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NPM Bans Terminal Ads
291–300 of 377 posts
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, thank you. I'm not heavy on the "hell i'll just import anything" kinda thing so I often feel immune to some of the random "omg this package" panic. But... Babel... that's some serious stuff once it hits there.
The serious stuff is that this library that's used in over 3 million projects according to Github, let alone projects that Github doesn't count, is only making the author a measly $200 on Patreon.
I think that's an interesting but any idea or solutions really seem ... worse to me. Including hitting up everyone's console all the time.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well then that's easily solved. People who don't want ads, don't use the software.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
The history of JS style standards is a lesson in ignoring prior work: - In the beginning was the jQuery style guidelines, which started for jQuery but were eventually for general JS https://contribute.jquery.org/style-guide/js/ - Then there was idiomatic.js, from a massive bunch of JS community leaders https://github.com/rwaldron/idiomatic.js/ , evolving some of the principles of jQuery style guidelines. - Then AirBn…
> see 'tape' and how it's 'the only test framework which supports TAP' because the tape author invented TAP What? The tape package on npm? As far as I know, that was made by substack (James Halliday), whereas TAP dates back to 1987 with Perl ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Anything_Protocol says “the Test::Harness module was written by Tim Bunce and Andreas König”).
I saw TAP presented for the first time along with tape and evidently got confused. You're right. I stand corrected.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need funding. Most open-source software is redundant, low quality, or extremely niche. It's ok if some open source software is simply never written. I think it's fair for developers to charge (or otherwise monetize, including ads) for their software, even if they open-source it, but they don't "need" funding any more than any other arbitrary piece of software that someone somewhere thinks should exist. > s…
They do need funding or they wouldn't put ads in node modules. They wouldn't sell popular packages to bad people to repurpose as malware. These are telltale signs that open source developers are not being looked after. They are not making ends meet. These are people with popular open source and the reward for open source is not being distributed effectively for popular projects so it's surely much worse for the botto…
> They do need funding or they wouldn't put ads in node modules
That's a tautology. They decided to monetize their open-source work through ads. I don't disagree with this approach, if users don't like the ads then don't use the software. That doesn't mean companies need to arbitrarily fund that project.
> Before they can write good software they're going to practice writing all kinds of dumb shit and good stuff building the experience and knowledge required to invent a kubernetes.
So what? They can write lots of practice software and not open-source it. Why should anyone be paying for them to do so?
> The problem with it coming to a grinding halt is we're obviously not finished yet. In ten years React should be in the trash like literally everything that preceded it is. We might still be using Flash if we were finished. Its syntax sure looks like it lent TypeScript some ideas.
If it should be so then it will be so. People will write software if there is a need for it. There is no inherent reason why React "should" be in the trash in 10 years, it will be in the trash only if new problems need to be solved and if they do someone will attempt to solve them.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work on Enterprise projects and we rarely (never) contribute back financially, because we cannot for practical reasons. It is simply not possible for us to add a "donation" cost to our projects. That will not get past accounting. A license, on the other hand, we would have no issues purchasing that. We purchase (expensive) licenses to proprietary software all the time. We could and would do the same for the open so…
Enterprise companies pay for "support" all the time. It's usually utterly pointless and very expensive annual fee that lets you enter a support ticket. Enterprise companies also don't like to run "unsupported" software. So there is definitely an opportunity here.
It's just hard to "scale" across lots of individual open source maintainers/contributors who as individuals are unlikely to be able to keep SLA minimums, support query timelines (always answer in 24 hours), other such things that help corporate accountants and lawyers sleep at night. It also doesn't quite scale if those corporate accountants and lawyers have to sign and pay for O(N*M) such support contracts for the direct and indirect open source dependencies of the company's software.
If there is an opportunity here, it's most likely in collective effort. An open source guild/union could provide a support pool/cohort of contributors to cover 24/7/365 or what have you support agreements, an insurance pool for SLA guarantees broken/fees, broker and collectively bargain with enterprises for support contracts that cover costs and wages for entire direct and indirect dependency chains, rather than just obvious direct dependencies or splashy well branded dependencies.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
OSS is sustainable. I don’t like how tidelift seems to present a partial story. If there some OSS crisis that I’m not aware of? Separately, just because something is an approach doesn’t mean it’s worth talking about.
Yes, there is a crisis. Critical infrastructure is maintained by single developers who get no money for their effort, while the companies using their work make billions.
That doesn’t seem like a crisis to me. Are some of these critical infrastructure devs threatening to quit work unless they are paid. I’m not a big contributor, but I’m pretty familiar with a French projects and the contributions are made specifically because of the license. OSS licenses are designed to let companies make “billions,” that’s a feature not a bug.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
OSS is sustainable. I don’t like how tidelift seems to present a partial story. If there some OSS crisis that I’m not aware of? Separately, just because something is an approach doesn’t mean it’s worth talking about.
Yes, there is a crisis. Critical infrastructure is maintained by single developers who get no money for their effort, while the companies using their work make billions.
There are also an increasing number of cases in the last few years of such maintainers moving on, and that infrastructure failing soon after that. The event-stream npm debacle, the left-pad npm debacle, the electron-native-notify npm debacle, the rest-client ruby gem debacle, the strong_password ruby gem debacle...
Single points of failures in underpaid open source maintainers are an amazing security risk to critical infrastructure. "Patching" the labor market of open source to better account for the realities of downstream profits relative to upstream labor efforts, might be at least one way to make the entire ecosystem better for everyone.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#299While 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.…
Open source is good. I've been saying for years that OSS devs should be paid and the cheapskates who use OSS for commerce should put their hands int heir pocket instead of forcing devs into the humiliating position of begging.
Ads are cancer though. The idea that the only reliable way to fund anything is turn it into a billboard needs to die.
Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thing is, while the "Free" in "Free Software" is ambiguous, the "F" is FOSS has always meant "free as in freedom". It's not a new interpretation by feross (and I think the downvoters are reacting negatively to that suggestion).
Yeah, I think my wording in the original post is to blame here. What I was trying to get across was that Feross has previously been vocal about his belief that his software was both FOSS and monetarily free. Now, he seems to be exploring the possibility that his code can still be FOSS, and monetarily free in concept, but perhaps walks the path Facebook, Google, et. al have that has lead to the much maligned cliche' "…
Well, the GNU project itself, and its founder (RMS), who is by any standard a strict follower of that philosophy, thinks that Free Software should be sold - and for as much as one can charge [1]. I'd say that the two are not really on the same path; if anything, they work against each other.