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I'm giving up on open source

nutjs.dev

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Re: I'm giving up on open source

#151

Post by CRConrad »

refulgentis wrote: post #79
fsckboy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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

Printer driver is what the Free Software movement, and therefore its bastard son the Open Source movement, comes from. But, sure, you want to call that "no benefit", you do you, man...

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#152

Post by CRConrad »

nitwit005 wrote: post #129
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly naivety. There are a lot of people who really don't understand that people are doing something without getting paid, as a side gig, just to be helpful. They just don't get it. An uncle, who is a totally decent human being otherwise would complain loudly and bitterly at folks who ran kids sporting events when things didn't run smoothly. At the time I didn't think much of it, until I was an adult and saw th…

Once you're dealing with a large group of people, you can't assume you're dealing with a basically nice person. If you interact with a thousand people, you are going to interact with multiple genuine criminals.

Aren't those somewhat orthogonal concepts? That is, I think some genuine criminals can still be basically nice people.

Probably not a majority, though. And not that it detracts from your actual point; just a s(n?)ide observation.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#153

Post by CRConrad »

austin-cheney wrote: post #50
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.

Entitlement. Imagine if OSS went away tomorrow, not even all OSS, just the supplemental developer code specific tools. Suddenly 90+% of JavaScript developers would no longer be able to do their jobs. They wouldn’t even be able to pretend to write deliverable code. Careers instantly killed. Nobody thinks about that. These free helpers are just assumed to be required and always available, completely taken for granted.…

> These free helpers are just assumed to be required and always available, completely taken for granted. These things are just presumed to be absolute necessary and unavoidable.

Xkcd, Nebraska, 2003...?

ETA: https://xkcd.com/2347/

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#154

Post by bobdvb »

CRConrad wrote: post #148
Zancarius wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> If you tolerate a wide gamut of responses, and abuse, you're going to get abused. Isn't there something called "the tolerance (or intolerance?) paradox"? Basically, something about "If you want tolerance to prevail, the one thing you can't tolerate is intolerance"? Think I've seen it mentioned here; others may be able to source my dim recollection. Boils down to, I guess, if you don't want to get abused, abuse the…

Absolutely don't tolerate abuse and set out your stall early on but I don't think the response is to fire the first volley, but to shutdown an abuser quickly.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" is an old saying but very true and often forgotten. As a maintainer or moderator, swift action which shuts down antisocial behaviour is more important than engaging. Perhaps you didn't really mean to say "abuse the crap out of abusers", but the correct response isn't abuse, it's a simple denial of engagement.

The other side of this is arrogant maintainers who have no interest in engaging with their audience and who don't accept criticism/comment. If you put it out there then you are asking for comment, if you just want to maintain your own code of your own purposes, then either don't make it open source or at least turn off issue tracking.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#155

Post by CRConrad »

eesmith wrote: post #108
lucajona wrote: post #51

For context, I started an open source project that is arguably 10x more popular than Nutjs (20k stars on github vs 2k). I also gave up on maintaining it, but others stepped in to take care of it so it's still running. The parallels between open source and bolshevism are interesting. I'm not a history expert, but this is just how it appears to me. - Contempt for property - Pitches itself as a movement by "the people",…

Open source is largely based on "property". Very few open source projects are in the public domain. The FOSS developers I know have a higher respect for those licenses than capitalist corporate users, who seem to treat FOSS licenses with contempt by not following all the terms. Your lists of points seem also applicable to capitalism. - ignore property rights if the fines are cheaper than the profits - capitalism both…

> Very few open source projects are in the public domain.

Software in the public domain kind of by definition can't be open source. Not for more than a fleeting instant: You can take it and use it, and so can anyone -- and immediately make it closed source.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#156

Post by fanf2 »

thayne wrote: post #141
bruce511 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the one man band level, it works fine if it is a hobby. The problem is figuring out how to make a living supporting a small project.

It works OK if the small project is a byproduct of a day job whose primary purpose is something else.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#157

Post by fanf2 »

CRConrad wrote: post #155
eesmith wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is largely based on "property". Very few open source projects are in the public domain. The FOSS developers I know have a higher respect for those licenses than capitalist corporate users, who seem to treat FOSS licenses with contempt by not following all the terms. Your lists of points seem also applicable to capitalism. - ignore property rights if the fines are cheaper than the profits - capitalism both…

> Very few open source projects are in the public domain. Software in the public domain kind of by definition can't be open source. Not for more than a fleeting instant: You can take it and use it, and so can anyone -- and immediately make it closed source.

You can say the same thing about any non-copyleft BSD/MIT/ISC-style licence.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#158

Post by CRConrad »

000ooo000 wrote: post #138
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.

> 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.

I'd be willing to bet it isn't.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#159

Post by CRConrad »

fanf2 wrote: post #157
CRConrad wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few open source projects are in the public domain. Software in the public domain kind of by definition can't be open source. Not for more than a fleeting instant: You can take it and use it, and so can anyone -- and immediately make it closed source.

You can say the same thing about any non-copyleft BSD/MIT/ISC-style licence.

Yup. And I think I have. :-)

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#160

Post by CRConrad »

bobdvb wrote: post #154
CRConrad wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tolerate a wide gamut of responses, and abuse, you're going to get abused. Isn't there something called "the tolerance (or intolerance?) paradox"? Basically, something about "If you want tolerance to prevail, the one thing you can't tolerate is intolerance"? Think I've seen it mentioned here; others may be able to source my dim recollection. Boils down to, I guess, if you don't want to get abused, abuse the…

Absolutely don't tolerate abuse and set out your stall early on but I don't think the response is to fire the first volley, but to shutdown an abuser quickly. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" is an old saying but very true and often forgotten. As a maintainer or moderator, swift action which shuts down antisocial behaviour is more important than engaging. Perhaps you didn't really mean to say "abuse th…

> Absolutely don't tolerate abuse and set out your stall early on but I don't think the response is to fire the first volley, but to shutdown an abuser quickly.

Well, by "abuse the crap out of abusers" I certainly didn't mean you should "fire the first volley". You can't know that someone is an abuser before they have fired the first volley. Then you fire the second one, to shut them down.

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