Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm giving up on open source

nutjs.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 209 posts

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#191

Post by simonblack »

There's quite a bit of cognitive dissonance in the article. Or I'm not reading it properly.

On one hand he talks about charging for his plugins, and on the other he says that open source is not sustainable unless somebody pays for it.

Yes. Somebody does pay for it. Either the programmer himself, or the company that employs the programmer. But somewhere along the line somebody, somewhere is paying for open source programming.

Yes there's a bit of quid pro quo. I'll use the gcc that somebody sweated blood, tears and money over for free. But the gcc that I use today allows me to put my software out there 'on the cloud' for the next person to use for free. Have I sweated blood, tears and money to produce my software? Yes, of course I have. Do I want cold, hard cash for that software? No.

There is a old principle here: 'Pass it around' or maybe 'Pay it forward' is how you first saw it. But I received gcc for free from upstream, I pass my own software downstream for free too.

"And so it goes."

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#192

Post by EdwardDiego »

justinclift wrote: post #27

> This public issue on the nut.js repo ... Personally speaking, if that user had posted something with the same attitude on one of my projects repos they'd have been banned from the repos of the entire org. Pretty sure I've only ever had to do that twice before, across a lot of years.

It seems like the backlash to that user has severely impacted their mental health.

All of this is fucking stupid.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#193

Post by forgotpwd16 »

>All of my packages around nut.js will cease to exist publicly on npm. Ready-to-use packages will only be available through the private nut.js package registry, which requires an active subscription to be used.

>The GitHub repo will remain public, so if you want to continue using nut.js on your own, you'll have to take care of building, testing and hosting packages yourself.

Open source doesn't require distributing pre-built packages. So still is open source. This model was used by QtiPlot until the sources were eventually stopped being available, because surprise, surprise there're people that were building it from sources and then distributing.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#194

Post by eu_rope »

Just in time before the CRA hits the fan. Since it's open source with commercial activity, he would be liable for the open source released on similar terms as proprietary software to all the free users that did not pay a dime (hopefully only within the requirements of the Act, I'm not sure about that).

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#195

Post by eu_rope »

sevagh wrote: post #124
xtracto wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a FUCK OFF OSS license: like the do-whatever-tf-you-want but with extra clauses telling people to FO. if they want bugfixes, improvements or features. All the free software I had put out there is kind of like that. I don't care about the fame, glory or user count. I release something I built to scratch an itch just because someone else might find it useful. If you didn't like my code, tough luck, go write you…

The MIT license already bakes "fuck off" into its core. The license does not put any maintenance burden on the creator. So, choose a regular license, and comport yourself as a maintainer in a manner that tells people to fuck off. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY

That's going to change with the Cyber Resilience Act (at least in this context, where open source is tied with a commercial activity).

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#196

Post by eviks »

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?

One of the chief complaints is extreme rudeness/insulting behavior, not your confusion with bluntness.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#197

Post by eviks »

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…

That would be what's usually called "source available + documented" rather than open source

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#198

Post by eviks »

orliesaurus wrote: post #93

I maintain an OSS that is 10x smaller than the author of the post and I have experienced the same absurd community behavior. I feel bad for the state of open source [0] - even when Microsoft literally a couple of weeks ago pulled the "FIX THIS NOW" card on ffmpeg https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/10341#comment:4 [0] https://blog.tidelift.com/maintainer-burnout-is-real

How did you manage to translate "Please help," into a "FIX THIS NOW"?

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#199

Post by capr »

lomereiter wrote: post #81
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…

If this were indeed the average attitude, there wouldn't be this big of an outcry with regards to the move from fully open-source to source-available licenses (Mongo/ELK/Hashicorp/etc.)

wrong: source-available means you can look but you can't incorporate/change/copy-paste/get-inspired-by. "look at this wheel, learn but don't make your own". It's a travesty.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#200

Post by nullfield »

eu_rope wrote: post #194

Just in time before the CRA hits the fan. Since it's open source with commercial activity, he would be liable for the open source released on similar terms as proprietary software to all the free users that did not pay a dime (hopefully only within the requirements of the Act, I'm not sure about that).

One has a couple options here, given that the EU didn’t seem to listen re: certain classes of developers, small software projects, and the like:

1. Ignore the EU, meaning a couple different things depending on what your commercial activity is but likely including not advertising there or applying for a CE mark; if it’s open enough license-wise and someone wants to deal with the EU conditions they can go start their own EU company supporting/updating it.

2. Maybe, along with (1), refusing to sell to anyone in a country covered by the CRA.

3. Just altering your license to prohibit anyone located where you’d be subject to the CRA from using your software.

It’s not the intent of the CRA to cause this but-and they were warned and maybe made some adjustments but not enough-it’s what they’re going to cause, and leads at the end to the same result as this whole discussion (I quit) for different reasons.

Post reply on HN