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Ask HN: Why you do open source?

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Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#41

Post by outside1234 »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #38
buro9 wrote: post #14

To reduce the waste of human energy that repeats the same task a million times by not communicating, and in the process to increase the quality of the output of human energy by having what energy is available be focused on improving the existing output or using it. I can't get over the profound sense of waste when I do something and think "50,000 devs have probably done this before, and 100,000 more will do it again"…

But open source software doesn't necessarily avoid the waste that you're describing. Just look at MySQL, and derived DBs like MariaDB and Drizzle. There is much overlap with PostgreSQL, but PostgreSQL is objectively superior in just about every way. Then there is all of the effort put toward the various libraries and tools for each, toward other application support for each, and so forth. Is it not wasteful when peop…

I look at "branches" like that as R&D. We are learning what works with them and then sticking with the best. It is also insurance that we don't get coopted by someone like Oracle.

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#42

Post by nhaehnle »

I learned a lot in my youth from using Linux systems and being able to really delve into all the internals - no hidden magic, everything available to take a look if you wanted to. As a teenager, I used to have print-outs of large parts of the core of the Linux kernel, of X Windows, and so on.

This availability of knowledge, but also the freedom that comes from free software systems, are important values for me. I want to contribute to such systems being viable, modern environments.

A secondary motivation is that for purely hobby projects, there is a chance of finding collaborators that make the project more fun to work on and advance more quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#43

Post by zanny »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #38
buro9 wrote: post #14

To reduce the waste of human energy that repeats the same task a million times by not communicating, and in the process to increase the quality of the output of human energy by having what energy is available be focused on improving the existing output or using it. I can't get over the profound sense of waste when I do something and think "50,000 devs have probably done this before, and 100,000 more will do it again"…

But open source software doesn't necessarily avoid the waste that you're describing. Just look at MySQL, and derived DBs like MariaDB and Drizzle. There is much overlap with PostgreSQL, but PostgreSQL is objectively superior in just about every way. Then there is all of the effort put toward the various libraries and tools for each, toward other application support for each, and so forth. Is it not wasteful when peop…

Another facet is that, despite the waste, a lot of people are strongly motivated by competition to do better. Look at how Mir has spurred Wayland to get its act in gear - or how Gnome tried fixing Gnome 3 when Unity happened, or clang vs gcc, or how Go + Rust / Ruby + Python / Java + C# are competitive in the language space, or how Backbone competes with Angular.

All over the open source space, there are almost always two opposing forces in each camp, sometimes more, but whenever the competition dries up (VLC?) innovation slows down. VLC has become extremely refined as a media player, and I ask nothing more from it, but it hasn't tried any real radical UI departures or UX shifts and its mobile version is still slow on the uptake. I imagine if it had a media player competitor it would improve faster.

So the duplicated effort, although a "waste" of time, seems to drive developers to work harder, which produces better products in the end.

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#44

Post by sergiotapia »

Because I get a thrill when I see people star my projects or even comment on how it can be improved.

I also believe that writing open source software is a fantastic way to land more jobs as it proves to your employer that:

1. You can release software.

2. You can write clean code (your wrote clean code, right?)

3. You can use a DCVS like Git or Mercurial.

Where's the downside?

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#45

Post by Udo »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #38
buro9 wrote: post #14

To reduce the waste of human energy that repeats the same task a million times by not communicating, and in the process to increase the quality of the output of human energy by having what energy is available be focused on improving the existing output or using it. I can't get over the profound sense of waste when I do something and think "50,000 devs have probably done this before, and 100,000 more will do it again"…

But open source software doesn't necessarily avoid the waste that you're describing. Just look at MySQL, and derived DBs like MariaDB and Drizzle. There is much overlap with PostgreSQL, but PostgreSQL is objectively superior in just about every way. Then there is all of the effort put toward the various libraries and tools for each, toward other application support for each, and so forth. Is it not wasteful when peop…

Spending time with FUD and bile arguing against open source projects, now that's a waste of time. Complaining about licenses and inefficiencies is also a waste of time when it's done by people who are not directly involved in development.

Compare that with exploring different paradigms and priorities (such as Postgres and Mysql who happen to have very different philosophies), which is absolutely OK in my book. Nobody wants a monoculture. Except malicious bystanders who first and foremost like to make this into some kind of faction warfare.

I don't really have a stake in this fake database conflict, but why is it that Postgres always seems to attract these kinds of people whereas Mysql users seem to be content doing their thing mostly in silence and without the vitriole?

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#46

Post by chris_wot »

Because every time I see that I've changed something to LibreOffice via gerrit, even if it's just a comment translation or spelling error fix, I know that I've contributed to something that will help someone else.

Not to mention reading through code is interesting. Especially when you have a chance to change it to make it better.

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#49

Post by freework »

I have a friend who wrote a open source library that is very popular. It is a testing framework that is very well known from within the Python community. This guy was a coworker of mine a few years ago. When he sent a resume to the company, they pretty much hired him on the spot because of the fact that he was the author of [famous open source project]. He didn't go through any interview process, at least not in the tedious FizzBuzz / "what are your biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses" sense.

Thats why I do open source. Hopefully one day I'll get lucky and one of my projects will catch on and become very popular. When that happens, I have guaranteed employment pretty much for the rest of my life. Although, only like 1% of all open source developers are lucky enough to have a project with enough "cred" to be in that position. It mostly has to do with luck. There are tons of popular projects that suck (PHP), and tons of projects that are amazingly written, but not popular.

Re: Ask HN: Why you do open source?

#50

Post by rodrigoavie »

I learn a lot from reading code of other people who are smarter than you. Also, very frequently Open Source tools are better than their equivalent proprietary ones. Also, it can give you fame and fortune, there's an immense number of people who has benefited from advocating and using Open Source software.

Also, great (and many) companies are always looking for developers of specific Open Source projects like OpenGL, OpenCV, Rails, Django, and many others.

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