Gosh, is it now so de mode to do something just for the fun?
Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
101–110 of 284 posts
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#102"Since companies steal Open Source software without a care in the world" If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts. People have different reasons for working on open source. Some want to make money from it, others don't. As an example, I don't know the full ElasticSearch story, but if Amazon's fork was legally…
>If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts.
this is assuming you have the resources to :
a) know the theft happened
b) follow up in court.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#103I 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…
The way is solve this is that I release everything under GPL. Companies usually won't touch that, but everybody else might.
Same here, though I usually use the AGPL for extra freedom.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#104I never work on FOSS. I work on software because I need it for me, and make it free for others to use. The question of whether it's worth it is moot, as yes, it's worth it because I need the software for myself.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#105I 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…
The way is solve this is that I release everything under GPL. Companies usually won't touch that, but everybody else might.
To me, it's not a problem that my code is used for commercial gain. I use the MIT licence (a permissive licence). The key thing for me is that it doesn't give companies a competitive advantage, rather it puts companies that don't use it at a competitive disadvantage. It's thanks to Open Source that I'm writing this on a system that uses 100% Open Source software (okay, maybe the BIOS isn't). A good thing about Open Source is that if a company uses it, they're more likely to report / fix bugs, which helps everyone.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#106Resonates.
I just wrote a little script to give me some model geometry numbers. I'm sure others could use this, I wrote mine because all that exists online is half-ass Jskirpt pages that are covered in ads and offer a slightly different form of this calculation than I want.
Once upon a time I would've published this somewhere and let anyone else who wanted those numbers for a project of their own at least have a chance at finding and using my code for it.
Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing (someone took offense to my presence last year and got me booted from several platforms). Even if I did, I wouldn't want to undertake the burden of having published something others might find useful, even in an utterly trivial context like "where do I put supports on a model railroad spiral ramp?"
Im too old, too ill, and too weird to get hired anywhere, so any code I write now is just for me. Its liberating. I no longer care about things like CamelCase vs under_score_debates and can set m y text lines at 300 char wide if i want to.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#107If I make a pencil and give it to someone, and they use it to draw a picture that they sell for $10m, they haven't ripped me off. They've added a lot of value to that pencil. I haven't lost anything. They haven't "profited from my work". They've done something pretty amazing using a tool I created. Good for them.
FOSS is the same. The idea that people are taking FOSS code and building billion dollar companies with it are somehow doing nothing of value except deploying your code is complete nonsense. FAANG companies that use FOSS software as the backbone of their tech stack are not simply deploying some code. They're working hard and adding value on top of it.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#108The 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…
This is part of what's broken. If your users aren't examining your code, then they're vulnerable to supply-chain attacks from it.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#109Earlier 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?
The value isn’t “consumed”. I get as much value out of my open source projects regardless of who is using them. The fact that you consider users to be “leeches” means you’re missing the point of open source.
'Leech' is the correct term for this relationship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_(computing)
Contributors are not leeching the work.
Users who don't contribute are though, especially when they suck down developer time with issues.
You're not in a position to judge my understanding of FOSS because the word 'leech' makes you uncomfortable.
Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?
#110Earlier 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.
Over the years, the itch they were scratching tends to get fully scratched, people move on from their needs to other things.
What was enjoyable, becomes grunt work, like making the full set of unit tests for features users want, but you don't actually use yourself.
Whatever this handwavy 'other benefit' was, stops being beneficial.
But they're still paying the opportunity cost, sitting down as the older, greyer, burnt out maintainer while others get the benefit from their work.