NPM Bans Terminal Ads

While I don't particularly like the idea of stuffing ads into npm logs, I don't have the same visceral negative reaction that many people have in these HN threads on this topic.

The overwhelming majority of the people complaining about this are well-paid tech workers writing code for well-funded companies that profit off of open source code without providing any reciprocal value to the open source projects in return. (Of course, that statement isn't true for 100% of companies, but I'd guess that less than 10% of companies using open source code donate back to the open source projects they use)

Something about this whole debate makes me a bit uneasy.

You have people working mostly for free, developing open-source, FREE code that provides incredible value to the for-profit companies that use the open source code to generate (sometimes) massive amounts of revenue.

Given the amount of value open source provides to for-profit companies (with the open source maintainers rarely getting any reciprocal value from the companies that profit off them), why is it so alarming to think that these maintainers might think of a clever idea like this to make a couple thousand bucks?

I'm not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn't).

But instead of attacking the guy for trying, I really wish the discussion were focussed on how the community of open-source consumers can contribute back to the open source ecosystem in a way that promotes the sustainability of the projects and community.

I know it's not a npm package, but would the donation message for kids in Uganda when you started vim be considered no bueno with these rules? I guess it's not an ad technically

I hadn't heard of Tidelift before until recently, and I don't see it mentioned here in the discussion. Is this the kind of thing you'd like to see?

https://tidelift.com/

Something has to be done to ensure that Open Source which plays a vital role in our business ecosystems remains sustainable. There are real business implications if some package we all depend on is under-funded and implodes (we can all name well-known examples of this from recent history.)

Some projects may be of critical importance to the future, but without a business model they may fizzle out and die. There's an argument that some culling must occur for the overall benefit of the collective, and I have no doubt there is a market-driven solution that we can live with. I don't know if Tidelift is it, but it is definitely an approach.

Charity? People make money off libraries.

It's such a ridiculous attitude to read on a news site hosted by a Venture Capitalist firm.

I get where you're coming from. But doing an annoying thing is always going to bring negative attention, and doing a novel annoying thing is going to get a lot of attention.

That attempting to make money by spamming diagnostic mechanisms was going to annoy people was inevitable.

> But instead of attacking the guy for trying, I really wish the discussion were

I wish they guy had spent energy on "how the community... can contribute back", instead trying to get a payday by stripmining trust.

I have a lower tolerance for this crap than others, but any code I catch doing things analogous to this gets banned from my environments and the author names noted. What else will they do to my machines if someone dangles a buck?