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I'm giving up on open source

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Re: I'm giving up on open source

#71

Post by parl_match »

anaxamander wrote: post #63
haswell wrote: post #25

I'm struggling with the framing of all of this. I think it's clear that the author doesn't want to be involved with the realities (as unfortunate as they are) of maintaining an OSS project. There are very real issues with entitled or abusive users that have been well documented. What I don't understand is the expectation that the money would just flow upon publishing the software with a permissive license. It sounds…

> most people won't pay for software if ... they don't have a vested interest in the project succeeding. Wouldn't you expect companies that rely on a given project to have a vested interest in the project succeeding? I wouldn't choose to spend who-knows-how-many man hours on migrating to a new technology instead of paying a modest (for a business) fee for licensing something I rely on.

The whole reality is kind of rough, and it shouldn't be this way.

Yes, but that is abstracted away easily as "someone else's problem". Mature organizations with SCA and policy around it will often do a library review that catches using less mature projects.

This means that you get a bunch of small companies that can't/won't maintain or contribute back to the projects themselves, and few big companies using it who'd have the overhead to contribute back.

In some cases, for popular and newer stuff, that means that when a vulnerability is found, you have hundreds of companies and projects downstream from the bad code. Meanwhile, the larger and more mature orgs flag it and deprecate or mitigate it (through various, expensive means like WAF/RASPs)

And by then, it might even be completely unsupported, or worse, made breaking changes that strand many. Like a whalefall, it will feed hackers for a year.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#72

Post by wanderingmind »

In my opinion, maintainers need to more actively block inconsiderate people. One thing Github should do is provide moderators ability to import a list of user accounts to block right from the gate. This way, communities can curate filters of accounts to be blocked like uBlock lists.

Rude and inconsiderate people need feel the pain of being actively blocked everywhere and not able to get anywhere forward with any of their requests. This can at least help OSS maintainers and developers get a little bit of mental sanity back

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#73

Post by somnic »

lordleft wrote: post #6

I will never understand how entitled or mean people can be towards OSS devs. I sympathize with this post a great deal and wish the author all the best in whatever he does next.

It might be sort of habitual. If I'm reaching out to support for a piece of software or hardware I've paid money for then it's actually fair to be pissed off if they're not providing what you paid for. The same doesn't apply to OSS, but a lot of people treat repo issues as if they're corporate tech support.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#75

Post by skywhopper »

I mean, good. The lesson is, don’t use a FOSS license for your code if you aren’t comfortable with people, maybe everyone, taking you up on it. And don’t share any software (or any creation) with anyone, open-source or proprietary, free or costly, if you don’t want to hear complaints and gripes and insults.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#76

Post by linuxhansl »

Releasing some software open source, having it gain popularity (just from being open source) and then saying you can't make money of it seems disingenuous to me. The project would not have been as popular if it hadn't been open source in the first place. You can't have it both ways.

Making money directly of an open source project is indeed difficult. But that also isn't the promise of open source. The promise is that many groups come together to work on an open source project for mutual benefit.

I had the privilege to work on several open source projects for my employer. Some of these were pretty important to what we are doing, but they were not the direct products we would sell. That worked remarkably well!

I still work on open source, for work, and some in my spare time.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#77

Post by aetherspawn »

Unfortunately, if you want to monetize something that is open source, you have to start with monetization in mind and open source just enough to hook people then get them on service contracts.

When you do it the other way (start open source, transition to closed source) it seems like everyone thinks they are entitled to get your work for free and they send you hate mail.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#78

Post by Zancarius »

MBCook wrote: post #42
haswell wrote: post #25

I'm struggling with the framing of all of this. I think it's clear that the author doesn't want to be involved with the realities (as unfortunate as they are) of maintaining an OSS project. There are very real issues with entitled or abusive users that have been well documented. What I don't understand is the expectation that the money would just flow upon publishing the software with a permissive license. It sounds…

It doesn’t have to be a reality. But people let it be. It’s only a reality because that kind of behavior is widely tolerated enough, or at least not met with harsh enough pushback, that it continues to drive away good contributors and cause burnout.

Exactly... This is so true, and it's sort of reflective of the human condition. If you tolerate a wide gamut of responses, and abuse, you're going to get abused. It sucks, but it's reality. The same thing happens (though, sometimes to a lesser degree, sometimes more) in our social circles.

Boundaries are necessary in all facets of life. If they're not well-defined, then they're easily crossed and you're left trying to establish them after expectations have already been laid, making it difficult to push back. I know it's not easy, but sometimes it's necessary to say no and cut off abusive behaviors/people. This was one of the hardest lessons I learned years ago. Yes, you'll make some enemies. Yes, you'll upset people. It's necessary.

One other problem (at least that I've had) is attachment. It's difficult to detach from something you've put a great deal of time and effort into, and one of the threats that occasionally pop up are "do X or fork/hand the project over/give up" (or any other especially mean epithet). If they're serious about forking it, hey, let them. It probably won't happen—and if it does, what are the benefits for the community? Is it risking fragmentation? If you're detached, threats seem a whole lot less threatening. And we've seen what pressure campaigns can do with some success (xz) with burned out devs.

I may just be jaded and cynical.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#79

Post by refulgentis »

fsckboy wrote: post #70
unethical_ban wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nailed it. Particularly the fact that as valid as OP's situation is, it isn't necessarily indicative of FOSS as a whole. They basically say it in their article: They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) of how awesome Linux and BSD are, and the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical, to be avoided, and so on. It seems the harsh reality of "Not everyone can be sustained by a nonprofit foundat…

> They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) you grew up thinking you were drinking koolaid, but you weren't, it was indeed fine wine. > of how awesome Linux and BSD are it's hard to think of two things more awesome than those two things. There's no koolaid, they are monumental achievements and are amazing. > the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical Stallman is/was a socialist, so yes, he h…

This seems to be tone deaf fluffy theory in the face of "well, I can't afford to eat but at least some guy online says it's fine wine"

Printer driver is a nice motivating story but in practice its a lotta work for no benefit

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#80

Post by skydhash »

franciscop wrote: post #31

You do need to develop a very thick skin in OSS to be able to thrive. You need to learn to just block those issues+people, both in the repo and mentally. I'm a nobody, but still some of my projects got a bit popular and I felt the heat, e.g. one of them was a CSS library which was very "beginner friendly", so people came constantly to the Issues to ask help with their CSS and how to do their job (not about the librar…

I was reading “Working in Public” and one of the ideas I agree the most was that the community can use the software, but not direct it. While communication is important, I’d restrict it to the appropriate channel: Using a bug report tools for issue; A feeback/roadmap tool for enhancement request; A forum for user/user support; A wiki for Guides. The actual project management would be read-only.
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