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I'm giving up on open source

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Re: I'm giving up on open source

#161

Post by spacechild1 »

CRConrad wrote: post #147
spacechild1 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

So you, as opposed to your customers, are just as grumpy and rude as the rest of us...? ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist. But your observation -- basically, that if you want non-rude users / customers, don't direct your product at programmers / hackers / geeks -- is so common as to be almost a truism. Why is this? Are we all assholes, or WTF?!? Do we have to be? Sigh...

> don't direct your product at programmers / hackers / geeks

On the contrary! My users are programmers/hackers/geeks. The difference is that they use my software to create (experimental) art. Many have a non-technical background, though. I guess that creates (or requires?) a whole different mindset. These people are genuinely happy that the software exists because it helps them to be creative and express themselves.

> So you, as opposed to your customers, are just as grumpy and rude as the rest of us...? ;-)

My background is in music, so I am not really a typical tech guy (although I've been programming since I was a kid). I might be a bit grumpy at times, but that's because I am from Austria :p

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#162

Post by franciscop »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #60
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…

> You do need to develop a very thick skin in OSS to be able to thrive. Yet, users or submitters of open-source must be coddled? One of the chief complaints about Linus Torvolds is his blunt communication style in response to poor quality code. So OSS developers must be able to accept very harsh critism or even insults but always be kind to users who offer nothing in return?

> So OSS developers must be able to accept very harsh critism or even insults but always be kind to users who offer nothing in return?

I absolutely didn't say that, please don't twist my words. Not only did I not answer about the OSS dev response, but I also didn't make a moral judgement of what must be done, both of which you are attributing to me.

They can answer with insults for all I care, but that's a lose-lose situation. The way the OSS is set up today is that you WILL get shit, so you should be able to weather it without it affecting you.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#163

Post by franciscop »

codezero wrote: post #56
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…

or we could demand that users of free software shouldn't dictate the culture of the community and that maintainers don't need thick skin. Instead maybe we should ask that users should be respectful and courteous.

You cannot do that with the current tools. I'd even argue that Microsoft's corporate goals are a bit at odds with the community best interests, e.g. adding friction to Github or to join/add to a project would decrease Github use, which is likely a KPI internally.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#164

Post by dagw »

bruce511 wrote: post #132
anaxamander wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, don't charge $40 if you are targeting large companies. For me as a project manager at Big Co, $40 and $400 is exactly the same, if I'm willing to pay one I'm willing to pay the other. What I care about is how friction free the process of paying you that money is.

Also I would rather pay one company $1000/month than 5 companies $100/month for the same service. To be crass about it, it isn't my money, but it is my time.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#165

Post by pabs3 »

CRConrad wrote: post #145
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.

> There's OSS at the large-scale level (Linux, Firefox, Postgres) where the model is clearly working and sustainable. Is it, really? At "the large-scale level" of the project, perhaps -- but what do we know about how "sustained" individual contributors even to those projects feel they are being?

The LWN folks have some stats about employment of Linux contributors. Most contributions are paid, but the volunteers ("None") beat a number of companies by changesets and by lines changed.

https://lwn.net/Articles/964106/

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#166

Post by neurostimulant »

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.

Doesn't seem to be unique to OSS. Free/cheap stuff attracting the worse kind of people also happen in other fields.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#167

Post by eesmith »

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.

The argument is that open source is based on "contempt for property."

Yet most open source projects use a license based on copyright, and copyright is generally considered part of "intellectual property" as it draws from property ownership as its model.

Without strong copyright, there is no effective GPL.

I therefore do not see any connection between open source and contempt for property. Certainly less contempt than I see from capitalist corporations which use open source components in proprietary products and in violation of the license terms.

As for your "kind of by definition can't be open source", I'll kindly direct you to a counter-example at https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html which includes both "SQLite Is Public Domain" and "SQLite is open-source, meaning that you can make as many copies of it as you want and do whatever you want with those copies, without limitation."

You'll find very few people who argue or believe that SQLite is not open source.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#168

Post by Myrmornis »

This post risks confusing two things: maintaining open source software, and trying to make money from doing that. There's no real problem with the former: you do it because you want to, and you ignore people if they're unpleasant on GitHub or wherever. You just focus on making some nice software because that's what you want to do in your spare time, or perhaps in order to bolster your applications for paid work. Making money from open source software is something different entirely, and that's what the author is complaining about.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#169

Post by cvwright »

fanf2 wrote: post #156
thayne wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like this is true at the larger scale as well. For example, IBM and SGI etc helping to improve Linux in the 90s / early 00s.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#170

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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…

Open source done for money is doing it wrong.

One of the things that makes OSS so great is that it's not done with a profit incentive, so it doesn't exploit or rent seek from the user.

Many labor under the delusion that they can, or should, make money writing OSS though.

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