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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?

#231

Post by ghoward »

v-yadli wrote: post #34

Not sure if it's good analogy but consider playing music. You practice your favourite instrument and post it on the tube. Worth it. You get to know people with similar style and taste so you jam together. Worth it. You guys stream the sessions on Twitch and got fans. Release EPs on bandcamp. But it starts to take too much personal time away from you. Worth it? But the fans want it! You'll have to decide. Sometimes yo…

Author here.

This is a good analogy.

I guess it's still different from what I meant because while making music does not really do harm, software can in the wrong hands.

(Okay, music can still do wrong in the wrong hands, but the scale of harm from software is far bigger.)

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#232

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sdiupIGPWEfh wrote: post #228
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an artist (by training. I don't really do that much, these days), I can relate. I used to have a big Strathmore sketchbook, that I took with me, everywhere, and, whenever I had the time, I would practice in it. I have old photos of me, with it. I was fairly scruffy-looking [still are -Ed.] , and the sketchbook was sort of my "brand." My classmates used to call me "Puff," because I liked drawing dragons. It got to…

> It got to the point, where even my rough sketches would be as good as finished works. Hah, I feel like I understand more where you're coming from with that. I was the opposite, seeking to get my finished works to feel more like my rough sketches. > I never really warmed to Boris Valleho's work (he used to hang in a gallery that I had work in, and I met him), but I have to admit, that guy can draw. That he can draw…

I use a Rembrandt sketch as an example in this post: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...

I prefer art to be a lot “rougher” than Valleho’s work, but had a difficult time, doing it, myself; which was one factor in my eventual retreat from art.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#233

Post by ghoward »

rvieira wrote: post #146

Just a very tangential note about the last part of the post > I can't even get a job IMHO, making a single contribution to an important FOSS project (e.g. Linux kernel, a major programming language or a widely used library), although not easy, will definitely land a job very easily for anyone.

Author here.

I have code in FreeBSD. Does that count?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#234

Post by ghoward »

Tomis02 wrote: post #122

Work on it if: - it's fun for you - if you use it personally Don't work on it if: - it's just for CV purposes - you have this idea that you should be working on FOSS because FOSS is great and you should somehow contribute - you want to create FOSS for the sake of creating FOSS. The world doesn't need more code, it needs less. There's plenty of garbage code floating around Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I…

Author here.

> Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I agree with the sentiment but I wouldn't worry too much. If the "stolen" code snippet is easy to write then it's really no big deal it it gets copied. If it was difficult to write then the person "stealing" it probably won't be able to understand it, which will lead to trouble down the line. It's not (yet) the same as ignoring the license of an entire repository.

Boy, I hope you are right.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#235

Post by tonyedgecombe »

piaste wrote: post #66
watwut wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yep. Log4Shell and Heartbleed were nasty security bugs, but imagine living in a world where every single software shop wrote their own logging libraries or SSL libraries. 99% of them would have far worse vulnerabilities. It would be like '90s php cowboy coding.

Absent open source we would all be buying those libraries from small software shops just as happened in the ninieties before OS become so prevelant.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#236

Post by cma »

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#237

Post by throwaway984393 »

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…

I learned long ago that I don't want to waste my life doing something I don't care about. I publish things as open source that I wrote because I needed them, and nothing existed like it.

One of those things, other people actually use! I don't so much, but I enjoy keeping it going every so often because it gives me purpose.

Another of those things, literally nobody seems to know about, even though it's a very useful thing which there is no oss alternative for. I'm a little sad nobody uses it, but it's fine because I still use it.

When I stop using these completely, I'll shutter them. Somebody can fork them if they want.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#238

Post by ghoward »

zokier wrote: post #131

> It makes sense why there is scarcity; after all, this is work done by volunteers in their “free” time. This is the big fallacity here, although I'm not sure why "free" is in (scare) quotes. FOSS isn't necessarily volunteer free-time development; afaik for example vast majority of Linux development is done by salaried engineers as their day-job. That is the way things should be done imho.

Author here.

You're right that I should have addressed that point.

I used "free" in quotes because it's not free in the sense of "no cost".

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#239

Post by ghoward »

jchw wrote: post #22

I hate to be contrarian but I can't understand what the point of this article is. It's a bit meandering and quite cynical. For example, I agree that the company behind MuseScore has exhibited some bad behavior that is worth discussing, but their attempt to introduce opt-in telemetry to Audacity is difficult to classify as adding "spyware." Also, the article meanders through a lot of different points that have very li…

Author here.

> Also, the article meanders through a lot of different points that have very little in common other than being cynical. For some reason, it starts talking about stuff that isn't related to open source. It also talks about a lot of different issues regarding open source. I don't understand what the overarching message is, except for something along the lines of "all software development sucks."

I agree that it meanders, but I don't think I'm cynical, just discouraged.

The real point of the post was to ask the question in the title, explain why I am feeling that way, and ask people to contact me (the last line), which they have!

> I don't understand why it's likely to do more harm than good, or by what measure. How does this tie into previous examples? How do you expect it to be "exploited"?

Rig is a build system, which means that if companies steal it and modify it, they could conceivably make it insert a backdoor into every piece of software it builds. (See Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust".) That is an enormous potential harm, at least in my opinion.

> It doesn't seem to approach the completely valid question of why developers don't like using closed-source tools.

You're right, and I honestly think there's no problem not liking closed-source tools. I just happen to think it's hypocritical to want Open Source, but push closed-source on end users that don't know better.

> It seems to imply that the mere act of releasing software should entail some kind of payday or recognition, but that doesn't make any sense.

This is not what I meant, sorry. It's more that I want my software to do more good than bad, and I'm not sure it would.

> But I urge people to see the non-cynical side of this.

Me too.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#240

Post by ghoward »

icambron wrote: post #208

These articles never clearly state what problem they want to solve. Some candidates that seem obliquely implied: - That you personally don't feel motivated to make OSS because of the way it's structured. Of course no one can fault you for that; that's the default position. Same for me and, say, juggling. But should the ecosystem really reorient itself around encouraging you--and specifically you--to participate? - Th…

Author here.

> These articles never clearly state what problem they want to solve.

Sorry. The problem is that I want my software to do more good than bad, and I'm not sure it will.

> (There was also something in this article about ads in paid products, which I also find obnoxious, but that seems like a non sequitur? Did I miss something there?)

I see ads as harm, harm through manipulation.

I know the article was not well-written; it was more a feeling dump of discouragement.

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