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The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

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Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#141

Post by rleigh »

names_are_hard wrote: post #134
rleigh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a full-time and well-paid job means that open source work is in my spare time, and that time is limited and precious. I don't actually want to be paid for that. Or have any written or unwritten major obligations to others. The amount I need would have to be a full-time job that pays better than my current full-time job, and that will be expensive. I've previously worked on large open-source projects like Debia…

I have the same issue as you, not in open source but in freelancing. Occasionally I'm approached by someone in my network who needs a few hours of software development. In the past I tried this, figuring that I may as well earn a few bucks on the side during my free time. But then I realized the enormous overhead that comes with taking payments in Israel. I'd need to open an account with the tax authorities and deal…

Exactly so. The first year, I thought I would do all the accounts myself... with zero formal accounting knowledge. After all, with just a few invoices and payments, how hard could it be? The answer was... it's an entire discipline I know nothing about, and while theoretically simple, you have zero practical experience or understanding of what the government requires of you, and there are lots of tax rules and accountancy terms you have to properly understand. So you waste days doing it, and worrying if you got anything wrong, because you are legally obligated to do it correctly and file everything on time. That's a lot of worry and time to save some money.

The second year, I just paid an accountant to do it for me. It was very expensive given that the accounts could be written in their entirety on a single sheet of paper. But I had the peace of mind that it was all done correctly by an expert, and they were responsible for ensuring it was all done by the book and filed properly. And they found a few mistakes I made in the previous year.

The accounts are essentially a fixed overhead; it doesn't get much more expensive if you do 10 or 100 times the business. But that makes starting out hard because it's a big annual fixed cost.

I do wish freelancing was easier, be it on closed or open projects. It does seem like governments have stifled entrepreneurship with overly burdensome taxation policies. I'm not opposed to paying income tax, but I do think it could be made sufficiently simple to pay for small freelance activities that it's not deterring it, and that would be beneficial for the economy overall. Many of these small jobs could be the catalyst for the formation of a new company if they take off.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#142

Post by ebiester »

zamalek wrote: post #31
_greim_ wrote: post #10

It 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 hel…

This was so easy to "sneak" into the process where I work: > The fastest way to get results is for me to contribute a fix. > Can't we copy their code and fix it locally? > Absolutely, but then we won't get any fixes from them in the future, unless we set up our own build infrastructure and have a team make sure that they merge across changes regularly. ... which starts sounding like lots of money. Your employer cares…

That doesn't solve the problem completely, though, as truly fixing it requires review time with the existing team. It's still unpaid labor, but now it involves code review and collaboration.

I think we still need people paying open source contributors.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#143

Post by wvh »

noncoml wrote: post #85

There are TONS of people out there writing code and opening the source. These people don’t do it for company sponsorship or money or to improve their CV. They do it purely for the pleasure of someone else using it. It’s just that only a very tiny fraction becomes popular. That’s when the problems start. Some may see their software being adopted by millions and may start feeling envious of those that make money using…

One option is of course to get a job in one of those companies that is a user of your project. You get to work on your and possibly other similar projects, and the company gets an employee they already in advance know is going to be skilled and relevant. If your code is very useful for some, it ought to be possible to harness its popularity to offset some of the potential negative side effects.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#144

Post by mrpotato »

YousefED wrote: post #84

What about automatically "crowdfunding" open source projects? Idea: would it be possible to design a system where we distribute a membership fee to open source projects used? Let's say NPM would cost $10 / month per end-user. This would be redistributed to all the packages you use. (Or, similarly, cumulative membership fees will be distributed according to # of projects that re-use your package). Have there been expe…

I think that would have a negative effect on individuals and open source developers. Have a dependency on npm, 10$/m. Have a dependency on Nuget, 10$/m.. I'm at 20$/m for my project which may or may not be a commercial product.

With this model, the fees could increase with each distribution platform your project depends on.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#145

Post by kodah »

These problems are complex.

If companies start putting together tiger teams to support open source then they never really get to everything they use, just what open source projects are most important to them.

When companies fork/adopt/insert themselves we have concerns over corporate influencing, sustainability, and independence.

When companies just throw willy nilly money at big hunking shells like the CNCF it gates projects into this very corporatized world that is quite distinct from open source culture, and again damages open source.

This just touches on the contribution model, this doesn't even touch on the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of license violations (if you're behind on updates who has time to go enforce licenses?) It mentions but doesn't touch on corporatization or undue influence.

I'm not sure I know what to do but it's a problem worth solving.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#146

Post by ThinkBeat »

>Studies suggest that about 9.5 >percent of all open source code >is abandoned,

This does not seem reasonable to me. I would think the number of abandoned open source projects to be closer to 70% or higher.

Even projects that have reached popularity.

So many times I have found references to libraries I wanted to use (C#/F# .Elixir).

In the end I find a link to sourceforge or similar to find it has been abandoned-ware for a long time.

Then we have the vast majority of open source code that never reached much of an audience and have been abandoned long ago.

I am sure if one ran a query over all public GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket, SourceForge, Codeproject the vast majority are abandoned.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#147

Post by b0rsuk »

marvinblum wrote: post #124

It's important to set boundaries early on. I'm working on this analytics library [0] and this game server management app [1] at the moment. I started the first one with my own website in mind and as it gained some popularity, decided to try to make a commercial product out of it. Instead of making everything open-source, I develop the platform closed-source and keep the core (this library) open-source, but set limits…

Have you tried a FAQ?

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#148

Post by wdb »

zamalek wrote: post #31
_greim_ wrote: post #10

It 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 hel…

This was so easy to "sneak" into the process where I work: > The fastest way to get results is for me to contribute a fix. > Can't we copy their code and fix it locally? > Absolutely, but then we won't get any fixes from them in the future, unless we set up our own build infrastructure and have a team make sure that they merge across changes regularly. ... which starts sounding like lots of money. Your employer cares…

One of the reasons why I haven't raised a PR yet to Cypress to add my WebKit support to the project.

Cypress not responding to emails to orchestrate the PR isn't helping either

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#149

Post by ndiddy »

avhon1 wrote: post #78
Palomides wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it sounds cynical, but before starting any code, I now ask myself "will a corporation profit from this labor?" and if so, I work on something else instead. I never have a shortage of ideas, so it's not a big deal.

I'm curious, do you mind giving an example of a software idea which is not potentially profitable?

Not him, but I'm currently working on an unauthorized port of an old Japanese computer game to the Sega Saturn. I imagine this has no commercial value.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#150

Post by mfer »

kodah wrote: post #145

These problems are complex. If companies start putting together tiger teams to support open source then they never really get to everything they use, just what open source projects are most important to them. When companies fork/adopt/insert themselves we have concerns over corporate influencing, sustainability, and independence. When companies just throw willy nilly money at big hunking shells like the CNCF it gates…

> When companies just throw willy nilly money at big hunking shells like the CNCF it gates projects into this very corporatized world that is quite distinct from open source culture, and again damages open source.

How does giving money to something like the CNCF gate projects? How is the world those are developed in differ culturally from open source culture?

I've developed for CNCF projects and random projects (some of which have become popular). I didn't notice a culture difference. I did notice an outside support difference.

I'm curious what you mean.

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