61–70 of 88 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
FreeDOS can be used for offline word processing, e.g. reducing information leaks when writing the next "Game of Thrones". (2014) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/07/dos-b... > Twenty years ago this week, as Microsoft announced that it would end support for the MS-DOS operating system, James Hall announced to the world that he intended to create a public domain version of the OS in order to keep the…
I've installed Asahi on my Mac and so far have been happily computing with the following Emacs Firefox foot (terminal) swaywm (and the associated utilities) KeepassXC (password management) mpd (music) calibre (ebooks) mpv (for the few local videos I still watch on my computer) evince (for pdfs) various cli utilities What I like about these is how consistent it is. No sneaky updates that shuffle things around (I don't…
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…
Many small open source projects still operate this way and their community consists a small number of people who have fun hacking on a project together after work.
But as projects grow some of them acquiesce to end-user expectations and slowly turn into "organizations".
They have schedules and regular releases, commit to timely triaging of bug reports, provide forums for end-user support, publish status updates, respond to feature requests, write documentation, have a slick website with a nice logo, form committees and sub-committees to make decisions, adopt codes of conduct to try to deal with the jerks who invariably show up, file the paperwork necessary to deal with big donations, etc -- all the "necessary bureaucracy" that comes with being a large, reputable organization.
At that point you've basically added back all the unfun parts of working and turned it into a second job, so why not get paid?
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…
> they saw it as an opportunity to build a community Many small open source projects still operate this way and their community consists a small number of people who have fun hacking on a project together after work. But as projects grow some of them acquiesce to end-user expectations and slowly turn into "organizations". They have schedules and regular releases, commit to timely triaging of bug reports, provide foru…
Some developers get paid by companies, but they usually come late to the project when most fundamental work has been done already (this depends on the project, Linux for example might be an exception in that sponsorship has started comparatively early).
Most developers who have done fundamental work before the commercialization of OSS get nothing. The beneficiaries of the whole thing are developers who are now 25-30, work for FAANG and take over existing projects while not doing really much.
BTW, the real jerks are often wolves in sheep's clothing who do excessively well in the bureaucratic apparatus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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...
Off topic, but I notice FreeDOS still uses email mailing lists. What email mailing list software / platforms are people using these days? Can you get mail delivered if you install an OSS mailing list and stand up your own server (vps or whatever)?
> FreeDOS still uses email mailing lists I'm a bit surprised by this statement. Does this imply that there are now a bunch of FOSS projects that don't use mailing lists? Mailing lists are by far my preferred method of communicating with projects. Please don't tell me people are moving to github issues or some such?
Congrats to FreeDOS for 30 years. This is perhaps a good example of a project being more than the product. By which I mean, we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose, and yet it continues. Of course I generalise, but the original premise ("I liked the command line") is amply served by Linux, Mac or Windows. The other original motivations are similarly obsolete now. All of which is irrelevant. It remain…
There are many thousands of DOS programs still in active use today -- and not just by hobbyists or for educational purposes, in active commercial use, if you require economically productive criteria to consider something practical: Many industrial control systems still used every day operate through DOS applications written in the 1980s. Spending a lot of time and money on a complete rewrite upgrade to make these con…
Congrats to FreeDOS for 30 years. This is perhaps a good example of a project being more than the product. By which I mean, we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose, and yet it continues. Of course I generalise, but the original premise ("I liked the command line") is amply served by Linux, Mac or Windows. The other original motivations are similarly obsolete now. All of which is irrelevant. It remain…
Back in the day my go-to method for making DOS boot disks was to find a win9x machine and type "format /s". That used to be easy to do, but there are no more abundant Win9x machines anymore. FreeDOS was an alternative to that.
The last time I used FreeDOS was a few years ago to flash a bios update that required DOS to do so.
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…
As an aside, I think it's worth noting that most attempts to build long-lasting, vibrant communities for software fail, regardless of whether they're open source or not. Open source might not have a high success rate of community-building, but neither does proprietary software (or whatever middle ground you consider to be in the space between those terms, like "open core" or "source available"). If what you care about most is building a large community, the more effective choice probably depends on a lot of factors specific to what you're building and what else is going on at the time you're trying than something as simple as "always be open source" or "always be proprietary".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Barton recalled O'Grady suggesting it would be great for developers "if you took one of your laptops, put Ubuntu on it, and just got it to work. We said that's an awesome idea, but it'll never happen, because we're talking about Dell. Our laptops need to deliver huge volumes and revenue. When I talked to one of our higher-ups about the volumes that we thought we would sell, he said, 'Yeah, that's what we sell in Belgium on Tuesday, between three and four in the afternoon.' Despite this disheartening evaluation, when Dell started an in-house innovation fund, Barton pitched it again. This time, he was granted $40,000 to pursue the idea.