'm quite certain that trying to charge an annual fee from members would have killed the entire project before it was even born. Introducing money to the equation changes everything. People start to look at the project as a product they are buying, instead of a cause they are contributing to. I believe the author…

As soon as money is involved there is a certain expectation of quality and the work being done properly. If you start depending on that money then you are under the control of your customers and your hobby will quickly degrade into a regular job.

"Degrade"? Getting a job contributing to FOSS projects sounds pretty good to me.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#173

Post by LeoNatan25 »

jasonkester wrote: post #157
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

> creating an open source project is a contract with the community, and part of that contract is to assist members of this community I disagree. Creating an open source project is a gift to the community. Expecting further time and attention from somebody who gave you a gift, out of a sense of entitlement from having received the gift, is just being rude. Pay for my time and I'll help you with your issues. Demand my…

That statement is made by how I view my open source projects, and thus what I expect from other open source projects. Could be that my expectations are too high, but I don’t believe so. This is not entitlement, it’s expecting a level of seriousness similar to that I am willing to give.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#174

Post by LeoNatan25 »

thinkloop wrote: post #163
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

> creating an open source project is a contract with the community, and part of that contract is to assist members of this community that might require features or have issues. If this were strictly enforced, there would be much fewer open source projects, as not all authors would be able to meet the obligations.

Then add a disclaimer that the repository is not actively maintained and is looking for maintainers. This will absolve the responsibility of the entity that can no longer sustain the project and set the expectations of visitors accordingly.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#175

Post by remline »

jasonkester wrote: post #157
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

> creating an open source project is a contract with the community, and part of that contract is to assist members of this community I disagree. Creating an open source project is a gift to the community. Expecting further time and attention from somebody who gave you a gift, out of a sense of entitlement from having received the gift, is just being rude. Pay for my time and I'll help you with your issues. Demand my…

A community that hasn't established a semaphore for updating the code isn't a community. It is hard to build that with consensus instead of input from its creator.

The nature of what succeeds in opensource has everything to do with whether the creator puts community work in themselves, nominates someone, or just publishes read-only code.

Naturally, anyone is free to do whatever they like.. but most people seem to expect a result from their actions and publishing pure code is rarely going to have any result.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#176

Post by LeoNatan25 »

hasenj wrote: post #138
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

That's a strange view of open source that borders on communism. You don't have any duties or obligation towards any individual to assist them with their issues. The only obligations you have is to be honest about the project. For example, if you know that the project is not written with security in mind, you must announce the fact, so that people don't go using the project assuming you took care of all potential expl…

I don’t get where communism comes from. This is my view on personal responsibility and nothing more, and I naively expect people to have similar dedication to open source software as me. I understand this is not always the case, but I have described the perfect world as I see it in my comment above.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#177

Post by Chris2048 »

hasenj wrote: post #138
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

That's a strange view of open source that borders on communism. You don't have any duties or obligation towards any individual to assist them with their issues. The only obligations you have is to be honest about the project. For example, if you know that the project is not written with security in mind, you must announce the fact, so that people don't go using the project assuming you took care of all potential expl…

I'd like to second this:

> to be honest about the project

Sometimes you see the attitude "You get what you pay for", but putting code in the ecosystem without property explaining what it is is like littering.

In the same way I want to be able to walk in the park without constantly checking the ground for dog shit, I want to be able to use software without having to audit every part personally because the author didn't care for it, or communicate that fact.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#178

Post by Chris2048 »

sorokod wrote: post #146
hasenj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange view of open source that borders on communism. You don't have any duties or obligation towards any individual to assist them with their issues. The only obligations you have is to be honest about the project. For example, if you know that the project is not written with security in mind, you must announce the fact, so that people don't go using the project assuming you took care of all potential expl…

Don't know about duty but I think everyone has a right to expect help and a right to give help. It makes for a better world where these rights are regularly exercised.

A right to "expect" is a right to control your own though, unless you mean something else?

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#179

Post by icebraining »

CM30 wrote: post #166
quickthrower2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your employer benefits financially from the open source community. People who purchase software cheaply due to lower barrier to entry and more competition also benefit. As a coder I generally don't benefit so don't feel the need to give back. As a coder the tsunami of FOSS is a negative. My job is now to glue free modules together rather than design stuff. I'd be quite happy to pay for a compiler if I had to.

As a coder, it also means I don't have to code everything myself from scratch. Surely that's better than having to reinvent the wheel for every single project, especially where larger requirements like a full site CMS or framework are concerned. It also means new coders can join in without having to learn a new codebase for every role, that we're not paying a fortune for software licenses for every project and that w…

I'm sure you'll find it harder to get help for a project than you would with open source, spend far longer on every project than you would by merely using an existing framework or end up at the whims at a large corporation with no interest in letting you make your own modifications to the code.

If you're employed, why would you care? You're getting paid the same, the extra time is your employer's problem.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#180

Post by lamby »

ATsch wrote: post #169
ef4 wrote: post #13

Color me deeply skeptical of the suggestion to try to lock people out of community participation unless they pay. The real secret to not burning out is to scale up the set of maintainers in proportion to the users. You do that by lowering the barriers to involvement, not raising them. Most maintainers err on the side of controlling too much. Which makes them into bottlenecks. One or two good PRs is enough for me to g…

A gitlab feature I miss on Github is "protected branches" and being able to add contributors that can only push to unprotected branches. This way you can give people access to the main repo while still being able to check code before it goes into master

You can do this on Github with custom hooks etc. But yes.
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