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Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

gavinhoward.com

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Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#61

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

mgaunard wrote: post #4

The reasons you write open-source code: - training purposes to better yourself - as a showcase or to build up your reputation to get hired - because you have a niche need in your personal life that no one else already solved None of those reasons are invalidated by big corporations using open-source without paying back.

Many also make money with open source software, for example a classic approach seems to be to offer consulting services around your product, or hosting.

WordPress and ElasticSearch come to mind, both made a lot of money.

You also get people adding to your product for free.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#62

Post by piaste »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #21
fivelessminutes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original reason may not be invalidated. But as a continuous activity, over years, what exactly is in it for maintainers to get up in the morning and trade their remaining lease on life for value to be consumed by rich leeches?

They enjoy it. They need to for their own needs. It provides them with some other benefit.

Unfalsifiable. You're basically saying "they're adults, so if they do it they must necessarily get value from it".

Myth of the rational maintainer, if you will.

In real life, people get (mentally) stuck into suboptimal situations where leaving would make them happier all the friggin' time.

Bad jobs they should have quit. Bad partners they should have broken up with.

Why not bad open-source projects they should have stopped maintaining?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#63

Post by kzrdude »

Matumio wrote: post #33
kzrdude wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to include my reasons: - It's a lot of fun - It's addictive Honestly I was a bit struck when a friend looked at my github and said it was a nice portfolio. The material view never hit me at all: my github is a product purely of what I've wasted/spent time on for fun, not to make a profile. :)

I find this materialistic view depressing. Not everything worth doing is ultimately about selling your lifetime to the highest bidder. Some things are just worth doing intrinsically. Like, fixing a bug that affects a high number of people. Or solving a problem just for the fun of it.

Yes, and there are some great take-aways that I didn't know I would get when starting, like connecting to very smart people and learning a lot, as well as being accepted as one (maybe) in the community of those.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#64

Post by jeltz »

_y5hn wrote: post #36
jeltz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the license does not matter because if the fair use argument does not hold then Copilot would violate even very permissive licenses like MIT since Copilot does not do attribution.

So how is this practice a benefit to anybody but Microsoft? Who takes on the legal risks?

Are you asking the wrong person? I personally believe their fair use argument is both morally wrong and legally dubious (but I am not a lawyer). But my only point which I bothered to make in my comment above was that if they violate licenses (which I suspect they do, but am not sure of) they violate all licenses except outliers like WTFPL. So picking a licens which does not permit Copilot is trivial (assuming copyright law restricts things like Copilot).

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#65

Post by throwawaylinux »

vermilingua wrote: post #24

As a fresh CompSci graduate, is it worth it/valuable to try and work on OSS; or am I more likely to just get in the way? If so, what are some good resources for getting started?

It can be. Firstly if you are very passionate about something it can be a good way to learn about it or even end up pushing the state of the art in some cases, so it can be worthwhile as any hobby is.

But also a lot of companies take it quite seriously now so it can be good for your resume particularly if you are not in the industry yet and want more experience or some references of your prior work. So it can be worthwhile even if you aren't completely passionate about it to the extend you would be content to always do it as an unpaid hobby.

It's not good to assume you will make money directly on your own project or some niche project, but there are lots of established projects which are in demand in the industry and you would be able to make money working on them. I work on the Linux kernel which I started as a hobby and I've been able to take my skills between several different companies and continue working on the same software (although different areas) which has been good for me.

Not to say you can't get transferable skills or relevant experience working on proprietary software and some may prefer the challenge or variety of working on different code bases at different jobs. So proprietary software is pretty on-par in those respects. There are a lot of areas where proprietary software is ahead too so if you want to work cutting edge software in a particular area, open source might not be the best option for you.

As far as getting started, start with working out what you are interested in and want to work on.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#66

Post by piaste »

watwut wrote: post #53
adabaed wrote: post #25

Imagine blaming a FOSS dev/mantainer because you didn't do your job properly and trust a third party on a production code!

I find thins point of view equally absurd as all the abuse on maintenners of Foss. It is standard for production code to rely on third party libraries. Not just standard, but the opposite is considered bad thing - you are not supposed to implement everything from scratch. If you do, you will end up with more bugs and issues. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in development last 30 years that would say "it is bad t…

Yep. Log4Shell and Heartbleed were nasty security bugs, but imagine living in a world where every single software shop wrote their own logging libraries or SSL libraries. 99% of them would have far worse vulnerabilities. It would be like '90s php cowboy coding.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#67

Post by GoblinSlayer »

adabaed wrote: post #25

Imagine blaming a FOSS dev/mantainer because you didn't do your job properly and trust a third party on a production code!

Ironically the maintainers can always say "fuck you, pay me", but they don't, because they know blaming is a good thing.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#68

Post by mgaunard »

austincheney wrote: post #13
mgaunard wrote: post #4

The reasons you write open-source code: - training purposes to better yourself - as a showcase or to build up your reputation to get hired - because you have a niche need in your personal life that no one else already solved None of those reasons are invalidated by big corporations using open-source without paying back.

That does not work. After several years of hard work a prior open source project that grew to immense popularity got me employment a few times. It wasn’t the actual project, code, or capabilities that meant anything. The only thing appealing about that project was it’s popularity. Nobody ever looked at the code, except people interested in submitting pull requests. If you think a prospective employer will take the ti…

Well that's precisely how it works, why would you expect an employer to review your code for free?

Instead they'll just look at whether you contributed to big projects.

Someone who managed to make significant contributions to Linux or LLVM for example might be better than the average joe.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#69

Post by piaste »

throw8932894 wrote: post #52

Of course it is worth it. You can make very good living as remote-guru-consultant with total freedom. All while making similar money to FANG employees (counting stocks, high cost of living and taxes). OSS developers do not have to be unpaid doormats. If I would be log4j dev, I would probably just wipe out all JNDI related functionality from project. Companies who need JNDI for backward comparability, would have to pa…

> OSS developers do not have to be unpaid doormats. If I would be log4j dev, I would probably just wipe out all JNDI related functionality from project. Companies who need JNDI for backward comparability, would have to pay for support.

This. Backwards compatibility is, as a general rule, not fun. And if you're not coding for money and you're not coding for fun, what's left, exactly?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#70

Post by adabaed »

watwut wrote: post #53
adabaed wrote: post #25

Imagine blaming a FOSS dev/mantainer because you didn't do your job properly and trust a third party on a production code!

I find thins point of view equally absurd as all the abuse on maintenners of Foss. It is standard for production code to rely on third party libraries. Not just standard, but the opposite is considered bad thing - you are not supposed to implement everything from scratch. If you do, you will end up with more bugs and issues. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in development last 30 years that would say "it is bad t…

Where did I say you should develop everything from scratch? I'm talking about auditing, updating, sharing revenue with the main FOSS software you use.. Being responsible with your software to minimize attack vectors.
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