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“Open source” is broken

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Re: “Open source” is broken

#251

Post by mbrodersen »

city41 wrote: post #225
mbrodersen wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give your work away for $0 then the world will expect to pay $0 for it. That’s it. It isn’t rocket science. If you value your work make companies pay for it.

Doesn't the reverse hold true too? If you rely on software you paid $0 for and it fails you, you got what you paid for.

Absolutely. However in reality if you give away your work for $0 then people value your work at $0 which means that they expect you to fix problems for $0. The problem is the maintainers giving away their work for $0. OSS is not about free (as in $0) it is about Open Source.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#252

Post by mbrodersen »

bachmeier wrote: post #234
mbrodersen wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies are paying exactly what the price tag says it is worth: $0. What is so surprising about that? If you want companies to not “freeload” then change the price tag for companies.

For the record, that's exactly what I'm saying. Don't use a license that allows freeloading, because if you do, that's what you'll attract. I disagree with "exactly what the price tag says it is worth: $0". That's not what the price tag says it's worth. They wouldn't be using it unless it was worth a lot more than $0.

I think you are confusing "marketplace value" (what they are willing to pay for it) and "intrinsic value" (your perception of what the "real" value is). Intrinsic value is in the eye of the beholder. Marketplace value is decided in the market place. I am only talking about marketplace value. Which is also what FOSS developers are complaining about. How the market doesn't put market $ value on their work.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#253

Post by charcircuit »

jevoten wrote: post #231
charcircuit wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to money. There's nothing broken about that. If you want to make money it would be a good idea to make a business plan. Making and maintaining a piece of software and giving it away for free isn't a great business plan, or at best it's an incomplete one.

But what is broken is the disconnect between providing value and being able to earn a living from that value. More often than not, any "business plan" involves providing a worse product, because the product must be compromised to enable the business plan. SaaS for things that could be run locally is a perfect example. Or algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in social media. Or the advertising panopticon. Or cof…

>More often than not, any "business plan" involves providing a worse produc

The question is if you can provide a better product then your competitors.

>algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in social media

Isn't this optimal though? If I see something but did not engage with it that site just wasted by time.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#254

Post by cf »

jchw wrote: post #179
zozbot234 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR - the person who coined "open source" in the first place! - agrees that this is a problem worth addressing. See his Loadsharers initiatve http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/ (more info at https://esr.gitlab.io/loadsharers/ ) discussed http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8383 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8387 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8403

I think most people, at least certainly myself, do not disagree that open source infrastructure projects are often underappreciated and underfunded. However, there's a dramatic difference between the way that ESR's LBIP initiative frames the problem vs this article (not to single anyone out - this article expresses a commonly held belief among plenty of influential and intelligent people, and no doubt the person who…

Maybe moral obligation is the wrong phrasing. But if you are major company with investors, perhaps a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders and customers to fund the software?

The correct model likely looks something like a foundation to support core infrastructure projects in the open-source ecosystem. This foundation is then funded by companies most dependent on that infrastructure.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#255

Post by ngc248 »

Open source ain't broken .... Its the expectations that have changed that is all. Somehow lotsa people think open source is a business model, where

1. release code with OSS licenses 2. let it blow up 3. profit???

If you want to make money off OSS, dual license it and those who want will buy maintenance contracts, don't expect companies to pay back for what they use. Companies are completely amoral .

Re: “Open source” is broken

#256

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

littlestymaar wrote: post #150
montroser wrote: post #73

No, it's not broken -- it's thriving. Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money. Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers. Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don't have to…

Yes it's thriving, but it's also broken. From a tweet[1] cited in the article: > This is the maintainer who fixed the vulnerability that's causing millions(++?) of dollars of damage. > "I work on Log4j in my spare time" > "always dreamed of working on open source full time" > "3 sponsors are funding @rgoers's work: Michael, Glenn, Matt" [1]: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1469441487175880711

Yes it's broken, But not because of open-source philosophy itself but because corporations are greedy and general consumers are largely poor.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#257

Post by pjmlp »

montroser wrote: post #73

No, it's not broken -- it's thriving. Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money. Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers. Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don't have to…

Hence why SaaS are thriving, what better way to get free beer while charging subscriptions to their users, and give zero back.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#258

Post by jchw »

mbrodersen wrote: post #250
jchw wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except by creating such an obligation, you are essentially throwing out the core concept of something being open source or free software. That's not solving the problem, that's more like giving up on it.

Not at all. I don't think you understand OSS. OSS is about Open Software. Not about free (as in $0) software. The only way to make OSS sustainable is to make companies pay for it .

With all due respect, I don’t think you do. Open source is about rights, and creating a secondary unwritten set of rules about obligations that are extralegal is just a more advanced way of circumventing them. Please read the DFSG, or OSI definition of open source, or the FSF definition of free software for what I mean. All of them are explicit that you can not discriminate on endeavor (explicitly including commercial) or the licensee. That’s not accidental.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#259

Post by acje »

suriyaG wrote: post #128
montroser wrote: post #73

No, it's not broken -- it's thriving. Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money. Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers. Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don't have to…

I mostly agree with your argument. But, if we just de facto accept everything for how it has been in the past. Then we stop making things better, for everybody involved. Is Open-Source thriving? yes. Can we make fix the places where it's broken? Also, Yes.

I think of open source as a force of nature, sure you can create incentives in your own proximity, and if you are FAANG the radius can be huge, but finite. The fundamental failure here is not related to open source but in how software is integrated and isolated. We need more robust typing in the integration and capabilities to define the isolation.

Capabilities alone might have eliminated this whole class of failure to escalate, but not eliminate the initial injection failure. Pretty sure that could have been demonstrated on wasmcloud.dev

Re: “Open source” is broken

#260

Post by eyelidlessness »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #256
littlestymaar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's thriving, but it's also broken. From a tweet[1] cited in the article: > This is the maintainer who fixed the vulnerability that's causing millions(++?) of dollars of damage. > "I work on Log4j in my spare time" > "always dreamed of working on open source full time" > "3 sponsors are funding @rgoers's work: Michael, Glenn, Matt" [1]: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1469441487175880711

Yes it's broken, But not because of open-source philosophy itself but because corporations are greedy and general consumers are largely poor.

And you’ve concluded that those things don’t have a causal relationship?
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