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GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

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Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#91

Post by mjr00 »

bahmboo wrote: post #89

The sense of entitlement is strong in these comments. If you haven’t built or maintained OSS I’m wondering why your opinion matters [edit: that's harshly worded I could have been more nuanced, hopefully the point is taken and it is a question]. There’s also the take that “this is fine” vs considering that the state of OSS things could be a LOT better with higher quality and more choices if we fed the beast properly.

I don't see any entitlement at all, in fact it's the opposite.

The article: "I expect open source maintainers to maintain their codebases and add new features. I have unilaterally decided that $1/package is a suitable amount, universally applicable to all packages and maintainers." this is entitlement

The comments here: "Open source maintainers don't owe you shit."

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#92

Post by tehjoker »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #51
pixelready wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might “reduce people’s motivation”. There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, craft…

The hikikomori [1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.

The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#94

Post by perlgeek »

IMHO Open Source Software is a public good, and should be mostly funded like other public goods: through government grants.

GitHub charging its users, who themselves are mostly OSS developers (and not end users) doesn't seem like a sensible solution.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#95

Post by tehjoker »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #10

>it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments Yes it absolutely is. That is the exact social contract people 100% willingly enter by releasing something as Free and Open Source. They do give it as a gift, in exchange for maybe the tiny bit of niche recognition that comes with it, and often times out of simple g…

A natural solution for this kind of problem would be either a private or public grants program. Critical infrastructure built by random uncompensated people... ideally there would be some process for evaluating what is critical and compensating that person for continued maintenance.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#96

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

abraham wrote: post #44
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #6

The first order effect of this would be great, but the following onslaught of schlinkert spam would be devastating- its bad enough now with people making garbage dependencies and sneaking them in everywhere just for clout

It might make the maintainers of if the rest of the pie vigilant for dependency spam that would cut into their end.

Well now you've got me wondering.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#98

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

securesaml wrote: post #80
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the issue list for any significant open source project, it's probably of nonzero size. That's a way of saying "no": just don't do it. Maybe you're overloaded, maybe you just don't feel like it. It's totally normal, and different projects have different levels of resources, some with none anymore.

I have seen small utility libraries like tj-actions get compromised because there aren't any security specialists looking at the library. My main concern is supply chain compromise.

Unless you're talking about a different event, tj-actions wasn't "compromised because there aren't any security specialists looking at the library". Instead, an API key was used, maybe by the author, maybe by someone else, to replace good code with bad code, including modifying historical release tags to point to the bad code.

That said, everything in my previous post still applies: a nonzero buglist is totally normal and widely accepted.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#99

Post by bahmboo »

mjr00 wrote: post #91
bahmboo wrote: post #89

The sense of entitlement is strong in these comments. If you haven’t built or maintained OSS I’m wondering why your opinion matters [edit: that's harshly worded I could have been more nuanced, hopefully the point is taken and it is a question]. There’s also the take that “this is fine” vs considering that the state of OSS things could be a LOT better with higher quality and more choices if we fed the beast properly.

I don't see any entitlement at all, in fact it's the opposite. The article: "I expect open source maintainers to maintain their codebases and add new features. I have unilaterally decided that $1/package is a suitable amount, universally applicable to all packages and maintainers." this is entitlement The comments here: "Open source maintainers don't owe you shit."

Interesting. I do not agree with your summary of his post, in fact he goes so far as to say "an idea, really. Incredibly half-baked. Poke all the holes you want. It’s very unwrought and muy unripe."

So yes, we can laugh at the proposed mechanism but I feel the world would be a better place if we could funnel more resources to OSS creators rather than just take because that's an easier path.

Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source

#100

Post by kjgkjhfkjf »

Proposals like these seem to assume that FOSS is mostly produced by unpaid volunteers. But a lot of the open-source stuff that I personally use is produced by massively profitable companies.

For example, I am currently working with React, which was produced by Meta. I write the code using TypeScript, which was produced by Microsoft (and other corporate behemoths such as Google). I am writing this comment in Chrome (produced by Google). Etc.

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