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No Free Features

landshark.io

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Re: No Free Features

#41

Post by alangibson »

monetus wrote: post #39
alangibson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely far from unethical to file a feature request. I'm suggesting that it is in fact an ethical problem to try to get something for nothing if you break it down. It's no different than walking into an artists shop and asking if you can just have a painting. It doesn't make you a terrible person, but I think it's a problematic norm. Now there's no requirement that the developer actually take the compensation (w…

Hmm, more like walking into a public installation and asking the artist if they considered adding X, since they are mostly losing time while adding to the commons.

If go with that example if there was a direct benefit to me in the addition. Feature requests are typically made based on what the requestor needs, not what they think everyone else might need.

Re: No Free Features

#42

Post by dahart »

alangibson wrote: post #38
jefftk wrote: post #34

> I look forward to a day when asking anyone to do unpaid labor is considered unethical by our industry. That goes for feature requests on open source projects ... While I'm sure there are some open source developers who see feature requests as a burden, lots of us just want to make useful software. If someone lets me know about a way that icdiff or anything else I maintain could be better, I'm happy to hear it. I'm…

> extremely far from unethical to file a feature request. I'm suggesting that it is in fact an ethical problem to try to get something for nothing if you break it down. It's no different than walking into an artists shop and asking if you can just have a painting. It doesn't make you a terrible person, but I think it's a problematic norm. Now there's no requirement that the developer actually take the compensation (w…

> it is in fact an ethical problem to try to get something for nothing if you break it down

The problem with this statement is that the software was offered by the author as something for nothing in the first place.

The OSS authors propose that you walk into their shop and walk out with (a copy of) the painting. The problem isn’t taking the painting, it’s coming back later and asking for a change of background color or a new frame, and expecting that to also be free.

It’s important to be clear about this and not twist it into something that it is not, otherwise these ideas undermine the purposes of open source. If you frame it as purely a commercial exchange, then you lose the advantages that the open source movement brings to the table.

Re: No Free Features

#43

Post by alangibson »

autarch wrote: post #40
alangibson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always understood that as a later Richard Stallman-esque take on it. Transparency would have just been assumed by the first people to do OSS because they'd be the ones loading the programs.

The term "free software" predates "open source" by many years. Stallman started work on free software (the movement and the code) many, many years before Eric S Raymond coined the term "open source".

It's about the sharing of code, whatever label you put on it. Terminology usually lags behind practice.

Re: No Free Features

#44

Post by monetus »

alangibson wrote: post #41
monetus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, more like walking into a public installation and asking the artist if they considered adding X, since they are mostly losing time while adding to the commons.

If go with that example if there was a direct benefit to me in the addition. Feature requests are typically made based on what the requestor needs, not what they think everyone else might need.

Yeah, emphasis on the feature requests being variable. Hopefully for the burden the more inconsiderate ones create, there is at least a commensurate level of unspoken gratitude. Thanks.

Re: No Free Features

#45

Post by autarch »

alangibson wrote: post #43
autarch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "free software" predates "open source" by many years. Stallman started work on free software (the movement and the code) many, many years before Eric S Raymond coined the term "open source".

It's about the sharing of code, whatever label you put on it. Terminology usually lags behind practice.

The terms "free software" and "open source" were created very deliberately to express different values. The conflict between those values has been the source of a lot of contention in the past. Nowadays there's less of that, probably because as the industry grows, the proportion of developers who are old enough to remember this stuff is going down.

Re: No Free Features

#46

Post by jefftk »

alangibson wrote: post #38
jefftk wrote: post #34

> I look forward to a day when asking anyone to do unpaid labor is considered unethical by our industry. That goes for feature requests on open source projects ... While I'm sure there are some open source developers who see feature requests as a burden, lots of us just want to make useful software. If someone lets me know about a way that icdiff or anything else I maintain could be better, I'm happy to hear it. I'm…

> extremely far from unethical to file a feature request. I'm suggesting that it is in fact an ethical problem to try to get something for nothing if you break it down. It's no different than walking into an artists shop and asking if you can just have a painting. It doesn't make you a terrible person, but I think it's a problematic norm. Now there's no requirement that the developer actually take the compensation (w…

I don't think this is a good analogy. We have a strong social expectation that products in stores cost money. When an artist opens a shop with many paintings, each with a price tag, everyone understands that the expected exchange is money for paintings.

