Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

gavinhoward.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 284 posts

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#151

Post by jasonkester »

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.

Some software does. Most probably wouldn’t if the author could be convinced to stop when it was done.

Personally, I’ve shipped several open source libraries that are still in use in lots of places despite me not having added a commit in over 10 years. They do the thing, don’t do anything else, don’t depend on other stuff, and thus don’t have a lot of surface to attack.

Imagine if the log4j guys had built their thing to spit out logfiles, then stopped before adding the bit where it can execute arbitrary code. I’m sure there was a version early on that did that. And I bet that version would still work perfectly well today. It was finished.

It just needed somebody to not unfinish it.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#152

Post by southerntofu »

KyleJune wrote: post #127
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…

In response to your first point, I'd rather use and contribute to FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. Issues are more likely to be addressed if the maintainers depend on the software themselves for profit. I see it as trading helping them improve their software for the ability to use it in my own projects. It also gives some reassurance that the FOSS is going to be maintained if the creators depend on i…

> I'd rather use and contribute to FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. Issues are more likely to be addressed

I understand the logic behind this assertion, but i don't believe it holds true at all. Businesses will favor fixing bugs related to main features that drive revenue in. Whatever's not hurting their business is invisible to them.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#154

Post by southerntofu »

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…

> Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product.

So true. I'd expand on that with a more specific example: game modders. When i look at all the energy spent on game mods which bring significant (gratis) value to commercial games, i can't help but wonder what the FOSS gamedev ecosystem would look like if all those dedicated people put their energy on free-software ecosystem.

Minecraft for example made a fortune on promises of later open-sourcing the game and deriving value from all the volunteers building mods.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#155

Post by Djejdbdbsjs123 »

h2odragon wrote: post #106

Resonates. 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 chan…

I don't understand that attitude. If you simply pushed the code to a github repo with a note that you won't be providing any support and disable the issues page, why would you feel any burden?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#156

Post by bnlxbnlx »

kazinator wrote: post #147
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…

And that's how you end up with FOSS that has the user experience of math, and the documentation style of math. :)

nice! thank you for offering that insight :)

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#157

Post by janto »

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…

Ha! Equating the relative value and effort that went into the underlying FOSS tech to "just a pencil", is a pretty accurate description of what a company does.

In reality, many a company would put a frame around the picture and market itself as an innovative artist. There's value in the frame, sure...however...

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#158

Post by jlg23 »

Before FOSS contributions looked good on résumés, people just solved problems and made their solutions freely available so others would not have to solve the same problem again. Once in a while you'd receive an email thanking you for that, more often than not, you'd not get any feedback at all. But that was OK, because it all was just about solving your problem, so the reward was there.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#159

Post by jefftk »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #134
rnoorda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of the trend I've seen where GitHub is treated as a portfolio- I once had a hiring manager I worked with tell me I should delete a few of my GitHub projects, as they made me appear "amateurish." I WAS an amateur! And I don't want to feel like I need to to hide random things I've tinkered with just to impress others. As a result, I know those who have multiple GitHub accts, one for fun personal stuff and…

Or, you could do every bit of work as if it were for a vital infrastructure project. That’s what I do. Even my “farting around” projects have a lot of polish. I write everything I do as if it will ship. I find it establishes great work habits and personal integrity, and my GH ids (I have a personal one, and a couple of org ones) make outstanding portfolios[0]. Not to worry, though. My experience, is that potential em…

It really depends what your goals are. I often have a problem I want to solve in my personal life, and not very much time. (Ex: code that makes the figures for a blog post.) So I write quickly, doing the minimum to get it done.

I would never do that in a work context, because the environment there is so different, but it's often the right trade-off for things I'm doing for fun.

(And I still make all the code open source because, well, it might be useful to someone even in the state it's in)

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#160

Post by h2odragon »

danuker wrote: post #149
h2odragon wrote: post #106

Resonates. 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 chan…

> got me booted from several platforms This bothers me. Can I get some more detail and drama? > Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing If you want to share your work with close friends, you could use say, self-hosted Gitea or GitLab.

> more detail and drama?

I'm really not certain myself wtf happened. Maybe I just fell victim to my own paranoia. Maybe quoting MLK and supporting an Amish school really are that controversial. Maybe it was the "naked lizards" video game mod.

Since i mentioned it that way, I'll also mention that I've been tempted to resurrect a site for some reason or none simply because up until last year, I had had some online presence continuously since 1994. I keep deciding not to, because I don't want to deal with the inevitable drama of offending someone by existing.

The only host I'd be happy with anymore would be someone leasing me bandwidth and an IP on a common carrier contract; and I'll stack up Pis or scavenged laptops and host horse porn if i feel like it.

Post reply on HN