I'm not sure why I do it, but I regularly remove all the stars from my GitHub project.
You are a complicated character.
GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
91–100 of 251 posts
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I think this may be a case where because you have a bunch of freedoms, you feel like you should have more. I say this to re-assure you, not critisize you. Open Source, and Free Software, are very clear on the 4 freedoms you enjoy. You can use, modify, distribute etc. But it's not a 2-way street. You have no rights about what goes back into the project, the author is under no…
The logical conclusion of everyone taking the model of "pay me to review patches or read your issues" is fragmentation. Instead of a vibrant ecosystem where people collaborate on patches and the project grows, the issues and solutions remain internalized in private forks. Is that a better outcome? From the time/money standpoint it's great, and it may make the project more sustainable since there are fewer issues and…
[deleted]
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#93Classic mistake. FOSS is not about making money. In fact, it's antithetical to making money. Value extraction is the province of closed source/user hostile software, by nature.
A lot of people and companies are making money from Linux, including Linus Torvalds and many kernel hackers. Linux is GPL’d. I think it is hard to make the claim that making money is antithetical to FOSS.
No post body was provided.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I think this may be a case where because you have a bunch of freedoms, you feel like you should have more. I say this to re-assure you, not critisize you. Open Source, and Free Software, are very clear on the 4 freedoms you enjoy. You can use, modify, distribute etc. But it's not a 2-way street. You have no rights about what goes back into the project, the author is under no…
The logical conclusion of everyone taking the model of "pay me to review patches or read your issues" is fragmentation. Instead of a vibrant ecosystem where people collaborate on patches and the project grows, the issues and solutions remain internalized in private forks. Is that a better outcome? From the time/money standpoint it's great, and it may make the project more sustainable since there are fewer issues and…
You have articulated well the trade-off between "project first" and "business first".
From a user point of view, project first is the only thing that matters. There is an instinctive resistance to anything that gets in the way. On the other hand users generally don't care about the project authors getting paid or not.
From the author side, getting paid is often a goal. If that means limiting the community to paying users, then so be it. From their perspective they are offering value, and they choose to spend their time focused on users who are paying.
In other words they need your money, not your code suggestions. They can code, but code doesn't pay rent.
As you say, others can choose to silo their changes, and not post them back, that is their right, and indeed likely happens anyway.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#95May I ask: let's say I am Joe Schmoe, an individual, not a corporation. But I have a particular need for coding done in, say, AutoHotKey or as an Outlook macro. I wish to pay someone for this small coding project. What is the best forum to do this exchange? I'm assuming this question would be on-topic to this thread because it is essentially, "If someone DOES want to help you to pay your rent, or at least for a week'…
Unlike the other websites mentioned, Contra is commission free and does not limit your communication with the freelancer.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the link: But it is MIT, can't I use it for free? Yes all projects are under MIT so the community backing honesty system can be ignored and Fody used for free. Do I need to be a Patron to contribute a Pull Request? Yes. Users must be a Patron to be a user of Fody. Contributing Pull Requests does not cancel this out. It may seem unfair to expect people both contribute PRs and also financially back this project. H…
> Many developers can afford $36 a year You realize that my dependency stack contains about 2500 dependencies right? If they all follow this model I’m looking at $90k/year just to contribute to a project.
To contribute to 2500 projects yes it would cost that. Otherwise your current rights or license that lets you use those dependencies already should be fine.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
? What contribution are you imagining that involves a PR to all 2500 projects?
Applying this business model to every project they use.
Let’s imagine you can, for example fix an issue
with NextJS API system without needing to touch, say React or Express or a whole load of other deps.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#98I continue to think that the best model is the one adopted by Fody.NET[0]. It's open-source, on GitHub, under the MIT license, developed in the open, and with a voluntary OpenCollective. And if you open an issue or pull request and you're not on the OpenCollective, it's usually immediately closed, by policy. The result is a system that is paid enough to be excellent, excellent enough for most users not to need suppor…
It doesn't work if the project hasn't had any new issues in a while. There is no incentive to be part of the OpenCollective if the project is completed and has no bugs. I've been struggling with this issue with my project. It's a completed project, no scope creep, no bugs, just occasional update once every 6 months or so. The docs are complete and detailed so nobody needs extra help; no one will pay for support At th…
Which makes sense in a way because part of the brand is “we’ll be around in 2033 to support this”. And “need help? see myriad answers on stackoverflow” and so
on.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#99I have been thinking about closing my Github account and moving all my code to gitweb on one of my personal domains. I'm tired of the social/popularity contest aspect of Github and just want to write and publish code that I find interesting. I also want more control and I don't want my code used for AI research like co pilot. I thought about trying source hut, or something similar, but I feel it will end-up just like…
how does another platform help you evade copilot? wouldn’t a “lower” platform have to pursue legal routes that are very unpalatable for those lacking deep pockets and legal expertise?
Using another platformmeans that GitHub won't have more rights to your code than anyone else.
Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
#100As moderator of Reddit, now I question myself why I am doing it for free.
Reddit Moderators, Forum Moderators, Chat Moderators, Blog Writers, Open Source Developers.
The Internet is built on a lot of great people doing things for free. That doesn't have to be a bad thing if you are okay with it. But always make sure you feel good about what you are doing. If you get enjoyment or a sense of accomplishment (to quote EA) out of it then it's no worse than playing a video game or watching a tv show.