On the other hand, with open source, we have a different set of social conventions. While the authors/maintainers are not obligated to handle bug reports or feature requests, we're generally happy to get good ones. They help us make our software better and more useful to more people. My projects are open source because I want them to be useful; I like making things. It's not something I do for money, and turning this into a consulting job wouldn't be fun. Other people can have different motivations, but I don't think I'm all that unusual in thinking about it this way.

I'm trying to understand how you think about this. Do you view it as ethical for someone to use open source software without payment? Isn't that also getting something for nothing? Is it ethical for someone to ask a question on one of my blog posts without offering to pay me for my answer?

Re: No Free Features

#47

Post by durnygbur »

The uninformed audience is unbelivably spoiled by free software, no other professional will even talk about any domain specific problem without charging at least one hour rate. The software professionals have hopelessly low self esteem or think they're the smartest, many are ruthlessly competitive.

Applying for jobs in our industry is such a miserable experience.

Re: No Free Features

#48

Post by ensignavenger »

dahart wrote: post #26

I’m fully in agreement with the goal here, that for-profit companies should pay for changes they request. And some companies do pay OSS projects for support. SQLite is one high profile example ( https://www.sqlite.org/consortium.html ), and there are others with varying degrees of success. The problem I see here is that there is no clear or easy path to making this goal a reality everywhere. What really happens most…

"there is no clear or easy path to making this goal a reality everywhere"

There is also no clear and easy universal path for proprietary software companies to be successful. Running a business is hard. I fully support efforts to make it easier to find financial success, especially with open source. Our expectations need to be reasonable, though. It seems that too many folks think that having a bunch of stars on Github should directly translate into rolling in the cash. But creating a product is only one part of building a successful business.

Again, better tools, better education, and more support are always great!

Re: No Free Features

#49

Post by michaelt »

nerdponx wrote: post #14
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what's a reasonable price to offer? $1? $10? $100? At what point does it not make sense for the end-user to sponsor a FOSS project in order to bring it up to feature parity with a proprietary equivalent if it costs more to pay for the feature than just buying the proprietary version? To use a real-world example, I used to use a program called Tag&Rename for managing my mp3 metadata for years.[0] It had a me…

I don't understand this post. It's worth $30 to you, so offer some amount above $0 and below $30. If the core developer won't do it for less than $30, find someone who will, or use a different tool, or live with the deficiency. This is literally how all other markets work, or are supposed to work. Imagine having a completely unrelated market in which you are totally free to negotiate, and then complaining that it's t…

I think what AdmiralAsshat means is: There's a gigantic gap between typical market prices for retail computer software and the hourly wage of computer programmers

When you buy a $70 AAA game, you pay what, 1/100,000 of the development cost? 1/1,000,000?

So when you try to directly fund the development of almost anything, it's gonna seem real expensive, because you're paying 100% of the cost when you're used to paying 0.001%.

Re: No Free Features

#50

Post by black_puppydog »

jefftk wrote: post #34

> I look forward to a day when asking anyone to do unpaid labor is considered unethical by our industry. That goes for feature requests on open source projects ... While I'm sure there are some open source developers who see feature requests as a burden, lots of us just want to make useful software. If someone lets me know about a way that icdiff or anything else I maintain could be better, I'm happy to hear it. I'm…

I don't think it's a hard and fast rule of course, there's always context.

If it's one hobbyist asking another, nicely and without expecting anything, fine.

If it is an engineer asking nicely because it would help them do their work better... sorry, but that's asking one dev to improve the balance sheet of the other's employer.

That's one of the distinctions I'd make.

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