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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

#71

Post by gsich »

avasthe wrote: post #66
CarelessExpert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense intended, but this isn't the way to have a meaningful conversation. First, it's stated as a blind truth with no reasoning. The only thing I can do is say "you're wrong", as there's no basis upon which to have a real discussion. Second, your repeated use of the phrase "degenerate activism" seems to have no other purpose than to elicit a strong emotional response. From my position it's borderline trolling. T…

PS: I am not the person you were replying to in GP. But I used his words. English is not my first language. 1) Look at the CEO salary. She was not even an engineer. The C-level executives don't harm themselves in this process, but there is no improvement because of her and she is still reaping a big salary. This also means many people are disappointed and less donations. 2) degenerate activism: all the SJW / diversit…

VPN is just a Mullvad rebrand. They don't do much themselves here from a technical standpoint. Could still waste millions, who knows.

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

#72

Post by CarelessExpert »

dmurray wrote: post #57
CarelessExpert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

> It's one of the reasons why, when I donate to a charity, I never specify how I want those funds to be used; I recognize that the charity is in a far better position to make that decision than I am. But by choosing a charity, you make that decision. If you donate to MSF you expect your money to be used differently than if you donated to Mozilla or the ASPCA or the Ayn Rand foundation - and you'd probably be a bit un…

> So it's reasonable for someone to want a charity that broadly shares his values. Wanting to fund a nonprofit that produces web documentation, but not longshot startups, is a reasonable value to have.

I absolutely agree.

However, I think it's one thing to say "I will donate to Goodwill because I think their mission is important and they have a good reputation", and another to say "and when I donate you must used my money to pay for X and not Y". The former is a statement of values and trust in the organization. The latter is very nearly the opposite!

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

#73

Post by prepend »

dragontamer wrote: post #50
avasthe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It need not take such high salaried non-technical CEO, degenerate activism or doomed web startups to run something like Mozilla.

But it does take a high salaried non-technical CEO to market the idea to more people, which brings in more funding for the project. That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work. A lot of charities become marketing firms to bring in more money. Because that's how you effectively grow a…

Marketing and technology aren’t exclusive.

Look at the heads of Linux Foundation and Apache. They seem to do a great job marketing but also have a deep background in open source software.

I’ve worked for companies with CEOs from engineering and CEOs from marketing, I’ll try really hard to never work at a marketing company again.

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

#74

Post by willcipriano »

dragontamer wrote: post #50
avasthe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It need not take such high salaried non-technical CEO, degenerate activism or doomed web startups to run something like Mozilla.

But it does take a high salaried non-technical CEO to market the idea to more people, which brings in more funding for the project. That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work. A lot of charities become marketing firms to bring in more money. Because that's how you effectively grow a…

> That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work.

Sounds like they don't need my donation, the people who do this non-technical work are bringing in revenue by the wheelbarrow load. If they weren't the price they charge for their skills would not be justifiable.

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

#75

Post by MildlySerious »

jameslk wrote: post #17

Google seems to be paying technical writers to build the free (growing) alternative to MDN, https://web.dev . It's not a generalized web resource yet like MDN, but just wait. Of course, you'll have to accept that the documentation here will likely have a Chrome-centric view of web development, further establishing the Chrome-only version of the web. The loss of MDN will just result in Firefox becoming less relevant.…

I already don't trust Google with the grip they have on the web. It doesn't seem like a good idea to let them be the ones to foster the next generation of webdevs, and provide the platform for learning and staying on top of things. There is no reason to trust that they will keep it as neutral ground and pay for it without ulterior motive, imo.

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

#76

Post by nwsm »

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…

>degenerate activism

What's this in reference to, specifically?

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

#77

Post by billyhoffman »

speedgoose wrote: post #42
jameslk wrote: post #17

Google seems to be paying technical writers to build the free (growing) alternative to MDN, https://web.dev . It's not a generalized web resource yet like MDN, but just wait. Of course, you'll have to accept that the documentation here will likely have a Chrome-centric view of web development, further establishing the Chrome-only version of the web. The loss of MDN will just result in Firefox becoming less relevant.…

It looks pretty closed source.

Look in the footer. It’s a Creative Commons Attribution license for all web.dev content and Apache 2 for all the code samples. I’m really not sure what else you would ask for here

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #35
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…

> 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. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by CarelessExpert »

outime wrote: post #60
th0ma5 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a kind of far right virtue signalling as far as I can tell. In my opinion, it is wild projection, but it seems to try to label any progressive ideal as regression.

I'm not OP but I think you're reading between the lines. I feel OP though - I'd donate to a cause if my money doesn't go towards political alignments of any kind. I'm tired of NGOs or similar entities taking stances over stuff I didn't ask for. I just want them to do one thing, who gave you permission to use my donation to do a completely different thing, even if well intentioned?

> I'd donate to a cause if my money doesn't go towards political alignments of any kind.

That's... well, naive, I guess?

Every single NGO picks an issue, and that issue has a political angle to it. Not only do I think it's unreasonable to expect an NGO to be apolitical, I think it's flat out impossible.

I would ask you: Do you really want NGOs to be apolitical? Or do you want them to share your political alignment, and in that way be non-controversial?

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

#80

Post by jermier »

benmller313 wrote: post #33
jermier wrote: post #2

> Cult of the free This is poorly chosen language as it doesn't distinguish between freedom versus monetization. I think most users of free software know it's 'free as in freedom' and they are not being duped. I think most users of free services are duped into thinking it is actually free and are unaware their data is being sold and monetized and are paying for the service with their data. Lately more people are waki…

I don't think the value in MDN is developers data so much as it's about controlling the defacto standards of Web Development.

I was referring to the phrase 'cult of the free' which is poorly chosen language as it doesn't distinguish between freedom versus monetization.
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