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Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

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Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#31

Post by dogma1138 »

bombolo wrote: post #20
rezo2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is strange to count on payment for code distributed under a free license. You can use a license that would prohibit the use of code for free in commercial products, but then spread of project will also be reduced.

I've always only used GPL on my projects, and I'm now moving to use AGPL. For me adoption is not important if that means freeloaders taking and giving nothing back.

The problem is that often there isn’t even an easy way to give back sure there are donations but ironically for a non person entity making donation payments like this isn’t something that is possible because laws often don’t account for this model as the projects are often not registered charities or other statutory non for profit organizations.

When a company makes a payment to an individual or an incorporated entity that is not a donation. It’s very difficult to near impossible to even properly classify them which means you are at very serious risk of violating either employment laws or tax laws or both.

And a lot of projects that have a restrictive license don’t dual license or do it properly and don’t really support commercial channels.

So whilst it’s easy to blame freeloaders more often than not the project maintainers are at fault.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#32

Post by bombolo »

dogma1138 wrote: post #31
bombolo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always only used GPL on my projects, and I'm now moving to use AGPL. For me adoption is not important if that means freeloaders taking and giving nothing back.

The problem is that often there isn’t even an easy way to give back sure there are donations but ironically for a non person entity making donation payments like this isn’t something that is possible because laws often don’t account for this model as the projects are often not registered charities or other statutory non for profit organizations. When a company makes a payment to an individual or an incorporated entit…

Seems you haven't read the horror stories from Daniel Stenberg's (curl's main author) website.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#33

Post by throwawaysalome »

dogma1138 wrote: post #31
bombolo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always only used GPL on my projects, and I'm now moving to use AGPL. For me adoption is not important if that means freeloaders taking and giving nothing back.

The problem is that often there isn’t even an easy way to give back sure there are donations but ironically for a non person entity making donation payments like this isn’t something that is possible because laws often don’t account for this model as the projects are often not registered charities or other statutory non for profit organizations. When a company makes a payment to an individual or an incorporated entit…

it's easy to blame freeloaders [but] the project maintainers are at fault

No one except butt-hurt OP is blaming anyone. If someone agrees to finish your basement for free, you accede and ask him to keep the noise down.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#34

Post by dogma1138 »

bombolo wrote: post #32
dogma1138 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that often there isn’t even an easy way to give back sure there are donations but ironically for a non person entity making donation payments like this isn’t something that is possible because laws often don’t account for this model as the projects are often not registered charities or other statutory non for profit organizations. When a company makes a payment to an individual or an incorporated entit…

Seems you haven't read the horror stories from Daniel Stenberg's (curl's main author) website.

There will always be idiotic compliance departments that don’t understand it also doesn’t help when SAM teams don’t differentiate between open source software and commercial software either in practice or logistically e.g. you have to register a vendor in some ERP/CRM system for every software even if it’s open source.

It still doesn’t change the fact that companies big and small can’t donate money to projects easily unless those projects are well organized behind an incorporated entity.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#35

Post by pointlessone »

robertlagrant wrote: post #2

Open Source is broken if you think you should be able to make money from it when you need to. I don't think it's broken for its stated aims. I feel bad the chap, but I don't think Open Source is to blame. It is fundamentally hard to charge tiny amounts of money to millions of people, which is all he really has to do to survive, because receiving money, especially with all the different tax rules from countries, make…

I agree that Open Source (and Free Software, so let's go with FOSS) works as designed. However, charging is not an option FOSS supports. At best it's accepting and no one's paying. OpenSSL, for instance, had accepted money for a long time yet the whole internet had to be scared for the money to actually start trickling in and still laughable amounts.

Where I don't agree is that FOSS is not to blame. It absolutely is. FOSS is the entrenched default. And FOSS is incompatible with requiring a payment. To require a payment one has to run a tangential business (provide support, integration services, etc.) and all the options are in conflict with the quality of the main FOSS product one way or another. FOSS makes it hard to switch to any other model and it's harder the longer the project lives.

The issue of funding is not going to be solved by FOSS because it is not the foal. We need to look past FOSS to find a solution. A good start would be to chose a different license when one starts a project. Like one of PolyForm Licenses [1] or BTPL [2]. These are not FOSS compatible but they align much better with the funding goal. And if one figures it doesn't work for the project it's easy to switch to FOSS. Much easier than the other way around, anyway.

