321–330 of 375 posts
There aren't a lot of totally free, open-source, end user products. In the 90s FOSS devs though one day GiMP would surpass Photoshop, we'd see Linux on at least 8% ~ 10% of laptops at coffee shops, Inkscape would be better than Illustrator, etc. Today, a lot of FOSS is corporate sponsored. But it's not end-product. It's all middleware. Hophop/Hack, Lightbend libraries like Slick, React, etc. It's all to help you buil…
Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…
Isn't this kind of the problem the GPL is supposed to solve?
Sure, a company can build off an open source project to increase their bottom line, but they'll have to contribute back any changes they make. Which means their work is now benefitting other developers as well.
I feel like the GPL has somewhat fallen out of favor in recent years. To an extent I understand why, and yet...
Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…
> "the benefit of open source contributions on github... go towards increasing the bottom line of for-profit companies, not to developers"
Don't those for-profit companies employ people -- including developers?
>"[developers] should... spend their time doing... skill development... to succeed in... current role or a role they'd like... for money"
Are those roles you mention positions in for-profit companies? In "for money", whose money?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that's not even remotely true. Have you ever worked with a PR firm or talked to folks that work at one. Have you ever worked at a large company, or talked to people who manage social media at one? They are very far from this level of coordination. Most can't even manage to deploy a properly measured ad campaign, much less some kind of op sec driven Reddit content campaign.
It's possible 99% of PR/marketing firms don't have armies of Reddit/Twitter bot accounts, while at the same time the 1% that do make up a big power base on Reddit. There are plenty of companies doing things like SEO and suchlike that build up networks of websites/content farms, and bots to comment on blogs and suchlike. Not much of a jump from bots commenting links on blogs to bots commenting more subtle messages on…
There are also plenty of companies that are "doing things like SEO" but none of them run networks of interconnected websites that they all control or content farms because those tactics stopped fooling Google over a decade ago.
Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…
Isn't there a disconnect here? > "the benefit of open source contributions on github... go towards increasing the bottom line of for-profit companies, not to developers" Don't those for-profit companies employ people -- including developers? >"[developers] should... spend their time doing... skill development... to succeed in... current role or a role they'd like... for money" Are those roles you mention positions in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Charging money to fix something because of who they are seems unethical to me... Maybe it's just capitalism, which is usually antithetical to open source free software... If they want it fixed, let them add resources to the project like submit a pull request, donations or charge people support fees for urgent bugs, which many OSS projects do...
Charging money to fix something because of who they are seems unethical to me First of all, I believe that everything people do is according to some ethic, or set of criteria that motivates them, so there's no such thing as "unethical." Secondly, it's not charging money because of who they are, it's charging them because of what they have, which is money, which is a desire to have a bug fixed, and which is not expert…
OK, that's one way to look at it. In that case I mean bad ethics...
> Secondly, it's not charging money because of who they are, it's charging them because of what they have, which is money, which is a desire to have a bug fixed, and which is not expertise in doing so.
That sounds reasonable and is similar to taxing the rich I suppose, but to me it's discrimination on WHO you are.
> Thirdly, charging money like this is not antithetical to free software, and as a matter of fact is promoted by FSF. Here they are dispensing with your argument in the first sentence:
That's their opinion, my opinion is that charging money for open source software (usage, support) usually results in bad incentives for the people controlling the software (more bugs = more money), which is bad for the consumers of the software.
Allow people to contribute money/resources to the project if they want/need, is the best for everyone.
> These companies don't pay taxes anyway.
True, but a whole other issue.
I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…
I'm in a similar situation. Started a website for fun, maybe I'll sell books. Then my website got popular and people want more content faster. I have a day job, so I can't work full time unless I'm paid similar. I'm unsure what to do next. My free website can be monatized with the goal of quitting my job. Or users can get my hobby for free. It seems no one is happy except me. The only benefit, my popularity will like…
Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…
Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…
It's just not financially beneficial to developers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the one you're responding to and I'm not making six figures, you can't assume everyone lives in USA making amazing salaries and bonuses.
Forget I mentioned money, then. That doesn't change anything else I wrote. I guarantee I earned less money in the past year than anyone reading this (I don't work in tech any more), and it didn't stop me from volunteering my skills. Being rich is not a requirement for contributing.