$1 to read the article that says open source developers are putting the entire internet at risk. hmm
FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
141–150 of 191 posts
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need the critical role of Open Source maintainer to professionalize. Do we? I do open source work and maintainership, and am happy that this is outside the control and influence of industry. Must even this that "makes the Internet special" also bow to industry needs?
I think it's fine when you are doing open source for fun, and for other individual users. If a company is basing their livelihood on your library, they should (in my opinion) be supporting it somehow -- either by paying you, or paying someone to keep an eye on new versions. The other choice is they are trusting you to fix bugs and not be malicious, which isn't (in my opinion) reasonable, as you get nothing in return.
You both feel right to me. We've found a vast amount of really important& exciting technology come from unhindered & unencumbered open sourcerers, people enjoying buding great things.
And I agree with you, that these people as their software ascends in use & importance, need support.
The term professionalization is dangerous to apply here though. There's a lot of baggage & constraint, power/hieraechy dynamics, employer/employee relationships that are no fun, are against the spirit of the thing. To have this vibrant, radical, free spirited altermative, & to turn around & try to consume the spirit of the thing, digest it into the the dun, boring, mundane mediocre shit-show world is a sure & sad way to wreck the thing. Yet these people deserve & need support somehow. Finding innovative ways to support those doing vast social good without binding & restricting them, without entailing them into your projects & curtailing their potential.
That all said, at this point, we just need to start funding these people far far better, step 1. These concerns about whether professionalization see destroys our golden vibrancy are abstract when so few (& only such select industrially useful) projects garner any support at all.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody has any right to expect labor from an unpaid person. I'm very grateful for OSS projects and maintainers but this is an interesting question: is doing something for free a free pass for false promises (advertising)? If I commit to help someone for free I then have a responsibility to show up. If an OSS developer advertise their projects as production ready then they have a responsibility to honor what is prom…
This is why we have licenses: … PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE I think it’s particularly clear, and that part is even in all capitals.
Sure, but it’s for legal responsibility. I’m talking about marketing, i.e. lies/false promises and/or error inducing landing pages regarding the reality of the project. It was not general point about all OSS projects, but to point a difference between projects that are part of a dishonest business strategy (company or personal) and “classic” OSS.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need the critical role of Open Source maintainer to professionalize. Do we? I do open source work and maintainership, and am happy that this is outside the control and influence of industry. Must even this that "makes the Internet special" also bow to industry needs?
The alternative is not the status quo. Look at all the talk of supply chain security from the big players. The alternative is that all power and profit is just moved to large institutional middlemen or directly to a few big companies who can afford such a program. If you don't care about control over the downstream of your project, or funding, no one is forcing you to professionalize! I just want that to be available…
I worry that if the majority of open source contributors professionalize, then we're left with something that resembles top-down directed corporate work (and an absence of a lot of the freedom that draws people towards developing free and open source software in the first place).
Proprietary and corporate players are equally useless at securing their supply chains; I don't love that (from my perspective) they're now blaming and trying to coerce open source to become more like them to ostensibly fix the same problems they propagate themselves.
I'm not a security nihilist: I think improvement is possible. But in my experience, not many corporate managers or project sponsors ask for removal of features and reduction of attack surface.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#145I'm an open source maintainer. I have a different take. Yes many projects lack funding, but I'm hesitant to ask for funding for my projects. Because: what sort of social contract would it imply if people fund me? Should funders be elegible for faster response times? Should their feature requests be implemented with more priority, or must they guaranteed to be implemented? What are the expectations of me? Can I take a…
I’m an open source maintainer that asks for donations with a basic “Buy me a cup of coffee” link. IMHO the person donating already got something in return which is the free software + the good feeling of having donated. I don’t offer anything in return for a donation because I also don’t want those strings attached and I feel at that point it’s no longer a donation. If I offer something in return it turns into sponso…
> I don’t offer anything in return for a donation because I also don’t want those strings attached and I feel at that point it’s no longer a donation
Couldn't agree more. The scope creep of this term hurts both parties. If there are expectations, call it a sponsorship program and state them clearly what it entails.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very well said. I maintain an open source project which is used by a few hundred companies, and I also sell a couple commercial products which enhance the functionality. I don't accept donations since I much prefer to offer well-defined commercial products instead of ill-defined donation benefits. Despite this, I've still had users who insist I should accept donations, often claiming that I would make some absurdly u…
I understand why you structure things the way you do, but I can speak for myself in a hypothetical scenario where I had money (now) to donate to an open source project that offers paid features. I might be concerned about paying for the paid features, because if I become reliant on them and then my capability to pay for them changes in the future, I'm now in an unfortunate position of having to re-write the features…
That's a good point, and I can somewhat understand that perspective for some types of software, especially projects geared at individual developers or very small companies.
For infrastructure tools that are typically adopted by an entire org or company though (as my products are), the situation is less understandable to me, even in the scenario where the user is a small bootstrapped company or solo dev.
I mean, my own company is small and bootstrapped, and I still pay for a number of commercial products because they provide benefit to my business or my own productivity. If I ever can't afford them in the future, that would probably indicate there are deeper existential problems with my business besides needing to rewrite some code to avoid use of those commercial products :)
Also, personally if I wanted to give money to open source software but was unsure about the future affordability of doing so, I would especially focus on donating to open source projects that are actively soliciting donations in the first place -- rather than arguing with a business owner over their lack of interest in donations, which is what some users have done in my case.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#147Do articles like these actually reach anyone who controls spending in companies with spare cash?
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Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#148Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture and of what makes the Internet special: people choose to experiment and share their work, and their work can reach every corner of the world. It has no significant parallel in other industries, it's beautiful, and I owe it my career. However, it's not a sustainable, fair, or effective foundation for an industry with the responsibility to power modern…
If it’s critical for you then ask for commercial license with support, hire em or just fork and maintain on you own.
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#149Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture and of what makes the Internet special: people choose to experiment and share their work, and their work can reach every corner of the world. It has no significant parallel in other industries, it's beautiful, and I owe it my career. However, it's not a sustainable, fair, or effective foundation for an industry with the responsibility to power modern…
Like all infrastructure with network effects and pksitive externalities, it should be tax funded.
Privatised OSes or other platform software is an absurd and insane proposition
Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects
#150You want to sell software, just sell it, geez.