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I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

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Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#21

Post by dual_dingo »

ROARosen wrote: post #8
avolcano wrote: post #4

Rather sad the two proposals here are either "giant browser vendors should pay for it" or "independent web developers should pay for it." It's one thing for developers to pay for things that will develop their independent careers, but MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource; it's something developers constantly use at their jobs. Their employers , big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Of cou…

>MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource.. >Their employers, big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Your argument is counter intuitive, if it is truly a reference, then surely the developers themselves should pay for it. A company hires a developer with the expectation that they know their field (including the standards etc.). It is the developers' own concern if they (understandably) need a…

Many employers pay for reference materials like this. Universities and hospitals pay insane amounts of money to Elsevier, Springer Nature & Co for scientific journals, others to orgs like ANSI, ISO or DIN. All this stuff is so expensive that no one can be expected to pay it out of his own pocket.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#22

Post by dgb23 »

ROARosen wrote: post #8
avolcano wrote: post #4

Rather sad the two proposals here are either "giant browser vendors should pay for it" or "independent web developers should pay for it." It's one thing for developers to pay for things that will develop their independent careers, but MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource; it's something developers constantly use at their jobs. Their employers , big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Of cou…

>MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource.. >Their employers, big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Your argument is counter intuitive, if it is truly a reference, then surely the developers themselves should pay for it. A company hires a developer with the expectation that they know their field (including the standards etc.). It is the developers' own concern if they (understandably) need a…

Also bring your own chair and desk while we're at it. Oh and you definitely want to buy some toilet paper. Felix always keeps a stock on those but he never shares.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#23

Post by Timberwolf »

One thing which really resonated:

"But will you do the boring but necessary browser testing to figure out if what you’re describing is always true, or just most of the time? And will you repeat that testing once new versions have come out? Will you go through related pages..."

This. A thousand times this. The problem for me isn't the quantity of information any more, it's the quality. 10-15 years ago if you hit an even slightly esoteric problem you'd bottom out a search pretty quickly and be on your own. Now, you'll find dozens of blog articles, community answers, Reddit threads... and unless you're very lucky they will all be wrong, from subtle "works on my machine"-isms up to "just commit a god-rights CI token to your repository, it'll be fine" - the telltale sign often being nobody can tell you why this is the solution, merely that they bashed other random solutions to related problems together until a particular combination happened to work.

Authoritative sources like MDN are vital in this context, having something you can refer to that tells you how things actually work so you can verify whether the suggestion you or a co-worker found on a blog is a sensible solution or the kind of horrible mess you'd expect to find alongside world-writable S3 buckets and services that regularly time out due to being OOM killed.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#24

Post by bloat »

gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

Do you have these standards with all companies you pay for services? Seems like it might limit you somewhat...

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#26

Post by jfk13 »

ROARosen wrote: post #8
avolcano wrote: post #4

Rather sad the two proposals here are either "giant browser vendors should pay for it" or "independent web developers should pay for it." It's one thing for developers to pay for things that will develop their independent careers, but MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource; it's something developers constantly use at their jobs. Their employers , big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Of cou…

>MDN is a reference as much as it is a learning resource.. >Their employers, big or small, should be the ones paying for it. Your argument is counter intuitive, if it is truly a reference, then surely the developers themselves should pay for it. A company hires a developer with the expectation that they know their field (including the standards etc.). It is the developers' own concern if they (understandably) need a…

If the developer is being hired as a contractor, perhaps so; this could be negotiable as part of the contract.

If the developer is hired as an employee, then in general I'd say no. It's the employer's responsibility to provide the tools and resources the developer needs to perform the job effectively -- whether that's hardware, software, documentation, or working environment.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#27

Post by jjordan »

artificial wrote: post #7
gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

If it were to be obeyed, a slider like the Humble Bundle where the allocation to the charity, game provider, and HB are manipulatable would be fantastic.

Fantastic idea. I'd be much more likely to donate to Mozilla if I could specifically allocate it to dev tools or MDN.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#28

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

bloat wrote: post #24
gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

Do you have these standards with all companies you pay for services? Seems like it might limit you somewhat...

That's the problem. People like you don't care about standards so companies run amuck while you just accept it and degrade the ecosystem.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#29

Post by giancarlostoro »

bloat wrote: post #24
gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

Do you have these standards with all companies you pay for services? Seems like it might limit you somewhat...

Paying for services is different from donating to a large entity where you have no guarantee of where your money goes. Paying Microsoft for Office products for example I know I'm getting Office, aka what I'm paying for. In the case of tech based non-profits you have no idea where your money ends up. Unless you're a billionaire funding a new "part" of a non-profit or donating specifically to MDN, other people who can only donate say $50 might not be so lucky.

Edit: This also makes me wonder if there's non-profits that work on tech that aren't throwing their money away beyond the scope of the project. The moment non-profits are doing more than just paying engineers and other essential employees / volunteers I begin to worry a bit.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#30

Post by derivagral »

bloat wrote: post #24
gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

Do you have these standards with all companies you pay for services? Seems like it might limit you somewhat...

Buying a service is quite different from an actual donation.
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