What I've learned about open source community over 30 years • Hacker News Board

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#51

Post by mike10921 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #40

These are great things to do if you want to buld a community around a project (which does help keep it going). But it's also OK to just build what you want and publish that and then maybe accept contributions under whatever terms you feel like. Community management really is an entirely different skillset from software developement and I wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from open sourcing their software if they…

Back in the day, Open Source projects thrived on the enthusiasm of creators who didn't view software development as a means to make money. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to build a community and create superior products through collaboration.

However, the landscape has shifted. When an Open Source project becomes successful today, creators often transition the original product into a proprietary version with added features and support, available only through paid access. This practice undermines the original Open Source project, and usually end off killing the original project.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#52

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:53 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #39

rob74 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this practice is in Microsoft's interest. People who buy a PC with FreeDOS usually install a pirated copy of Windows (or Linux, but not sure what the exact proportion of those is), which definitely doesn't contribute to M$'s bottom line...

On the contrary, being the primary desktop OS that everyone uses and thus everyone supports is Windows' biggest advantage. Anything that helps thingns stays that way contributes to Microsofts bottom line.

The get the money back via Azure Cloud OS (> 60% workloads on Linux), Microsoft 365 subscriptions and XBox.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#53

Post by bdcravens » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:01 PM UTC

mike10921 wrote: post #51

account42 wrote: post #40

These are great things to do if you want to buld a community around a project (which does help keep it going). But it's also OK to just build what you want and publish that and then maybe accept contributions under whatever terms you feel like. Community management really is an entirely different skillset from software developement and I wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from open sourcing their software if they…

Back in the day, Open Source projects thrived on the enthusiasm of creators who didn't view software development as a means to make money. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to build a community and create superior products through collaboration. However, the landscape has shifted. When an Open Source project becomes successful today, creators often transition the original product into a proprietary version with…

That's fairly rare, when you consider the massive amount of open source. There's also many good examples of open core projects.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#54

Post by chuckadams » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

Gormo wrote: post #49

kryptiskt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One prominent example, Rust started off with mailing lists but shut them off a decade ago or so. Many other projects I participate in or follow have moved their communication to other means, Discord and Discourse are popular, sometimes the mailing lists remain but are silent, sometimes they are removed.

Both Discourse and Discord seem entirely inappropriate for FOSS projects -- they are both proprietary walled-garden SaaS applications that aren't themselves consistent with FOSS principles, and they are both exclusively web-based with close coupling between the UI and the underlying functionality, which makes it difficult or impossible for users to access, log, and archive messages with tools most optimal for their o…

Discord is definitely inappropriate, but Discourse is open source and has an API for anyone's custom use, including stuff like RSS feeds. I've been dealing with email since the 80's, and I'm quite familiar with the power of email clients, but for any given project I'd much rather use Discourse. While email clients have message organization down pat, the UI for content itself is retrograde, and email deliverability is a complete crapshoot and getting worse every year. On a web forum, when you see your post, you can be pretty sure everyone else will see that post too.

You can shake your fist against the tide as much as you want, but a lot of projects are populated entirely from people who grew up after the web was born, and their members see no need to keep looking back to a system designed for a world before TCP/IP itself.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#55

Post by dingnuts » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

mike10921 wrote: post #51

account42 wrote: post #40

These are great things to do if you want to buld a community around a project (which does help keep it going). But it's also OK to just build what you want and publish that and then maybe accept contributions under whatever terms you feel like. Community management really is an entirely different skillset from software developement and I wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from open sourcing their software if they…

Back in the day, Open Source projects thrived on the enthusiasm of creators who didn't view software development as a means to make money. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to build a community and create superior products through collaboration. However, the landscape has shifted. When an Open Source project becomes successful today, creators often transition the original product into a proprietary version with…

Back in the day, most users were more technical (TFA is about a regular user using DOS, just as an example) so the ratio of contributors to users was higher

When a FOSS project gets big now, users show up in the issue trackers expecting the kind of support they are accustomed to from companies. They do not have the desire or ability to contribute.

Maintainers then get overwhelmed unless they have some way to support these users. Either they can raise money somehow in order to hire help -- like adding a proprietary version -- or get burned out and complain they didn't get enough donations.

This is just reality. We don't live in RMS's MIT computer lab where he set all the passwords to empty because computers should be free and everyone (every MIT student) is capable of writing software and thus should be able to.

Regular people just want to use the software and they will always outnumber contributors from now on.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#56

Post by zo1 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #40

These are great things to do if you want to buld a community around a project (which does help keep it going). But it's also OK to just build what you want and publish that and then maybe accept contributions under whatever terms you feel like. Community management really is an entirely different skillset from software developement and I wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from open sourcing their software if they…

Just building what you want and publishing it doesn't work anymore. Look at the countless projects wilting away because the "community" actively ignores them and the huge volume of content doesn't target those projects anymore. No tutorials, no guides, no evangelists, no Github stars and forks, no Twitter promoters, no fancy shmancy *.io domain and interactive Docs with oodles of integrations with everything under the sun means that your project will languish in ignored obscurity. Two big-ish projects getting that treatment that I've personally witnessed happening in slow-motion over many years: Tornado and Knockout.js.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#57

Post by badgersnake » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

peter_l_downs wrote: post #3

Extremely anodyne — given that the author has maintained FreeDOS for longer than I've been alive, I was hoping for slightly more interesting ideas than "have a website and be nice to people." Not that I disagree with his advice!

Sure, but building a community is not easy and it’s good to reinforce that there are no shortcuts.

I think I would pretty a suspicious of a blog akin to “Linus Torvlads wants this website banned - build an enthusiastic and productive OSS community in just one week with this one neat trick.”

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#58

Post by onemoresoop » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #53

mike10921 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, Open Source projects thrived on the enthusiasm of creators who didn't view software development as a means to make money. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to build a community and create superior products through collaboration. However, the landscape has shifted. When an Open Source project becomes successful today, creators often transition the original product into a proprietary version with…

That's fairly rare, when you consider the massive amount of open source. There's also many good examples of open core projects.

But the risk is always lurking. I guess this holds of some from contributing to open source projects, fearing this fate.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#59

Post by zdware » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #56

account42 wrote: post #40

These are great things to do if you want to buld a community around a project (which does help keep it going). But it's also OK to just build what you want and publish that and then maybe accept contributions under whatever terms you feel like. Community management really is an entirely different skillset from software developement and I wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from open sourcing their software if they…

Just building what you want and publishing it doesn't work anymore. Look at the countless projects wilting away because the "community" actively ignores them and the huge volume of content doesn't target those projects anymore. No tutorials, no guides, no evangelists, no Github stars and forks, no Twitter promoters, no fancy shmancy *.io domain and interactive Docs with oodles of integrations with everything under th…

Languishing in ignored obscurity is fine for the stuff I open source. There's no expectations but it's not hidden from anyone either.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#60

Post by lupusreal » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

franga2000 wrote: post #29

transpute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose FreeDOS is used by PC OEMs for tech support, e.g. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_9586495-9586656-16 You can create a DOS-bootable USB flash drive by downloading and saving a FreeDOS operating system image. The bootable USB flash drive can then be used for testing and troubleshooting any component on your PC. FreeDOS helps sell PC hardware without t…

The "helping sell hardware without Windows" part is actually more like "helps PC vendors exploit a legal loophole and Microsoft keep its market share". They could just as easily install Ubuntu/whatever on computers that don't ship with Windows, but that might make some people stick with it and immediately install Windows on it. But if they put a useless OS like FreeDOS on there, they can check the "has OS" box, as we…

Dell has been selling laptops with Linux for years. A few of the others have too.