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I'm giving up on open source

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Re: I'm giving up on open source

#131

Post by bruce511 »

cycomanic wrote: post #127
bruce511 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the root of your mis-expectation is in thinking that companies behave like people. Your viewpoint is personal "I would do this" and for you it's easy, it's your money so you just write a check. Companies don't work like that. Firstly because individuals get budgets, and there's no point wasting limited resources on free stuff. Secondly because individuals are accountable. There are procurement processes, mult…

I find it interesting how in software we excuse behavior that would be completely unacceptable in most other settings, because "that's how companies operate". I have yet to hear of a McDonald's sending a truck to the nearest soup kitchen and loading all food into it, to sell at the restaurant, because companies "take maximum advantage of any free resource". Well they don't do it, because it's seen as unacceptable. Wh…

Ar first glance it seems like a good analogy, but it breaks down quickly.

Fundamentally the reason MD doesn't do that is because they don't have what MD want.

Companies are more than willing to exploit free resources whenever it suits them to do so. Dumping pollutants in air and water springs to mind. Leveraging public infrastructure and so on.

If my factory has a lot of trucks coming and going I don't "donate" extra money for road repair.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#132

Post by bruce511 »

anaxamander wrote: post #105
bruce511 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the root of your mis-expectation is in thinking that companies behave like people. Your viewpoint is personal "I would do this" and for you it's easy, it's your money so you just write a check. Companies don't work like that. Firstly because individuals get budgets, and there's no point wasting limited resources on free stuff. Secondly because individuals are accountable. There are procurement processes, mult…

The miscommunication here is a question of scale. $40 a month doesn't put a dent in your budget when you're paying six figure labor costs at the same interval. That all being said, I have no intention of writing OSS for a living. I contribute to FOSS for fun only, and I set my own schedule outside my day job.

$40 might be what the OSS developer wants. But the overhead in getting that $40 to them is immense.

Even assuming I can "just spend" that, I need an invoice. It needs to be captured by accounts. I can be quized on it.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#133

Post by BlueTemplar »

djha-skin wrote: post #92

I like how the OP moves to a time release monetizing model, where like cockroach, it's open source eventually . It could be an interesting counterpoint to the open core model, and one much more feasible for an individual developer. Only problem is, how do you make sure the source is open for some but not others for that period of time?

Also isn't there a longstanding way to deal with this : source provided for free, but everything else, in particular binaries and support : paid ?

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#134

Post by bruce511 »

haswell wrote: post #86
bruce511 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's suggesting everyone should abandon OSS. he's still using it, and contributing. I think he's saying that his "professional journey building OSS" is over. ie his day job needs to generate income. The abuse part exists in all software, free and commercial. But it's especially galling when you did the work for free. OSS also tends to attract, um, shall we say, those who are likely to be uncomplimentary…

> I think he's saying that his "professional journey building OSS" is over. ie his day job needs to generate income. I agree that he’s saying this. But FTA: > Open source is great, but it's not sustainable. We self-sabotaged ourselves over decades, and now we're at a point where it's hard to turn back. Publishing source code for the greater good is a noble cause, but to be honest, I think that over the years, using "…

There's OSS at the large-scale level (Linux, Firefox, Postgres) where the model is clearly working and sustainable.

There's also OSS at the "one man band has a small project" level, where, IMO, the sustainable model has yet to be figured out.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#135

Post by spacechild1 »

bruce511 wrote: post #67
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…

I don't think he's suggesting everyone should abandon OSS. he's still using it, and contributing. I think he's saying that his "professional journey building OSS" is over. ie his day job needs to generate income. The abuse part exists in all software, free and commercial. But it's especially galling when you did the work for free. OSS also tends to attract, um, shall we say, those who are likely to be uncomplimentary…

> OSS also tends to attract, um, shall we say, those who are likely to be uncomplimentary.

I maintain several small open source projects. The bug reports are generally helpful and the users very polite. People regularly thank me for my work and I cannot recall a single negative interaction. The trick is: my target audience are computer musicians :)

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#136

Post by zem »

anbardoi wrote: post #16

I understand the sentiment for this article, but I disagree with the part about using open source mainly to avoid paying for software. I use open source because I like having the ability to learn how it works. If I can't know how a program works, I can't have control over it. It is not my tool , I am its user . I also just like learning how technology works in general, and non-free software is generally difficult to…

i use (and write) open source because i enjoy the feeling of participating in a combined gift economy and shared commons people are working to improve. i do agree that the OP experienced the worst aspects of the culture, though, and don't blame them for turning their backs on it.

i also don't blame anyone for taking their own, mostly individually maintained and developed, project from open to closed for whatever reason. if the commons finds the project valuable enough someone else can always come along to fill the gap later, though it is sad to think about all the work that went into the original project.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#137

Post by mlhpdx »

I’m sympathetic to the author and having to deal with unpleasant folks. But I wonder how much of the economic experience is simply underestimating how difficult “business” actually is?

This has come up a few time recently on HN, where someone thinks there is an easy button for income. But there isn’t.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#138

Post by 000ooo000 »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #113

Cue the meme: Well………………bye. Look, we (aka OSS maintainers) are all struggling to find ways to get paid to make it sustainable—unless we're lucky enough to work at a company that literally just hired us to work on OSS. I totally get some legit gripes about how it's hard to get enough sponsors, or client projects which let you use the projects and then improve them, or whatever. But just throwing up your hands and say…

>How many OSS projects has this person used without supporting them?

A more fitting question would be "how many incredibly-entitled support requests has this person directed to projects without supporting them?", and I'd be willing to bet it's zero.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#139

Post by 000ooo000 »

moribvndvs wrote: post #128

I’m appalled by this, if I’m being honest. > Working on an open source project is still work, and if you're doing a good job, you should be rewarded for it. I also always believed that if you ever started a project that is valuable for companies, they would support you in return My friend, then you started in the wrong place. At the risk of getting into a mire over free vs open source software, I think you have funda…

>I do not believe you owe anyone anything just because you published a project, and you have the contract to prove it. However, I take issue with the “leaving and taking my toys with me”,

You said it yourself. They owe no-one anything - the toys are theirs to take home. That anyone might think continued access to his toys is a right just smacks of entitlement.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#140

Post by DopplerSmell »

zogrodea wrote: post #96
DopplerSmell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird take... AI art is cheap or free, but that doesn't mean anything at all in relation to how you treat the person providing the service. You have failed to understand that the value of the service is fundamentally different, providing open source software costs a human effort. Providing art no longer requires the same amount of human effort, if AI is acceptable, so it's not at all comparable.

What would you say to someone who responds that AI art only exists because of training data stolen from unpaid artists?

That it's an emotional reaction to someone using easily available material to train a program rather than themselves.

I always saw it as a technological consequence of allowing people to view their work; training a model is no different to an individual looking at it.

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