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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

#151

Post by bxk1 »

wvh wrote: post #143
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.

This is pretty backwards in spirit. If you own the code, there is no reason to let any corporation use you like that. Just change the license to something anti-corporate if you started with too permissive one, it'll make it apply to all the new commits and force such corporations to pay for commercial license or stop using it. If you think they are willing to hire you to work on your project, they are even more willing to just pay for it.

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

#152

Post by MaxBarraclough »

didibus wrote: post #94
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…

I agree with you. If you chose a license you regret, its kind of just your fault. Why would you pick MIT license for example, if you didn't want to allow free commercial use? If you "make it free" and choose a very relaxed and unencumbered license to encourage adoption of your project and make it more popular. And then you do get popular, and start thinking people should now pay you, it seems like a bit of a lure. Th…

> If you chose a license you regret, its kind of just your fault

Agree. The only possible exception I can think of it if you make major contributions to an existing project, and of course use the licence they chose. Even then though, you've voluntarily agreed to those licence terms.

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

#153

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

dalke wrote: post #89
andi999 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not from legal, but too me there the problem would be: you use a product, but you dont 'buy' it, you 'donate' to the guy who made it, who is also 'super nice' and fixes some stuff about the product you need. This looks like a work/service/purchase agreement in disguise. Actually you dont want that to be possible.

I tried commercial FOSS development. An older version was available at no cost, the newest version cost money. Both were MIT licensed. If you were a company, and wanted to pay me, it was easy - send me a PO and you would get the source code to the newer, faster, more capable version. Nothing in that looks like a donation. I did it this way precisely because giving someone money for being "super nice" and distributing…

> "I came out of that workshop convinced that the primary reason companies like FOSS is because it's generally available at no cost. Not because it reduces long-term dependencies on external parties, not because it improves software development methodologies, and not because it's an essential liberty. But simply because of the cost."

This was, or at least should have been, known from the beginning; I've certainly been saying it since the '90s. When people were proclaiming FOSS to be "free as in beer and free as in speech", it was pretty clear that most people stopped listening after the first four words.

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

#154

Post by kodah »

mfer wrote: post #150
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…

The CNCF is pretty distinct from organizations like Debian or The Linux Foundation, and even Debian comes under the same sort of fire I'm about to lay down here. At this time, I think it's more skepticism than the understanding of what the problem is, but it boils down to corporate influence and what level of influence companies are allowed to have on projects.

Companies have several methods of influence:

- Financial contributions (and the projects nature of dependence)

- Developer interest and representation (eg: when a mega-corp installs a developer and combines that with things like funding)

- Board representation

A quick anecdotal example was the whole kerfuffle about Google using it's influence to insert kustomize into kubectl. [0]

Big organizations like Debian or the CNCF are attractively large targets for the above concerns.

[0] https://goteleport.com/blog/kubernetes-kustomize-kep-kerfuff...

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

#155

Post by marvinblum »

b0rsuk wrote: post #147
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?

Not yet, but I will add something along the lines.

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

#156

Post by throwaway936482 »

I have a very simple rule when it comes to doing work, be it on open source software or otherwise. If you want me to do something for you, (and you are not a close friend or relative) you will pay me appropriately for it. Want me to fix a bug for you? Pay me. Want me to merge your drive by pull request? Pay me. Want "to arrange a zoom call between me and your team to discuss how we can better use your project to add value to our business". Pay me. This idea that we should all be giving away our labour in the name of the great God's FLOSS and freedom is bollocks and one of the great con jobs of late stage capitalism.

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

#157

Post by zamalek »

ebiester wrote: post #142
zamalek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. It does bring the egos to the altruistic water, other arguments become much easier once they have experience with the value of OSS participation.

Furthermore, if a company has a culture of fixing things in open source, people are exposed to it. I can guarantee that many great potential personal time contributors have never been shown the door.

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

#158

Post by gonational »

throwaway1723 wrote: post #128
gonational wrote: post #47

If you’re part of some group (e.g., OSS contributors), and a mass media propaganda company, like Wired, which is run by a Vanderbilt, comes along and starts saying things about “this poor lil feller is being abused”, etc., you should be extremely worried; they work for somebody who’s coming after you. The first step in taking advantage of a group else is convincing that group that they’re victims.

Well my friend, the soil where you're trying to plant your sensible words is just totally barren. Here on HN you'll most probably face feedback only from those who work exactly for somebody who's coming after some group as you say, or zealous dupes who follow the former for free. And that feedback will never be positive!

Well I at least found one sensible person! Thank you for your reply.

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

#159

Post by erikerikson »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #70
erikerikson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um... 3) More than market. They put in the upfront and just liked businesses expect, there should be return.

I understand where you are coming from but I imagine few open source projects were created with the idea that they'd eventually make the big bucks on support contracts. I think the important point is that if money should be on the table. After that it's a business negotiation as to how much you are willing to pay. An interesting point is how you can implement a process to make this whole thing not consume non trivial…

My main point was to note how far apart the paradigms are.

I think you're right that few projects are started with aspirations to gaining support contacts. It does seem like it might help OSS be more sustainable though. If I could transition to independently working on some of my projects I'd be glad to make a fair number of compromises to do so.

2 is definitely the best option and can be surprisingly low friction, especially when Bob points out that otherwise there's an ongoing maintenance cost to the business to keep merging the upstream. Bob also has his personal time even though that shouldn't be on the table.

I've succeeded at 1 & 2 and failed at 3.

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

#160

Post by themodelplumber »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #139
themodelplumber wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always choose to just say those things, but if it's worth doing, the language and approach should make it more likely that the general community response will be better for you than saying nothing at all. To me that means being gentle and professional about wording and boundaries, (which is easier provided one is not absolutely shattered by their work experience). Examples: - We are currently backlogged and m…

Thanks for the info. I'm curious why there is a need for "professional" standards here? I feel that this is, by definition, not "professional" - that would require payment. Also, the imbalance of jerks behaving like jerks but everyone else has to act responsibly: in a work setting, sure - you don't get to choose your colleagues and you need to get along. But in this setting - why can't a maintainer just tell a jerk t…

I think that's an important ground rule, for sure: You don't _have_ to do any of that.

You can absolutely tell a jerk to do whatever comes to mind. If you want. I know I've done that before. (I would add that I regretted it because, in part, it complicated community discussions later)

In a lot of ways, I think that once you feel like you _have_ to do this or that, especially the professional stuff, your personal values (i.e. "but I don't wanna... This is supposed to be fun, that's what I want more of in my life") will start pushing back on you and you'll have an internal conflict on your hands.

However:

- I think it's a better idea to identify specific people with whom you can really have fun and let go. "General public" has never been a good return on heavily-subjective communication investments. But with a little calibration? Figuring out who else is going to make this fun and enjoyable? That's where the fun can really pick up. I have fond memories of traveling to different spots in the world, and meeting close FOSS project friends.

- There are tons of different degrees of professional standards. You can be humorous, you can give funny examples. Or you can just try to meet a reasonably objective "not a terrible communicator" standard.

- It's also about what you're _not_ perceived as: Rude, out for money, vindictive.

- Unfortunately the word "professional" really echoes our social values as a group. But that's just the lay of the land right now. Some of the best communication training Joe Average will ever receive is only available in a "professional" setting. The word and system suck in a lot of ways, but there's some good stuff in there if you can set aside the parts that annoy you.

Anyway, don't do this professional stuff, it will make your life more tedious and boring, etc. ;-) But those little points of leverage have helped me and that's where I'm coming from.

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