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NPM Bans Terminal Ads

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Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#231

Post by nickjj »

cj wrote: post #11

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.…

> 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.

But these open source contributions are being done by people with free will. They are not forced to release the code they write to the internet for free. They choose to do it because that's what they want to do.

Instead of associating writing code with money, try to relate it to a hobby. I have 40 something repos on GitHub and posted 200+ blog posts on my site for free but I don't expect payment. I do it because it's fun and it helps me learn.

I'm not sure where I stand with banning terminal ads.

On one hand if someone wants to try and make money by spamming people with ads, I say let them do it because if it gets really obnoxious then ad blocking tools will remove them. On the other hand, if it becomes expected to have ads on every tool, I could get see that getting out of hand. And at the same time I don't think there's a clear enough line to constitute what an ad is. If I link back to my site without asking for anything (as a signature of some sort), is that an ad?

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#233

Post by ken »

wvenable wrote: post #136
CJefferson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not switch that around (honest question)? If you are a software developer and you want software without adverts, pay for it. If you want software for free, you accept whatever the author of that software chooses to do to pay their bills.

Software that has ads is no longer free (gratis). You're just paying for it with annoyance and intrusion instead of money. And I think the collective opinion here is that we'd rather go without that software than to pay for it that way. In other words, we won't accept those terms and we won't use that software.

How did you arrive at that "collective opinion"? Google and Facebook still seem to be doing OK. Even limited to developers, StackOverflow is being used as much as ever.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#234

Post by kyledrake »

jasode wrote: post #50
cj wrote: post #11

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.…

>, why is it so alarming to think that these maintainers might think of a clever idea like this to make a couple thousand bucks? [...] 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 You're (possibly unintentionally) distorting/diverting the issue. Nobody is criticizing open source ma…

> You're (possibly unintentionally) distorting/diverting the issue. Nobody is criticizing open source maintainers for trying to get funding in an abstract sense.

Yes they're very good at providing speech and debate lip service about wanting to sustain OSS devs, but then when we actually want to do anything except hold out a tip jar they treat OSS devs like trash. The person that wanted to throw people in prison didn't seem particularly interested in our ability to get funding https://twitter.com/kyledrake/status/1166801737534984192

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#235

Post by frenchyatwork »

vfc1 wrote: post #69

I don't like terminal ads either, but I wouldn't mind them if they meant that the creators of popular libraries can keep maintaining their work without giving up their personal lives. Monetization is still a huge taboo in the open-source community and is badly viewed by many of it's biggest beneficiaries, developers who make their entire living out of skills that consist of knowing how to use these open source and fr…

> Monetization is still a huge taboo in the open-source community

That's not true. Qt has managed to monetize fine, and it's no pariah. This is 100% about the way in which people are hijacking tools to promote monetization of their code.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#236

Post by wvenable »

craigsmansion wrote: post #225
wvenable wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that Free Software is not concerned with capitalism but that doesn't address the question. Free Software can still be incompatible with capitalism even if it doesn't address it directly. If you release your software with a Free Software license do you really "own" it in a capitalistic sense? I'm thinking no. As a consequence it's actually hard to make money with Free Software. But that difficulty and lac…

Depends on one's definition of "capitalism" when applied to software I think. Whereas I would not "own" the software, I would own the hours I'm willing to write software. As things are I can't freely sell those hours because of a monopoly on many programs, that is, no user can hire me to improve their proprietary software. I can only sell my hours to users of Free Software. Now we have software "ownership" against th…

You make a very good point.

At issue here is that the developer is not selling their time. They're putting in that time for free. And then they want to recover that income after the fact. This is traditionally how any kind of product is developed. You put in time and resources into a product and you sell that product to recoup that cost and hopefully make a profit as well.

If you don't own/control the software, due to it being Free Software, then that whole avenue of income generation is not available or very difficult. Time and again, we see individuals and companies trying to find a way to sell Free Software like traditional software.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#237

Post by ken »

reaperducer wrote: post #119
liability wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you admit you don't really know much about the matter, but consider your opinion qualified by virtue of somebody asking you for your opinion? You can ask me what I think about inflation but that wouldn't make me an economist, would it?

That seems an unnecessarily hostile response. So you admit you don't really know much about the matter, but consider your opinion qualified by virtue of somebody asking you for your opinion? Yes, I admit that I don't know much about OSS. But I did not state that I have a qualified opinion. In fact, I answered "Don't know/no opinion" on those questions. The reason I posted my reply was to indicate that there must be s…

Would there be any significance to the question if the people asking about it weren't themselves economists?

It's a strange question, to ask if OSS will still be around that far in the future. It (albeit without the name) has been around longer than proprietary software. Did your survey ask if proprietary software would still be around in 20 years? I think it should have.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#238

Post by wvenable »

ken wrote: post #233
wvenable wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software that has ads is no longer free (gratis). You're just paying for it with annoyance and intrusion instead of money. And I think the collective opinion here is that we'd rather go without that software than to pay for it that way. In other words, we won't accept those terms and we won't use that software.

How did you arrive at that "collective opinion"? Google and Facebook still seem to be doing OK. Even limited to developers, StackOverflow is being used as much as ever.

I meant in this particular case. People accept that consumer products like Google and Facebook are funded by advertising.

We are talking about Free Software, libraries, and advertisements in the console. I think the collective opinion is that developers would rather not use that package than be subjected to ads in their console.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#239

Post by _frkl »

rohansingh wrote: post #184
NobodyNada wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider a world where the norm is not MIT/BSD but GPL dual licensed with MIT for a fee Note that the MIT license allows redistribution: anyone who bought a single MIT license could legally distribute MIT-licensed copies without continuing to pay the original author for additional licenses.

I'm not sure that would actually be that big of an issue. Let's say you have some sort of model where a monthly subscription gives you an MIT license for all commits made that month. Who is actually going to go to the trouble of mirroring every commit or release from upstream to their own public repository? If somebody actually did that gratuitously, the copyright owner could just decline to renew their subscription…

I agree with the parent post, and the sibling. MIT doesn't make much sense in your scenario. Dual-licensing is usually a copy left license, and some sort of private/commercial license agreement to protect against the case the parent comment mentions.

The people who want to support you are not the problem. They'd probably donate too if they would buy a license in this thought experiment. The people who don't want to support you are. One of them could buy a license, relicense as MIT. And either they'd get updates with their paid license, in which case they'd just release those as MIT too, or wait for your next stable version and buy again and so on. Or they would just fork the project, and start their own business around it, without having had any more cost than a single license....

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#240

Post by Macha »

rwallace wrote: post #170
kortilla wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t make it past accounting.

What if it's a support contract that entitles you to a response to support requests on the basis of 'in less than twenty-four hours' as opposed to the usual 'I might respond on a best effort basis if I have time, but no promises'? Would that make it past accounting?

Yes, but:

1. Do open source maintainers actually want to commit to that?

2. What if the response is "Yes, we don't support that and don't plan to?" and the company feels this doesn't qualify as enough support and causes a headache.

3. If the purchaser knows what they're getting into, what's to say their successor also does?

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