Good.
Too many people compelled to work for free for the profit for others under a misguided philosophy. Open source is a great thing, and doing it for free is a fine thing if you want to do so. I do some free open source work. But I hate that people are pressured to do it, or get crap if they chose not to.
No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
471–480 of 966 posts
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that developers have been able to create a lot of value building on top of Android (Google), Flutter (Google), and .Net Core (Microsoft). I could probably dig up specifically an Amazon open source example, but I think you can convincingly argue that devs have created a ton of value building on top of the work on AWS.
First, creating value on top of the platform is not the same of extracting value from it. Second, the examples you give are not part of the core value of the companies. They are commoditizing their complements. [0] When Google releases a self-hosted version of their search and adwords programs, when Amazon makes AWS products compatible with OpenStack or when people can run iOS on any hardware and have access to the s…
Developers have made massive gains overall by commoditizing their complements. Linux OS is almost surely the largest single example of this.
How many fewer developer jobs would there be now if every OS installation cost what Solaris used to cost (or even what Win2K8 Server cost)?
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#473Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…
> Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? To nitpick: They are not stealing it, they're using it per the license terms. Don't like that? Well, choose a different license. That being said, I think there's an underlying point here. The "business-friendly" open source movement co-opted the idealistic free software movem…
>To nitpick: They are not stealing it, they're using it per the license terms. Don't like that? Well, choose a different license.
Agreed, and you're not even nitpicking, this is a significant point that devs need to understand before they choose to go open source.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#474Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…
>> Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down?
If this a a concern, then at least use GPLv3 and not BSD or MIT.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
This looks like a pretty popular project, so I assume he's decently talented. How does he not have a day job? Passion projects are great and all, but they're not known for paying the bills. Especially for solo maintainers, it's almost like playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips. Want to make a career out of it? You need talent, marketability, and be ready to compromise on your vision.
This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.
> This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects.
As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job.
> Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year.
Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay.
> We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.
We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses".
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the police would ransack my family home after a fire you could probably write the same article. Charred RPi's and lots of computer parts, enough wiring for a new house, lots of chemicals (cleaners, fertilizers, other chemical agents with regular gardening use cases), ultimate survival guide and related parts ("This guy was prepping for something!"). The naming of suspects is just adding insult to injury. If he's i…
Yikes, what you describe could easily be a decent portion of HN people’s homes. Don’t forget the anti-social, unpopular with the neighbors bit either. And of course the NYPost appears to thrive on drumming up scandal.
I second that. The ammount of microcontrollers, arduino/RPI boards, gsm modules, 400 Mhz radio transcievers and such would most likely "make me available" for "interviews".
Just a few years back when moved to a diff city for the job we had a visit to check if "we're ok" because our electricity bill was way above the average for the area. The silver lining: My wife was ok with me upgrading everything in the rack with new, low(er) power equipment.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
5. Use https://commonsclause.com or another commercial use restriction with an open source license. - Get bashed for not being a real open source by fellow nerds - Get licensing fees from larger companies
Just say it is commons clause, not ordinary open source. I've even become convinced (based on someone digging out enough references) that the term ipen source was being used before OSI, but for the rest of the HN, just say "commons clause" without saying "open source" and I guess most bashing disappears. There will always be that person annoyed that it isn't AGPL - or MIT for that matter - but for most if us we just…
>I've even become convinced (based on someone digging out enough references) that the term ipen source was being used before OSI
Basically at the same time. Christine Peterson seems to have coined it in 1998, the same year the OSI was founded. https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...
As far as I'm concerned, people can use whatever license they want. I just think it's borderline deceptive to claim something is an open source license even if it clearly doesn't meet the OSI (or FSF) definition.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who do you think a "regular dev" is? If it's software for personal use, then the GPL is just fine. The GPL is explicitly designed to protect personal use. If it's software for commercial use - I mean, that's exactly what the issue is here. Commercial users ought to need to pay for the software they use. Just because you offer a commercial license doesn't mean you need to charge a million bucks for it - if someone ema…
> Who do you think a "regular dev" is? Someone who's not employed by a fortune 500 company, probably the 99% of devs?
Why is it evil for a large company making a large profit to exploit your free work, but not a small company making a small profit? They're both benefitting from work you're doing without paying you. Personally I don't see an qualitative difference, just one of degree.
Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought free software was all about allowing people to create value from it?
Even though I believe it is more about the principles than the economics, where am I saying otherwise? The problem I am talking about is the asymmetry: Apple (Amazon, Google, MS, etc) can create value from the work from FOSS developers, but FOSS developers can not create value from the work of Apple (Amazon, Google, MS, etc).
I get a lot of value out of eg the Linux kernel. But I never contributed any value back to that project.
What makes me a better person than Apple etc?
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that developers have been able to create a lot of value building on top of Android (Google), Flutter (Google), and .Net Core (Microsoft). I could probably dig up specifically an Amazon open source example, but I think you can convincingly argue that devs have created a ton of value building on top of the work on AWS.
First, creating value on top of the platform is not the same of extracting value from it. Second, the examples you give are not part of the core value of the companies. They are commoditizing their complements. [0] When Google releases a self-hosted version of their search and adwords programs, when Amazon makes AWS products compatible with OpenStack or when people can run iOS on any hardware and have access to the s…
> First, creating value on top of the platform is not the same of extracting value from it.
Please explain. Especially what you mean by extracting value.