Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

blog.filippo.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 464 posts

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#341

Post by hellotomyrars »

wpietri wrote: post #322
throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has the strategy of "companies should just be nicer" worked for things like minimum wage, health insurance, workers rights, ect... It's getting to the point of insanity (in my opinion) that people keep thinking this is going to magically appear if they ask for it. It arguably flies in the faces of thousands of years (or millions if you count pre-humans) of evolution. At the least people suggesting this should ack…

I'm not suggesting it's magic. Indeed, what I specifically said was that we should work to build strong cultural expectations. Which are very much necessary in all the cases you name. As an example, note that the Fortune 500 spend $20bn annually on corporate social responsibility: https://econreview.berkeley.edu/stocks-sustainability-how-th... That's not because they just had some good feelings. It's because people e…

Yes and no. A lot of that spending is done with a monetary incentive in mind. Companies aren’t completely devoid of understanding that there is a certain breaking point where being shitty can have financial consequences. They aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, not predominantly anyways. They can use charitable contributions to project a public persona (earned or not) of being good, for the purposes of increasing/maintaining business. They can do it as a smokescreen/cover for other scandals for the same reason.

Is that a good thing? Yes. Is it enough? Not even close.

The culture needs to change sure, but the change of culture that needs to happen seems effectively impossible unless companies are dragged into it kicking and screaming through organized labor efforts or government oversight/regulation. Those are both of course highly polarized political issues and that aspect of culture sure isn’t getting better either.

I think the quicker, sadder, and easier change is that a lot of Open Source projects just aren’t going to get started like they used to, and are going to have increasingly restricted licenses with stratified feature sets. We’re definitely seeing more of the “Taking my ball and going home” approach by small developers with tiny open source packages these days and it’s sad but also hard to blame them for. Even worse there are an increasing number of groups who attempt to buy projects for sometimes stupid money for the explicit purpose of using them as a Trojan horse to ship malware. They’re preying on the same people who have become incredibly cynical about the whole thing and that’s dangerous for everybody.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#342

Post by mbrodersen »

strenholme wrote: post #298
mbrodersen wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You provide your work with a price tag of $0. So people/companies pay $0. What’s so hard to understand about that? You give away BMW’s for $0 and the same thing will happen. You are signaling that your work is worth nothing. So people then expect you to do more work for nothing. Yes of course! You yourself value your work at $0! And the world then agrees. Don’t be naive and expect otherwise.

Just because a blob of code is free doesn’t mean the support is free, and it has been this way for a very long time. Have you ever seen how much an email-only 1-year support contract from ISC costs (clue: Five figures)? In the real world, free but pay for support is a reasonable expectation. RedHat has been doing it since 1993. Even with end user software, freemium has been a thing for quite a while. I see from your…

> I can’t be sure you’re not trolling; I will assume good faith and think you actually believe this ridiculous argument.

OK and I will assume you are not trolling and that your explanations of things I already understand was done with good intentions and not being condescending.

You clearly don't understand my argument and are offering a straw man interpretation. So in the spirit of explaining things, let me try again. It is a simple argument and shouldn't be hard to understand:

If you give away your work for $0 and demand nothing in return (no $ service contract, no $ licensing fee, no $ monthly maintenance contract) then the result will be $0 for you.

It is a really simple argument. A 5 year old will probably get this. But for some reason a number of FOSS commentators don't get this very simple point. They give away everything for $0 and then get upset, throw their toys around and refuse to play with the other kids, when companies then pay them exactly what they asked for and nothing else.

And since you made an effort to explain to me how open source works (clearly me reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar twice and various other Open Source books doesn't qualify) I will now explain to you how markets work:

Things don't inherently have value. You might have spent 30 years slaving away on your precious code, while thinking pure thoughts of enlightenment every single key press, sacrificed your family in the name of the deity of FOSS, but do you know what? Nobody cares. The value of something is what people are willing to pay for it. That's what a market is.

So what happens when you give away your precious code for $0? What happens is that people will value it at exactly that: $0. You yourself are signaling to the world that your work has zero value. So you and your work will be treated that way.

You might not like it. You might wish that the world was full of enlightened people who would all magically see things your way. But that is not the case. So accept it and move on. If you want to make $ doing FOSS then put that in the licence and sue anybody who doesn't pay.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#343

Post by mbrodersen »

F6F6FA wrote: post #314
mbrodersen wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People give away their work with a price tag of $0. So people/companies pay $0. Are you surprised? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy? If you want people/companies to pay $ then you need to put that in the license and sue companies that don’t do it. Or get a company to do it on your behalf in return for a %

Not surprised. Sometimes give a tip for good service. If you want people/companies to pay $ then you are not working on OSS.

