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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?

#211

Post by chongli »

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.

Software needs to be maintained to be useful

Maybe that’s the problem we need to be addressing. More and more these days I find myself frustrated using modern software when old unmaintained software had already solved the problem.

We consider it a novelty when a writer like George RR Martin still uses WordStar on an old DOS machine [1]. Maybe it shouldn’t be a novelty. Maybe it should be the normal thing to do.

It’s utterly at odds with a consumer culture though. People don’t seem to want well-made things that last a lifetime. They want shiny disposable crap.

[1] https://youtu.be/X5REM-3nWHg

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#212

Post by cdrini »

For me, one of the most discouraging things I've found about code in general, is that there's too much of it. And it's all the same. Every project, every repo, every developer, is just writing the same code, over and over again. Countless developers in the world are spending countless hours, are spending entire careers, writing code that's already existed. Real humans, are wasting their lives and their time.

One of the best things about open source for me is that it reduces this a little. By having public and free code, you can begin to reuse others' work instead of re-creating it. It's a radical multiplier on progress. Imagine having to write log4j when all you really want to work on is creating a search engine. An individual can build a project at a level of complexity/finess that would otherwise require LIFETIMES. Every day, I get to regularly complete projects which I shouldn't be able to complete in my lifetime because of open source. And I get to contribute back to that fabric/infinite conversation. Proprietary code, although it might garner usage and benefit its users, will never be part of that fabric.

This is why open source is worth it to me. Regardless of what proprietary companies do, I'm getting value from and providing value to open source.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#213

Post by johannes1234321 »

solididiot wrote: post #123

I'd personally not work on SW that could be used by someone else commercially at zero expense. In that sense I never understood why people moved away from GPL and started using "do whatever you want"-license types. Funny trivia. I spent considerable time working on corporate SW that acted as a gatekeeper for GPL-like licenses. It seems that one of the worst things a corporation can do to itself is use free SW with su…

> In any case if you approach FOSS romantically I think you're in for a big let down. It's some form of business transaction. Nebulous and tricky but business nontheless.

That it one view. However I for one did quite some work on opensource work, where all I got out we're interesting problems to solve. There I didn't care who is using it in the end. I created a solution and maybe got feedback from people smarter than me on the solution. This is more since than business. (And yes, with other projects I was able to get attention on me for getting jobs and some I do for work. But no, it's not all about business and money. My job pays enough and some things are fun.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#214

Post by swiftcoder »

mgaunard wrote: post #68
austincheney wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Specifically, may be better at navigating the politics of organisations. Which is a key skill at many employers - likely equal to or more important than technical skill as one ascends through the ranks.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#215

Post by chongli »

Retric wrote: post #210
chongli wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first heuristic is very difficult. It means you can’t work on the Linux kernel or pretty much anything that could be used for server infrastructure. It also means you’re very restricted in license choices since you otherwise never know if your project might get picked up in the future and used in a proprietary service. This likely means you have to use something like AGPL.

It’s fine if someone picks up and uses a project I worked on. That’s what OSS is for, but the Linux kernel doesn’t need my support to keep going as it’s self sustaining at this point. Plenty of other projects are in serious need of active support and keeping them afloat is simply a better use of my time.

Having your project picked up by commercial users is entirely the problem this heuristic is intended to avoid. It’s also the central problem from the linked article: commercial users take from open source projects and often don’t give anything back. They also tend to externalize any costs they have from use of the project onto the project maintainers.

Maybe you’re okay with being treated the way the log4j maintainers are being treated right now. The whole point is that you shouldn’t be! People producing valuable software in their free time and giving it away for free should be treated with respect and that’s not happening right now. We need to find a solution!

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#216

Post by janto »

onion2k wrote: post #186
janto wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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. Take Facebook as an example. The first version of Facebook was essentially built on 4 FOSS projects - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Facebook couldn't exist without them (or alternatives). But of themselves nothing about those projects represents the value that li…

Facebook's value of storing and serving images and posts of individuals is all in the tech that it is built with. Are you saying that there is nothing in the engine, body or wheels of a race car that represents its value? If your product's value requires certain technical properties (robustness, speed, conforming protocols) and you did not develop those then you did not create all the aspects that your users value.

A picture's ability to convey the art, absolutely does owe a lot to the technology (ink, canvas, culture) that was used in its creation.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#217

Post by bigbillheck »

h2odragon wrote: post #160
danuker wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pres…

> Maybe quoting MLK and supporting an Amish school really are that controversial

Depends on the context.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#219

Post by WBrentWilliams »

I think the problem is the word "free" in open source. Along the axis of freedom, this is a strength. You can read the source, figure out how it works, and adapt it to your uses. Or, as my senpai (pity English doesn't have a single word for "talented co-worker that demonstrates the ideas you haven't thought of yet) puts it, "I can read the source for a feature I like, and then I know how to do it, and I can avoid the features I do not want." This isn't copying, this is studying. You read the source to understand, then write your own implementation that better fits your use case.

However, there is another axis to consider: In English, "free" also means gratis. This means that no one with recognized authority is enforcing a shift of resources in exchange for using the code as written. Yes, you can ask for resources, and there are many ways to do so, but without enforcement, you get the most common behavior of "thank you, I will" and all the attendant problems, be that of pushing the license to limits, finding loopholes, to lack of funding, dead projects, to (possibly) self-interested actors placing features in open source that they can later exploit because no one really audits the code (See also log4j. I am not saying that a government placed something exploitable in the code. I am not saying that a private actor did so. I am saying it is interesting that a piece of widely used infrastructure has had an exploitable feature for so long).

Criticism aside, how does one provide freedom to learn and explore while curtailing the free rider problem?

A first-generation solution: Sell copies of your source code for the resources you need to maintain it. One example would be to make the source available once money has changed hands. You cannot stop the buyer from turning around and giving the source away for free: Once you have made a sale, you have made a sale. That particular copy of your source has created all the profit it will create.

A second-generation solution: Sell future updates. This is an idea I have been playing with, in terms of a business plan. Your source is free (both gratis and freedom) and you sell tokens. The tokens are capable of being purchased separately. Tokens can be exchanged for votes to determine which new features are developed and which bugs are fixed. They key is in selling the tokens.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#220

Post by rs999gti »

psychstudio wrote: post #120
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"

Why not reverse bounty or charge these entitled users for fixes and change requests?

If they want the patch or improvement, they should pay for it.

Log4J CVE might have been the perfect use case for asking for 50K-1M EURO for the maintainers to patch the bug, to any corporate clients this is a drop in the bucket.

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