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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?

#111

Post by agluszak »

onion2k wrote: post #107

If 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…

I think a better analogy would be: I make a pencil and give it to someone for free, and that someone puts that pencil in a box and sells it for $10m.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#112

Post by rikroots »

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.

I agree with this, plus the "it's fun" reason others have mentioned.

I started work on my canvas library (licence: MIT) 8 years ago mainly so I'd have something to showcase to potential employers. It worked: the reason I finally managed to land a job as a web developer was because someone took time to check out the library and decided the work I'd put in was worth them taking a risk on an older new entrant.

Since that time I've continued to develop the library to help me deepen my knowledge of all things canvas. Especially since I started to look at ways to make canvas elements more responsive, and more accessible. But the main reason is just the joy I get from using it to create pretty demos and animations - the library scratches a creative itch.

I got used to the idea that I'll never be rich a long time ago. Good friends are more important than money.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#113

Post by ZeroGravitas »

onion2k wrote: post #107

If 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…

I think the analogy would work better as:

You make a pencil.

Someone takes your pencil, and puts it in a really nice box with some other pencils.

People use those pencils to draw a $10 million picture.

The box maker uses contracts to ensure they get a 10% cut of that picture sale.

Actual pencil makers gets no cut.

I can see why this would annoy pencil makers, no matter how nice the box is, or how much effort they put into sales. At a societal level it seems incentives are slightly out of wack too.

Personally, I'd rather see all the money go to the artist than add more levels of ownership, control and cuts, especially if the inputs are non-rivalrous.

The classic economics example is lighthouses, we all benefit from the non-shipwrecked ships bringing goods to market but feel like the merchants should probably contribute to their construction via taxes rather than rely on randomly charitable lighthouse builders (see: Public Goods)

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#114

Post by Radim »

fivelessminutes wrote: post #12
larsrc wrote: post #5

Define "worth". We were never in it for the money. I maintained Dia for 8 years and never saw a penny. If you don't like your FOSS project being used by evil capitalist megacorps, put an anti-commercial license on it.

There's a licencing 'race to the bottom'. If there is a liberally-licensed alternative, resources will divert to that.

Right, you cut to the heart of things. There is a licensing "race to the bottom" happening. Which makes sense from the demand side (of course people want free). But where does the supply side come from?

Why does the floor keep constantly dropping? Who are these developers, always willing to do more for less?

In my experience:

* Some of it: people who open source their hobby projects. The personal upside of investing resources into open source is fun & practice.

* A lot of it: academia. Universities have an infinite supply of indentured labour in students and postgrads. The personal upside is grades and graduation. The institutional upside is publishing and grant money.

* Lately: large enterprises. These have the resources to throw high quality engineering behind their open source projects (unlike the universities, where quality has always been a struggle, due to tremendous "developer" churn and different incentives). The personal upside is salary; the business upside is $$$ via "commoditize your complements". Added bonus: open source serves as an HR tactic too.

Put together, the demand for the "race to the bottom" is there and so is the supply. And so it happens. The machinery behind "If you don't do it (with a permissive license), someone else will".

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#115

Post by Rochus »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #8

The FOSS that was imagined by Stallman, where end-users could actually use FOSS products in their everyday lives, is not possible under capitalism. So what you have instead is effectively a network of semi-public property primarily for industry use. But, just as anything else that industry cannot turn for a profit, FOSS is and will always be in the lowest of priorities, if a priority at all. Cheers to Stallman, but a…

I know many people, including myself, who do a lot of volunteer work without being Marxists.

The motivation is not money, but to provide a benefit to society or to the people in the immediate vicinity, i.e. to be helpful and to be appreciated.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#116

Post by Packofbezens »

agluszak wrote: post #111
onion2k wrote: post #107

If 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…

I think a better analogy would be: I make a pencil and give it to someone for free, and that someone puts that pencil in a box and sells it for $10m.

Agreed, but I think the analogy should follow the pencil, not the person. This seems to shift focus towards that someone who made the $10m. What does the buyer who just spent $10m do with the pencil? Do they hoard it as a trophy, or does it become a tool that provides some value to society?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#117

Post by rndhouse »

scotty79 wrote: post #59
99_00 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You don't need to maintain anything, you can just drop it and go do something else if you prefer. Maybe someone will pick it up. Maybe noone. If you maintain something you chose to maintain it. You have no obligation to continue maintaining it.

Most of the value is in the maintenance. In responsiveness to changing demand. I bet all the valuable FOSS software you can think of today is maintained.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#118

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I like doing OS work, because it has trained me to do better work. These days, I like to open-source pretty much everything I do. It’s not very popular, and that’s fine with me. I still write every one of my projects as if I were doing a major-league infrastructure project; to be used by millions. Helps me to develop good habits, and I don’t need to worry about the quality of my dependencies.

I eat my own dog food. Most of the work I do is SPM modules, which I use in larger, aggregate, development work. They are often “spun out” of my larger projects, as I proceed. I may see that the section I’m writing, has use outside of the main, so I stop work on the larger project for a few days, while I extract and develop the submodule as a standalone project; complete with documentation and testing. Feel free to check out my work. My GH handle is the same as my HN handle. I stay busy.

Also, I write software to help people. Here’s a relevant comment that I made, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29660819

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#119

Post by teekert »

Even the words "And remember, there are people bashing the maintainers for screwing up something they essentially did as volunteers!" are to harsh, if you ask me. Everybody makes mistakes and it can be extremely annoying to have to fix something when you don't get paid for it (it's your own time). I know this because I run my own "cloud" back-end, when it breaks, I get annoyed but I got to dependent on it to ignore it even though I started it for the fun of it. Now magnify this feeling by a million^million because the whole world is breathing down your neck and sometimes even bashing you.

Btw, I saw this tweet about OBS now many times and I keep wondering why Jesus would steal from OBS :b

If I were higher up the tree in my company I'd dump money on these guys. Or at the very least set up a "donate back to open source" initiative, perhaps based on economic calculation and amounts of software used. Now that I think about, maybe I'll start such an initiative, see how far I can get it.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#120

Post by psychstudio »

cobertos wrote: post #73

Only certain FOSS is worth working on for me. Here's my heuristic as of today. * Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless. * Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself…

Also: entitled users who ask if x can be done, and after a comprehensive answer which took a lot of time and thought say "can you make a demo and post the code. thanks"
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