The perils of mixing open source and money
david.heinemeierhansson.com
The perils of mixing open source and money
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#2Thank you for writing this. I think it's valuable to step back and look at whether accepting donations is in line with the set of values that led to open source in the first place.
I am reading Ben Franklin's autobiography and came across this quote which I think also neatly sums up a point you omitted:
"...as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#3Money isn't just for working full time. Sometimes you need hardware or software for compatibility testing. For example, suppose you were trying to build parsers/writers for PSD or XLS files. To test on older versions of photoshop or excel, you need access to those older versions (and most likely, the contemporaneous hardware). Those are real costs.
I also think the point regarding focus is misguided: if the money is specifically for embellishments (e.g. 100% compatibility), then you are in fact more likely to embellish
Finally, Ruby on Rails happens to be an exceptional example in terms of traction. Most open source projects never come close because the addressable market is smaller (the set of all people supporting a particular ruby gem is a subset of the people interested in ruby) and in those cases a bit of extra money is enough to take a hobbyist effort to a production-level product. That extra work takes time and money (for example, sitting there and validating certain results by hand) and oftentimes won't happen with an open source project.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#4All open source projects are not the same. All the people running open source projects are not swayed by money. Some projects are much more complicated than a web framework. These projects need funds for progress to be made. Case in point - OpenBSD. I love the project and their approach. I also feel they genuinely need funding to keep improving the system. Another example - LuaJIT. Great project, does not have a load of contributors - so I won't mind funding Mike if it means he spends more time on LuaJIT. Another example - SQLite. I'll just send in a donation because its so damn good.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#5> Thousands, collaborating for a decade, to produce an astoundingly accomplished framework and ecosystem available to anyone at the cost of zero.
Well, I am sure DHH means "nominal cost", but the cost is certainly not zero. But it degrades economic discussion when people misuse the word "cost" to mean "currency transacted". Inevitably one of the interlocutors wanders down the trail and marvels, "the cost is zero, so much resources were saved!"
Well no, the cost is not zero. Things other than currency were transacted.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#6It's against this fantastic success of social norms that we should be extraordinary careful before we let market norms corrupt the ecosystem.
I consider myself a reasonable person. This quote makes me angry. This comment seems willfully obtuse in my opinion. Not noticing the immense institutional support and money behind Rails is truly silly. I don't want to come off as mean spirited, but he is very silly for saying this.
The open source projects that are popular like Linux, nginx, and other system ops stuff are obviously popular and have benefited immensely from indirect money (in terms of institutional support). They are vastly superior compared to anything a company could built closed source. We often cling to the idea that open source software is superior to closed source software, but a quick survey of the landscape of open source software will show that this is patently false. Where there is obvious demand for a software product that lots of interested parties need just to maintain operability, the open source solution will usually be vastly superior if not mildly better.
But, take a look at the vast amount of software that is created on github that is open source and you will see a lot of (self-admitted) crap (I have made a lot of self-admitted crap). This crap might have the kernel of a good idea in it, but it never got the time it needed. I'd actually like someone to name an open source software project that we all know and love that hasn't benefited from immense institutional support.
David, not all of us get to be part of incredibly profitable companies that can afford to fund our adventures in coding. Suggesting that Rails hasn't benefited from institutional support and money is just deceptive and something I can't stomach. It's something we can't measure, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#7When was the last time DHH was worth less than a million dollars?
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#8As someone who worked on an Open Source project for years with no compensation, adding sustainable funding to it was very motivating. Money is a very weird thing, but getting money for the continued existence of your work is fantastic validation and support.
It's easy to work on things for free, but how do you know that people value them if they simply use them for free. Attaching money to a pursuit that was previously free can also act to greatly encourage the continued existence of the project in the face of burnout and uncertainty.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#9It's against this fantastic success of social norms that we should be extraordinary careful before we let market norms corrupt the ecosystem. I consider myself a reasonable person. This quote makes me angry. This comment seems willfully obtuse in my opinion. Not noticing the immense institutional support and money behind Rails is truly silly. I don't want to come off as mean spirited, but he is very silly for saying…
+1. I was going to say this but you said it better. My hackles go up when people say open source is better. That's true sometimes but it most certainly is not always true and I've argued for years that open source is usually a better (or worse) copy of some closed source thing that someone found useful and didn't like that it was closed.
Re: The perils of mixing open source and money
#10It's against this fantastic success of social norms that we should be extraordinary careful before we let market norms corrupt the ecosystem. I consider myself a reasonable person. This quote makes me angry. This comment seems willfully obtuse in my opinion. Not noticing the immense institutional support and money behind Rails is truly silly. I don't want to come off as mean spirited, but he is very silly for saying…
> I'd actually like someone to name an open source software project that we all know and love that hasn't benefited from immense institutional support.
Honest question, what about Debian? I know they had a year of FSF sponsorship back in like '94 but they seem to be heavily volunteer based with even the Project Leader keeping a day-job to pay the bills. I know they take in donations but they're generally who I point to as an example of what a Free/Open Source Software project can be.
edit: '93-->'94