Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

kitze.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 251 posts

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#241

Post by throwaway675309 »

karaterobot wrote: post #26

> it made 93$ in 2.5 years > When was the last time you chose a value above 1$ > you're a saint for choosing 2.5$ > OMFG THIS SHIRT IS 20$ For the record: the dollar sign comes before the number. I'll take the downvotes, I just can't stand it. I did read the article, and my heart goes out to the author.

I hate arguments like this, appealing to some magical distinct codex of grammatical law as if language isn't messy and largely evolutionarily in nature, and highly dependent upon the current socially agreed-upon context.

Like when pedantics get angry about the misuse of "begging the question". If the majority of readers understand the phrase to mean "demands that we ask the question", then that's what it effectively means.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#242

Post by collaborative »

hrbf wrote: post #172
collaborative wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it's now got to the point where people will downvote you for charging anything more than 0 and, if possible, they will write 1 star reviews in caps DON'T DOWNLOAD, IT'S NOT FREE!!

You know, let them. Whatever I decide to share with the world, I do for reasons of giving back. If some grab, run and foul-mouth, that’s their issue. The main idea of free culture is building on each other, not maximum extractive consumption. I believe the idea to be further ahead than our economic systems and accompanying incentives though.

I also am a fan of showing the other cheek but have to admit this does get me down from time to time .. makes me feel like a vending machine with no coin slots. Only hope is regulation of gate keepers at this point

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#243

Post by alfalfasprout »

dzikimarian wrote: post #162
senko wrote: post #116

I've been harping for years to anyone who would listen, Open Source is not a business model [0]. If your motivation for doing open source is money, you're doing it wrong. You'll be much better off just getting a job (and GitHub stars can help with that!). We all know "build it and they will come" and "follow your passion and the money will follow" don't really work in the real world. You have to make something people…

Frankly I don't get purpose of this article. Guy wrote some software with clear expectation of money and released it for free. Fine - bad pick of distribution model - it happens. Then he writes article, stating that you shouldn't be ashamed to ask for money. To whom it's directed? All OSS developers? Including developers of electron (one of his dependencies), which then has tens or hundreds of packages in its depende…

Of important note-- open source doesn't necessarily mean free. You can still require paid licenses for eg; commercial use but still provide the source code/allow modification.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#244

Post by iudqnolq »

ilyt wrote: post #152
ahepp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the part of this that's weird to me, is that non-paying users are able to open issues or pull requests at all. Something about it feels very passive aggressive. Why not just have the public facing project be a fork of a private, access protected project where bug tracking and PRs are handled, that only patrons can access? For some reason, saying "only patrons can access our development repo" seems perfectly r…

Yeah at that point just turn it off so people don't waste time (both them and yours) filling out bugs that will never get touched and just closed

If you don't read the prominent documentation before filing issues you're wasting lots of maintainer's time.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#245

Post by quickthrower2 »

loopgh wrote: post #201
quickthrower2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Projects from big companies disappear faster than, say, Vim and many other similar projects.

Vim is definitely a brand though. It is more than that, it has cult following.

Big companies known for abandoning projects have a bad brand in that regard (although their brand might be good in other areas).

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#246

Post by Klonoar »

MayeulC wrote: post #190
_wldu wrote: post #49

I 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…

I sometimes use github search to double-check if someone has worked on a problem before startin myself. Even when the repo is abandonned, it sometimes gives a good starting point. GitHub often tells me about repos I didn't find on search engines. I'd say go for it, but the discoverability aspect is important. I also follow friends and sometimes find interesting projects through their stars.

This is, increasingly, one of the only things I find myself locked into GitHub for: if I'm working in a space that's sufficiently "old" (e.g, macOS APIs), I generally cannot get Google to produce anything useful anymore and end up having to comb through various GitHub repositories. It's maddening.

No other code search engine comes close anymore, unfortunately.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#247

Post by beyang »

Klonoar wrote: post #246
MayeulC wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes use github search to double-check if someone has worked on a problem before startin myself. Even when the repo is abandonned, it sometimes gives a good starting point. GitHub often tells me about repos I didn't find on search engines. I'd say go for it, but the discoverability aspect is important. I also follow friends and sometimes find interesting projects through their stars.

This is, increasingly, one of the only things I find myself locked into GitHub for: if I'm working in a space that's sufficiently "old" (e.g, macOS APIs), I generally cannot get Google to produce anything useful anymore and end up having to comb through various GitHub repositories. It's maddening. No other code search engine comes close anymore, unfortunately.

Would Sourcegraph satisfy this use case? https://sourcegraph.com/search

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#248

Post by Klonoar »

beyang wrote: post #247
Klonoar wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, increasingly, one of the only things I find myself locked into GitHub for: if I'm working in a space that's sufficiently "old" (e.g, macOS APIs), I generally cannot get Google to produce anything useful anymore and end up having to comb through various GitHub repositories. It's maddening. No other code search engine comes close anymore, unfortunately.

Would Sourcegraph satisfy this use case? https://sourcegraph.com/search

Huh, nice! Might work.

Do you know if there's a way to submit something to this to spider (e.g a Gitea instance)?

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#249

Post by NayamAmarshe »

fsckboy wrote: post #240
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people really depending on Open Source for Economics? Open Source is not a business model, and that should be obvious. It's a distribution model, which has nothing to do with economics. Sure, it may affect a few variables but marketing and sales strategy are what matter more.

it's not a distribution model either, you can distribute binaries the same way, and they are not open source unless they're GPL, copyleft, etc. It's a source code license.

You could say it's a source code distribution model, as the name suggests.

Re: GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

#250

Post by gitgud »

> Just imagine if you enter a clothing store and be like "OMFG THIS SHIRT IS 20$? ARE YOU CRAZY? I CAN GO TO THE STORE NEXT DOOR AND GET ONE FOR 7$. I CAN GET A SKIRT, CUT IT, AND WEAR IT AS A T-SHIRT. OR EVEN BETTER, I'M GONNA SEW MY OWN SHIRT!!!111!"

This is a great analogy for open-source/commercial software in general. I still find myself naively thinking: "I could build this random project I just discovered!"

Post reply on HN