The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
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Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#2How much better the world would be if open source was fully funded by some of those tech billionaires whose fortunes were made by sitting on its shoulders.
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#3How much better the world would be if open source was fully funded by some of those tech billionaires whose fortunes were made by sitting on its shoulders.
And the news outlets that give them lip service.
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#4How much better the world would be if open source was fully funded by some of those tech billionaires whose fortunes were made by sitting on its shoulders.
I agree. I would love to see more things like Summer of Code or grants towards open-source software. Is there a sustainable way to fund open-source work apart from corporate benefactors who "own" the software?
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#5I have huge respect for open source developers
They have made significant contributions
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#6Open source has become yet another way for big tech companies to exploit laborers. If you are an independent developer working on an open source project without a copy-left license, you are a fool.
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#7Open source has become yet another way for big tech companies to exploit laborers. If you are an independent developer working on an open source project without a copy-left license, you are a fool.
Even with copyleft it's now a situation where AWS will do a cleanroom implementation of your API and neuter your market.
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#8I can’t read the article. I’m very interested, but Wired has become such a cesspool of popovers, pop ups, advertising, tracking, and general dark patterns that I just can’t go there... even with an ad blocker the experience is annoying and sucky.
What happened to them?
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#9Open source has become yet another way for big tech companies to exploit laborers. If you are an independent developer working on an open source project without a copy-left license, you are a fool.
The language is a bit too extreme in my view. You release OSS knowing that anyone can come and pick it up. Even if they make a dime off your sweat. Pick your license, fine, but there's no reason for the devs to get upset about it because there's no lack of information out there.
That being said, companies should kick down some love to the OSS projects they use. Especially big companies for which it's just a charitable write-off anyway.
Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
#10It isn't so much that companies are unfairly using others' work. It's that if you're going to use an open source tool in your business's codebase, you'll inevitably need support, upgrades, and bug-fixes, which translates into you putting pressure on the maintainers to do more work. By all means, use those people's previous work to put something amazing out into the world quickly. However, when you inevitably need help, be prepared to either: 1) Have people on staff ready and capable of contributing to the project in non-trivial ways; 2) be willing to either hire or pay the maintainer(s) market value for their time, just like with actual employees.