“Open source” is broken

Saying this more forcibly doesn't make it true. Demonstrably, a bunch of people's stuff broke because log4j was underfunded. You can't claim with such certainty that funding Open Source doesn't make products more stable after a bunch of companies just had a bunch of critical severity bugs because the project wasn't funded and didn't have enough eyes on it. That's a wild thing to say.

"Locking doors doesn't deter criminals, so our investors aren't going to pay for locks at my business", as you actively watch masked thieves walk out of your office building holding a flat-screen TV. Come on. :)

On the other hand, if it doesn't impact corporate profits, if Open Source stability isn't affecting businesses, then corporations can stop complaining about Open Source bugs, and we can all stop having these hot takes. But I think the reason we have these hot takes coming out corporate mouths is because they recognize that bugs do impact stability and they're interested in trying to make that into someone else's problem.

> You need to understand. That's what you need to do.

See, this is the thing though, I and the Open Source community don't need to understand this. The point I'm making here is that the log4j developers were not affected by this bug, it wasn't their stuff that was on fire, and nobody had a contract with them forcing them to care. Donating something to a company is not an obligation to service that thing.

Nor would it be "irresponsible" for the log4j maintainers to leave companies in that state. The Open Source community could just ignore all of this. The Open Source community doesn't benefit from Minecraft using their stuff for free, the Open Source community could turn over and go back to bed when people start panicking about Minecraft bugs. The Open Source community does not need to worry about anything other than the Open Source community, it is an act of both social and personal charity that people release code under permissive licenses, and doing so does not open them up to any additional obligation for support or any additional responsibility to guarantee stability.

If you want that support, then pay for it. And if you're not willing to pay for it, then fine, but then don't complain or expect sympathy from the Open Source community if your stuff breaks.

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> My understanding is your position is that Open Source isn't broken, it's all the free riding that's the problem.

My position is not that free riding is the problem, free riding is a big part of Open Source, free riding is fine. My position is twofold:

- First, when you give someone something for free, and they come back with additional demands or complaints that it doesn't work as well as they want it to because they're not engaged in support -- it's not your problem or your job to devote additional work to making it easier for them free ride.

- Second, that at a systemic level people giving stuff away for free does not give them some kind of additional obligation to individually overthrow Capitalism or rework our entire economic system, and I think it's wild to look at arguably one of the most successful Anarchist spaces in the entire modern world and say, "it's not the businesses that are the problem, it's these people, because they haven't done enough to overthrow the entire tech industry."

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You seem to be dipping your toes into a very cynical take on the tech industry that I'm not going to argue for or against. What I am going to say is that if I take your position, if I assume that the tech industry doesn't care about stability at all, that it only cares about rapid growth, that security vulnerabilities are acceptable to investors, that this all and elaborate shell game to monopolize and undercut competitors and choke down on the market and its workers -- from that perspective, it makes even less sense for us to have an earnest conversation about how Open Source can become more "professional" or how it can encourage companies to give back.

If I start from your view of the tech industry, then I am even more convinced that Open Source bears no obligation to these companies and that it's fine for the Open Source community to go off and do its own things and leave them to figure out their own problems. It doesn't make sense to have such a cynical view of how companies work, and then to say that Open Source developers are now somehow responsible for cleaning up this mess that companies caused. You seem very cynical about the potential stability of corporate products in general; but if they're so fundamentally broken then why not let them break?

It is a very strange philosophy for you to have where you're pointing at corporations and investor mentality as a fundamentally broken system, and then saying that Open Source devs are being irresponsible because they're somehow "enabling" these people. If someone sets out a bowl of Halloween candy and some kid comes up and takes the entire bowl, who is the primary person that you blame in that situation?

