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Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

blog.filippo.io

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Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#181

Post by orangecat »

didibus wrote: post #119
lumost wrote: post #42

Once upon a time, the best way to get a software job was to demonstrate your ability to build useful open source projects. 10 years ago the Principal Engineers I would work with had super sized open source portfolio's which leant them both credibility and experience building products people liked. Junior devs would search (sometimes in vain) for issues where they could contribute a few PRs Now the best way to get a j…

This might sound weird, but I find every time someone publishes or contributes open source, they are stealing value from me, because it is one less thing that a company will need me to implement, build and maintain for them, instead they'll now expect me to simply use the existing free of charge open source one. Not only does it feel like I'm stolen value, open source work tends to be the most interesting, and as mor…

This is just the broken window fallacy. Hobbyists giving away schematics for unbreakable windows are not stealing from your window repair business.

Yes, having open source competition means you'll have to either build a superior product that customers are willing to pay for, or find another niche. That's a good thing.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#182

Post by [deleted] »

mfer wrote: post #84
jbk wrote: post #74

> Now is the perfect time for Open Source maintainers to become legible to the big companies that depend on them—and that want to get more out of them—and send them five-to-six figure invoices. Well, this is exactly what I've been doing around VideoLAN (VLC, x264) and FFmpeg for the last few years. In order to do that, I've created 2 official companies Videolabs and FFlabs (besides the non-profit orgs) and I've gone…

> So, large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech. Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low. Sometimes they are a public company with fiscal responsibilities. A startup will only have so much runway and is likely trying to reduce expenses. Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free?

[deleted]

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#183

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #107
mfer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech. Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low. Sometimes they are a public company with fiscal responsibilities. A startup will only have so much runway and is likely trying to reduce expenses. Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free?

It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? A while back I bought a cheap robot vacuum. Their scheduling feature didn't meet my needs, so I reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced a cron-friendly CLI tool and a library so people could do other things with it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks Honestly, this was a mistak…

[deleted]

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#184

Post by laurent92 »

the_af wrote: post #159
candiddevmike wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, I think the golden age of completely FOSS apps (no open core) is ending/has ended as users expect more features and apps struggle to meet demands without effective monetization. I think open source will always have a place for libraries and tools, but end user applications will either become open core or no longer open source.

> I think open source will always have a place for libraries and tools, but end user applications will either become open core or no longer open source. Very sad if this ever comes to pass. It's a world in which I would never have learned about computers or decided to work with them. I think it makes more sense to charge big companies but keep software free and libre for individuals. (I don't think this future will h…

Shouldn’t Open Source be considered the 8th wonder of the world?

- OSS allowed an entire industry to flourish,

- It has had so many contributions that it is easily the category which is the biggest benevolence of the world, and possibly the biggest achievement of humanity,

- It allowed the entire world to go securely on the internet (launch a Debian and it’s secure and up to very high professional standards without effort, try doing that in the legal field),

- Its results are permanent. In 2100, documents written in Office 365 or Adobe will be lost, but they’ll be able to recompile LibreOffice, Chrome (at least Webkit) or Wordpress. Benefits of OSS accrue over time, as opposed to closed-source software which is sold under closed license and DRM.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#185

Post by F6F6FA »

brabel wrote: post #131
tomxor wrote: post #2

Unpopular opinion: Maybe there is nothing wrong with the "status quo", maybe we don't need yet another attempt to finance small FOSS projects where it's hard to explain how money will actually solve any of these issues. Maybe people just need to be more considerate of what they depend upon. And in the case that a popular yet well maintained project has a CVE on day, maybe we need to accept that popularity does not ma…

Quite honestly, I think that if companies paid open source maintainers to get the features they wanted, the log4j problem would NOT have been averted at all, it would likely have happened earlier... notice that the source of the issue (support for JNDI lookups right into any log messages) was introduced because of someone asking for that feature (and getting it for free!)... if a company had paid for it, it would've…

Perhaps OSS has become too sophisticated and professional-standard for its own good, while still being created and maintained by amateurs.

I have an analytics package which is apparently being evaluated by the military of a large country. Even if secure code, now the maintainers themselves are under attack.

