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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?

#81

Post by pjmlp »

scotty79 wrote: post #44

For me open source is like math. You don't work on math so that people will thank you for working on math. You don't expect people using math you developed contributing back to math or paying you. You get paid however you managed to organize getting paid. And work on the math for the math and nothing else. If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what i…

Except people working on math actually get paid and don't feel entitled to get work of others for free.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#82

Post by chii »

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?

> is it worth it/valuable to try and work on OSS

that's the wrong question to ask - the first question to ask is whether you have some aspect of a project that you enjoy working on (or have a project of your own that you enjoy working on).

If your goal is to put your name in a well known project for marketing purposes, then i'd say you have the wrong goal for doing OSS.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#83

Post by bell-cot »

The title is a personal question. You could ask the same thing about collecting stamps, writing fanfiction, staying together with a so-so romantic partner, being an active member of a local church, etc. Maybe all those things felt great to do, back in the day. But now...

Most of the dark patterns he mentions are more (cough) features (cough) of monomania-type capitalism than of FOSS. Or just human nature. Sitting on your fat ass and blaming the poor guy who did all the work was really old before the pyramids were built. Same for the tragedy of the commons.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#84

Post by wheresmycraisin »

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…

Using third party libraries in production libraries, regardless of its license, means you audit, vet, and test as much as possible the consequences of bringing in the library. And going through the same process every time you update the library. "Who does that?" Good software engineers do that.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#85

Post by chii »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #54

If it's not worth it to you don't work on it. If you do OSS because you want others to use your software but you're afraid to charge for it then just stop. Of course you'll be disappointed. The whole point of OSS is you put it out there, others use it, fork it, add to it, commit back, and because of pooled efforts now the software is better. No one owes anyone anything beyond the terms of the license. DHH recently wr…

> The best way to get paid for OSS

also "The best way to get paid" is to not make it OSS but to charge for it!

Because if the only reason some one would use the software is because it was free...

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#86

Post by flohofwoe »

Was it ever worth it? If somebody shares their work for free I would guess that making money out of it isn't their main motivation.

The main problem seems to be that other people using this work sometimes don't understand the license and expect the author to provide support.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#87

Post by Subsentient »

My advice is for the OP to make his build system GPLv3 licensed and sue anyone who willfully violates that license.

Open source still has lots of life left in it, but copyleft licenses are now increasing in importance, and the days of letting it slide when a company violates your license are now gone.

To decide on what license you want, ask yourself, do you want this to improve software as a whole, or do you want this to improve FOSS? Does the image of proprietary software benefiting from your work soothe or anger you? Nowadays, it's becoming increasingly important to choose the latter. If you don't care what happens, you can license it as MIT or something. There are still valid cases for that.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#88

Post by scotty79 »

pjmlp wrote: post #81
scotty79 wrote: post #44

For me open source is like math. You don't work on math so that people will thank you for working on math. You don't expect people using math you developed contributing back to math or paying you. You get paid however you managed to organize getting paid. And work on the math for the math and nothing else. If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what i…

Except people working on math actually get paid and don't feel entitled to get work of others for free.

They are not always paid for developing math. Sometimes they are paid for teaching math, sometimes for applying math. And they are developing it on the side.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#89

Post by kortilla »

99_00 wrote: post #57
scotty79 wrote: post #44

For me open source is like math. You don't work on math so that people will thank you for working on math. You don't expect people using math you developed contributing back to math or paying you. You get paid however you managed to organize getting paid. And work on the math for the math and nothing else. If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what i…

Software needs to be maintained to be useful. Proofs don't. So for many, it is not the same.

No it doesn’t, it’s open source, not an obligation.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#90

Post by 10000truths »

tlocke wrote: post #79

I work on a few Open Source libraries and they're used by companies that make a lot of money, and people often regard me as a mug for doing the hard work for free so that other people can make lots of money. The argument I give in response is that from an economic perspective, you can only make money from a unique advantage, and since Open Source can be used by anyone, it's not giving anyone a unique advantage. I'd p…

Also, lots of open source software only achieves widespread use because they are open source. If e.g. Daniel Stenberg had decided to charge for curl instead of releasing it under a FOSS license, very few would have bothered to use it, and in all probability, some other person would have written a FOSS replacement for it.
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