But sure, whatever. If I understand you, the central problem is that free riding is baked into our industry, and yet somehow it's individual unpaid developers building software outside of that profit-maximizing system that are to blame for all of it. So instead of holding companies to task, or trying to support the people building commons that aren't designed to monopolize or grow at all costs, or reworking economic systems to improve incentives, or even just acknowledging that Open Source devs don't have an obligation to support the industry, what we should actually do instead is criticize the Open Source community for not being itself Capitalistic enough. That will definitely help, and definitely won't just result in cementing the very systems you criticize. /s

>> Saying this more forcibly doesn't make it true.

Sorry, my intention was to emphasize some basic economic logic, not enforce it.

Let me try again. Unless there is agreement between the financial donor and the recipient that the donation will be reciprocated with demonstrably more fitting outputs for the donor, do not expect to see any positive correlation between levels of funding and product stability.

Apache already has the model for log4j... and I'm not being facetious here, but for the sake of clarity only they call it 'governance' which is a comprehensive regime of massive corporate sponsorship, and volunteer 'PMCs' who are drawn from elite engineering backgrounds and participate mainly for social status, not money.

This is because people like myself, and people that like 'The Apache Way' see individual philanthropy and good science as a very complex relationship... and people like me would say... 'bad relationship'. Good science tends to be funded socially... through government organizations and civic institutions, Apache Foundation is one such institution. They accept private donations but it just goes into general funds AFAIK, most of the work done there is sponsored by Big Tech. We can argue that, if you want?

So, underfunding of log4j was not the issue at all. Apache projects I believe are generally well resourced and well managed. No?

> ...the reason we have these hot takes coming out corporate mouths is because they recognize that bugs do impact stability and they're interested in trying to make that into someone else's problem.

So, no... the reason is because corporate mouths are connected to corporate hands, and they have been dishing out money to Apache from the beginning. They believe they are owed something... and to some extent they are. You don't sh*t on your donors. That's the rule in the third sector.

This is why the log4j team are being held accountable. They trade off Apache reputation and the foundation they work for takes the money off many big corporate sponsors.

When you see the history of these issues it all makes sense and although your sentiment might appeal to lots of people, that is all it is... just like 'we shouldn't feck with cats'. That is the sort of argument you are involving yourself with. Sure, in an ideal world no one would feck with cats, but my argument is... when you see someone fecking with a cat, you don't just let them do it, sure, lock them up and rehabilitate them or get them to do some community service or whatever but mainly you want to be thinking about making sure that cats aren't so vulnerable... so you do stuff like make sure breeders are registered, make sure owners look after them properly and don't let their cats stray and so on.

You don't seem to have a very good grasp of the what The Open Source community actually is... it's about big corporates. All the millions of individuals, small and medium sized developers and end users are basically bystanders.

It might be worth coming back once you've got a clearer picture of the landscape. It's not what you think it is. It's not a pastoral idyll of happy, flourishing code crofters, it's a highly industrialized and monstrous tyranny dominated by surveillance capital...

When you see that, tell me if you still care if some prestigious Apache PMC engineer who chooses to work on something for free is really surprised when additional demands or complaints come in to the Brand he is trading off.

That's the deal here.

The systemic level is elite engineers on good salaries and high social standing working on high profile projects on the understanding that their reputation rides on being professional.

For them, it is not about overthrowing Capitalism or reworking our entire economic system, quite the reverse. Open Source for these people is about working to extend that system around the world. I'm using linux now and am under no illusion that almost all of it has been commodified... made alien to the people that worked on it... in the exact same way proprietary software is... the kernel included.

Open Source is capitalist, not Anarchist. I hope that much has been made obvious.

You misstate my position, I said big tech only cares about stability as far as it impacts on profits. Very often it will seek to make a product less stable in order to make money. Dishonesty is not a bug, it's a feature of all corporates.

Open Source is one big corporate hussle. Maybe you will want to look into that a bit more before you assume that Open Source is anything else? Thanks.

I like that. Your post today, made me curious.

I wouldn't worry about speed. As you progress through your career, you'll get very good, at writing very good code, very quickly.

These days (I'm 59), I can bang out a full-fat native Swift app in a few days, with excellent code (and operational) quality, great UX, high maintainability, accessibility, localizability, customizability, etc.