[1]: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ [2]: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/01/26/Big-Time-2.0.0

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#36

Post by pointlessone »

karaterobot wrote: post #26

If somebody asks for charity, many people give them charity, because we owe that much to our fellow human beings. If the same person works for thousands of hours, and then says "hey, remember me? I gave you this thing that took thousands of hours to make, and I desperately need money, can I have some?" a large percentage of people will say "fuck you, how dare you try to shake me down for money!" A slightly more nuanc…

This is a great argument not to choose a FOSS license next time.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#37

Post by rini17 »

bentobean wrote: post #14

I myself am the beneficiary of many open-source projects. I readily acknowledge this. That said, where my mind keeps going to is that open-source software is in many ways similar to communism. And communism failed for a reason . If you want to freely give away your work, then by all means - do so. But do so with the understanding that you are promised absolutely nothing in return. No one owes you anything. This man w…

> had he pursued a paying career and spent a reasonable amount of his free time working on this

Please refrain from such unsolicited advice. Everyone has different values and alignment you don't know about. There are so many cases where idealists followed your advice, were in turn drained by mismanagement and burned out of IT completely.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#38

Post by robertlagrant »

pointlessone wrote: post #35
robertlagrant wrote: post #2

Open Source is broken if you think you should be able to make money from it when you need to. I don't think it's broken for its stated aims. I feel bad the chap, but I don't think Open Source is to blame. It is fundamentally hard to charge tiny amounts of money to millions of people, which is all he really has to do to survive, because receiving money, especially with all the different tax rules from countries, make…

I agree that Open Source (and Free Software, so let's go with FOSS) works as designed. However, charging is not an option FOSS supports. At best it's accepting and no one's paying. OpenSSL, for instance, had accepted money for a long time yet the whole internet had to be scared for the money to actually start trickling in and still laughable amounts. Where I don't agree is that FOSS is not to blame. It absolutely is.…

FOSS isn't entrenched in any meaningful way. No one forces or even guides people to make FOSS. People choose to opt into FOSS, and choose to work on it for nothing.

As an alternative, there are millions of commercial software vendors out there, and they predate FOSS. They weren't forced into some FOSS hegemony, because that doesn't happen.

If people don't want to work on FOSS, they can do what everyone else does and start a company, and charge for their work.

The thing to avoid is starting something that's totally free, watching people pick it up because it's free, keep using it because it's decent, and then assume that those people owe you money. They may well have done something else if they'd known they were making a purchasing decision from day 1.

I do think there's an opportunity somewhere for GitHub, that owns most of the infrastructure for Javascript OSS development, to do something for JS developers. For example, they could do what YouTube does with paid accounts and distribute some of the monthly fee to creators proportionally based on watch time.

(Note: that wouldn't be righting an injustice, although I'm sure their marketing would make the most of that instinct in people. It would just be adding a proprietary marketplace to monetise OSS creators. But it might also alleviate the problem.)

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#39

Post by throwawaysalome »

pointlessone wrote: post #35
robertlagrant wrote: post #2

Open Source is broken if you think you should be able to make money from it when you need to. I don't think it's broken for its stated aims. I feel bad the chap, but I don't think Open Source is to blame. It is fundamentally hard to charge tiny amounts of money to millions of people, which is all he really has to do to survive, because receiving money, especially with all the different tax rules from countries, make…

I agree that Open Source (and Free Software, so let's go with FOSS) works as designed. However, charging is not an option FOSS supports. At best it's accepting and no one's paying. OpenSSL, for instance, had accepted money for a long time yet the whole internet had to be scared for the money to actually start trickling in and still laughable amounts. Where I don't agree is that FOSS is not to blame. It absolutely is.…

Like one of PolyForm Licenses [1] or BTPL [2]

I'm contemptuous of the feckless trust that unenforceable legalese can win over human nature. It already sounds ridiculous for Coca Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken to publish their secret recipes permitting the public to recreate them at home but not repackage and resell. And that's for a food product whose provenance is easy to trace, what with the issues of scalability, storage, transportation, government inspection, etc. Dissemination of software is frictionless and hard to trace.

Re: Open-source is broken: the sad story of Denis Pushkarev (core-JS)

#40

Post by bombolo »

dogma1138 wrote: post #34
bombolo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems you haven't read the horror stories from Daniel Stenberg's (curl's main author) website.

There will always be idiotic compliance departments that don’t understand it also doesn’t help when SAM teams don’t differentiate between open source software and commercial software either in practice or logistically e.g. you have to register a vendor in some ERP/CRM system for every software even if it’s open source. It still doesn’t change the fact that companies big and small can’t donate money to projects easily…

Not the latest NASA one. The others.
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