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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?

#251

Post by 99_00 »

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.

There is social pressure to maintain software. There is no social pressure to maintain a mathematical proof. So the analogy fails.

The choice people make doesn't change the expectations of others.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#252

Post by _y5hn »

jeltz wrote: post #64
_y5hn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how is this practice a benefit to anybody but Microsoft? Who takes on the legal risks?

Are you asking the wrong person? I personally believe their fair use argument is both morally wrong and legally dubious (but I am not a lawyer). But my only point which I bothered to make in my comment above was that if they violate licenses (which I suspect they do, but am not sure of) they violate all licenses except outliers like WTFPL. So picking a licens which does not permit Copilot is trivial (assuming copyrig…

It was more of a general question. Copilot seems to be software to undermine FOSS, and fits in a general pattern ie. the purchasing of github, VSCode (I'm learning Doom Emacs now). It's all the same things as the past 3 decades though. Nothing new, just new rat traps.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#254

Post by Jetrel »

bregma wrote: post #139
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…

A part of my job is to review CVs and select candidates to interview for my team. The first thing I do is check to see if they have a github account, and if they do I check their projects. Anything that looks relevant gets a quick inspection. It makes difference to whether they get an interview, and it makes for some topics of discussion during the interview. It confirms for me that the candidate is in fact actually…

Speaking as someone who has the same thing on their job duties — yeah. Same here.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#255

Post by voakbasda »

rs999gti wrote: post #220
psychstudio wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That starts to sound suspiciously like an extortion racket.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#256

Post by cobertos »

indigochill wrote: post #181
southerntofu wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

On the other hand, plenty of game modders have started a productive career from modding. In an ideal world, I'd agree it would be better that that energy would go into free software. But in our current world, if there's a proprietary game someone is hooked on to the point they get excited about modding when they otherwise wouldn't and that modding leads to a career or even just skill development and perhaps connectio…

Anecdote, but I started in modding and made some amazing friendships through it as well as honed my abstract reasoning I use for programming professionally now.

There definitely social benefits that can outweigh the more concrete software == value and time trade-off benefits, but I find communities that are "worth" it _much_ harder to find these days.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#257

Post by cobertos »

chongli wrote: post #201
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…

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.

I meant support in a more direct manner. For example, writing a piece of software that does better Markdown importing to Notion.so. You're only enriching Notion.so's system, you're at the mercy of their API, whims, and bugs.

There is no black/white category of what is direct support though. It's a spectrum. And these are my own personal heuristics, rooted in my experiences and found benefits/drawbacks of my own projects and working with people.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#258

Post by cobertos »

dspillett wrote: post #184
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 you aren't using yourself anymore. More-or-less agreed. > This heuristic isn't fully fleshed yet I'd perhaps extend it as: “Don't work on FOSS you or people you sufficiently care about aren't using anymore.” Who qualifies as those you care about and why is an entirely personal thing and I'll not judge anyone's choice there. They could be friends, they could represent a cause you support, they cou…

Yeah, exactly this.

Enjoyment is a good signal for whether youre using your time in a way your brain tolerates. I personally strike a balance between maximizing happiness and also maximizing value, so when enjoyment dips, it takes a bit for me to get off a project still.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#259

Post by cobertos »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #125
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…

One skill that I’ve learned, over the years, is to say “no,” in a calm, respectful manner. Works a charm. The “calm and respectful” part is important. I can be right ornery, and learned, the hard way, that OS projects are more fragile than commercial ones, so enemies can do a lot of damage. I have written software for a fairly … pithy … demographic, and have dealt with feedback that would make many FOSS authors hide…

I've not found a good heuristic for saying "no". Most issues are valid issues. I can see the benefits, they might even benefit future me.

The hardest part for me is actually saying no, because it's never that black/white. I might work on it later because I want to help. I might stumble into a use case where I now need this feature and then do it. Someone might make a PR. But each "open ended issue" is still bandwidth, brain capacity, effort.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#260

Post by cobertos »

mpol wrote: post #164
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 you aren't using yourself anymore. I think there is still some middleground possible. It can still be enjoyable doing small support stuff for it and to keep it running and fixing small bugs, without any big rewrites or big features. I once cared about those things and I might still do. Just keeping it running might feel better than discarding it. It all depends on personal preferences, the type o…

Yeah, I agree. I think https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673524 captures it well
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