I don't think you understand OSS. OSS is about Open Source not about working for free. I love OSS. It's great. But stop complaining when the world gives you exactly what you ask for. If you want to be paid $ to do OSS then put that in your OSS licence and sue people who don't pay. If you don't then grow up, accept that the world will treat your work as having $0 value and move on.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#344

Post by mbrodersen »

abathur wrote: post #332
mbrodersen wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the companies pay more than $0 for code with a price tag of $0? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy?

Never tipped for good service?

I have. What's your point?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#345

Post by mbrodersen »

MadcapJake wrote: post #330
mbrodersen wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the companies pay more than $0 for code with a price tag of $0? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy?

It costs me $0 to walk to work but i pay for transportation because it gets me there faster and more comfortably. You just are looking at cost too narrowly.

I don't understand your argument at all. Companies and people in general only pay for things they have to pay for. So if you ask for $0 that is exactly what they will pay. It is not a difficult point I am making.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#346

Post by mbrodersen »

wpietri wrote: post #320
mbrodersen wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. I for one am not holding my breath. Meanwhile, perhaps accept the world for what it is and act accordingly? Just make the companies pay for it by licensing the code correctly. It isn’t rocket science.

Oh? Shame nobody's ever tried that. But since you've had a brand new idea that you're sure will solve the problem, how about you take a swing at it? Show us how easy it is.

Where did I say it was a brand new idea? Where did I say it would be easy? Starting a business is hard. I founded and ran my own succesful business so I know how hard it is. I am not sure what your point is?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#347

Post by O_H_E »

mbrodersen wrote: post #293
Jupe wrote: post #152

I don't know... I just don't see how OSS will ever be a real, sustainable business. The moment it does, someone else will simply subvert the paid-for software with a look-alike that does 90% of what the original does, but for free. In my view, this is the birth story of OSS. And I don't see any real market there. Even if you manage to find a "niche", like some sustainable software-as-a-service with subscription, ther…

Yep. Open Source developers who give away their work for $0 are undermining their own value and the value of other peoples skills. Open Source should always come with a commercial license for companies.

Hey @mbrodersen, this is really not appreciated here on HN. This pasting of what is essentially the same reply on every top-level comment is borderline spam.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#348

Post by mbrodersen »

wpietri wrote: post #315
mbrodersen wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right. The naivety of most open source developers when it comes to understanding how people/companies/markets work is jaw dropping. If you ask people to pay $0 for your work then that is exactly what they will pay. Wishing for things to be different is a waste of time. Accept how the world works and act accordingly.

That isn't "the world". It's a relatively small set of people in a relatively small chunk of history that see themselves as entitled to make endless profit without ever worrying about where that comes from or who it hurts. It's not a sustainable mindset, so it never lasts. Look at the shift in attitudes toward the environment in the last 100 years as an example. There was a point where executives thought it absolutel…

Which world are you talking about? History is full of people exploiting other people. Mention any period of history where people were not trying their damn hardest to exploit other people?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#349

Post by meribold »

pxc wrote: post #249
wpietri wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "you owe nothing and can do with it what you wish: sell it, fork it, modify it" in exchange for "the author provides no guarantees and is not liable for this software". This is demonstrably not how many people many treat open-source authors. Just look at how the Log4J folks are feeling right now: https://twitter.com/yazicivo/status/1469349956880408583 I do have some open-source code out there where people have been…

the text of the tweet: > Log4j maintainers have been working sleeplessly on mitigation measures; fixes, docs, CVE, replies to inquiries, etc. Yet nothing is stopping people to bash us, for work we aren't paid for, for a feature we all dislike yet needed to keep due to backward compatibility concerns. Why don't they 'resolve' the security issue by removing the feature and then set up a bug bounty for backporting fixes…

Can anyone recommend a service that allows people to back specific GitHub issues (pledge money) other than Bountysource?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#350

Post by dilyevsky »

mbrodersen wrote: post #276
dilyevsky wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low No they don’t. That’s why they keep plowing billions into cloud infra and gazillion of saas products. They have an excuse when they think they can get it for free anyway like is the case with OSS but not an actual reason

Why should the companies pay more than $0 for code with a price tag of $0? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy?

Why would anyone pay for business class airline tickets instead of (subsidized) coach? They both get to the destination at the same time!
Post reply on HN