For I am definitely a weaker link than a soldier or agent or gov department. Did not expect such usage when creating this project. If said government had seen how this was developed and tested, they would probably physically destroy the machines it is installed on.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#186

Post by Terry_Roll »

jbk wrote: post #74

> Now is the perfect time for Open Source maintainers to become legible to the big companies that depend on them—and that want to get more out of them—and send them five-to-six figure invoices. Well, this is exactly what I've been doing around VideoLAN (VLC, x264) and FFmpeg for the last few years. In order to do that, I've created 2 official companies Videolabs and FFlabs (besides the non-profit orgs) and I've gone…

It aint going to happen, have you read some of the contracts linked to opensource, it will be a minority who make money from it. For example, I could use opensource internally, add features to it but I dont have to submit those changes back to the main source for others to use. Not only that who is going to police it? Its not like there is some magic open source police who will police my computer is there?!? So sure whilst the statement is true that Open Source runs most of the internet, the companies using it like Facebook or Google are not under any legal obligation to submit any changes back to the public domain for the greater good under some of those contracts. Even MS has some API's which come very close to mirroring Open Source functionality which makes me question MS is this legal!

Open Source is just naïve charity, much like the UK Govt exploited the charity of the public by helping along a Weekly 8pm clap for NHS workers on a Thursday night during Covid Lockdowns. A weekly clap aint going to pay the bills and the rich will say anything to get out of handing over money. Hard lesson but its the truth, they would spend on PR Image control than pay bills IMO.

So sorry, Open Source is something people can practice on and not get paid for except in a consulting role at best.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#187

Post by phkahler »

mfer wrote: post #154
wpietri wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? A while back I bought a cheap robot vacuum. Their scheduling feature didn't meet my needs, so I reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced a cron-friendly CLI tool and a library so people could do other things with it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks Honestly, this was a mistak…

A few thoughts... I've long known people who modified cars. Sometimes they did it as a business. Sometimes they helped friends out. Sometimes the work was on nights and weekends. The car manufacturer never had a responsibility to support them. They never had to support people in forums. Anything they did was their choice. Sometimes as a business and sometimes volunteering. You didn't have to open source that work. On…

>> You didn't have to open source that work. Once it was out there, you didn't need to provide support.

That's true. The problems brought up in the article all stem from companies relying on open source and then getting into trouble when there are problems with it. They would pay if they had to.

The core problem is that everyone wants something for nothing. Sure companies appreciate that they can get billions of dollars worth of infrastructure software for free. Individuals appreciate that they can get useful software for free (though many don't care if it's FLOSS or illegally obtains commercial). People will take what they can, and pay for what they must. Open source is sometimes better than commercial, and even if the developers were paid industry rates it would be much cheaper because companies charge rent for software - not for development.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#188

Post by jokethrowaway »

DarylZero wrote: post #168
imachine1980_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like dual licensees?qt?

I mean just ordinary employees really wouldn't get paid at all if not for labor regulations. Just look into the amount of simple "wage theft" (employers forcing employees to work off the clock, etc.) that exists in the USA. Of course, this country fought a war over the issue of free labor from black slaves.

What you say is nonsense. Companies will try to pay as little as possible to make more profit. They won't pay you more than you can make them. Employees will try to get paid as much as possible. They won't work for something they can't live on.

All is good and dandy.

If employees are not getting paid, they'll go and do something else (like another job or growing food themselves) or steal and starve if there are no jobs or resources. They would never work for free because they can't live without eating.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#189

Post by DarylZero »

slooonz wrote: post #171
wakeupcall wrote: post #55

As a maintainer of several OSS projects, I could work full time on them and have time for nothing else. Yet, I'm pretty sure that even if these projects would be 100x more popular, the donations I would receive wouldn't even pay my daily expenses. I refuse all donations/tips for three reasons: - as per above, your donation is generally insignificant. it's just overhead in tax accounting - people donate "with strings…

> - receiving donations wouldn't be fair to any current or past contributors that made the projects what it is Hard disagree on that. Maintaining (bug triage, pull requests review, bug fixes…) is actually the hard work and the part that deserve the reward IMO. When I contribute to an open source software to fix a bug/add a feature, my reward is that the software I use has an annoying bug gone/the feature I want. I do…

Just fixing a bug isn't making the project what it is, though.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#190

Post by ItsBob »

Does this not mean it's time for a new open source license? Perhaps one that stipulates all the freedom current ones have up to a point?

I am not a lawyer and know little about open source but is it possible to create a new license that allows free use up to a certain revenue level?

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