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Side projects
11–20 of 243 posts
Re: Side projects
#12Thank you sir.
Re: Side projects
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created, only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free, as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies a…
> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?
AGPL
Re: Side projects
#14I hope this question isn't too forward - but my main question is 'how did you afford to do this?' I have had plenty of fun little side projects (some finished some not), but my main project is my salaried position. Aside from being independently wealthy, how can one create and maintain a long term open source project as a full time job. Consulting on the side? Donations? Something else? P.S. Thanks for Redis :)
Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created, only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free, as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies a…
I've been broadly thinking about ways to take a bite out of this challenge. I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. As the company scales it has a massive effect on their culture. I visited New Belgium Brewing (makers of Fat Tire) for instance, and a huge number of their employees are solely responsible for thoughtfully putting that money into action and funneling it into worthy causes. Imagine the impact that a double-digit percentage of the workforce of your successful company whose job it is to stand up for the things you decided were important _besides profit_. It's really incredible.
I really like the idea of setting up guard-rails like this to embody cultural values early on in ways that keep the organization accountable to them at scale and I wonder if something similar could help OSS. It's not hard to imagine a similarly structured pledge being adopted by companies and being popular with developers. It could be structured in hours or money, executed with developer time, donations, or hosting OSS developers like Stripe has done.
If I allow myself the thought exercise of what happens if something like this started to see adoption, I imagine we'd see projects beginning to license themselves favorably to companies who make this pledge in a variety of ways.
At any rate. That's roughly what I've been noodling around with regard to this problem.
[1] http://onepercentfortheplanet.org/ and I highly recommend Yvon Chouinard's book Let My People Go Surfing, which was where I was first exposed to the idea http://www.patagonia.com/us/product/let-my-people-go-surfing...
Re: Side projects
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created, only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free, as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies a…
> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?
As someone who likes the GPL and supports the idea that all software should be Free, the thing that bothers me about it is how "closed" it is to projects based on other Free licenses.
GPL projects "take" from BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects (in the form of libraries, supporting software, etc) and only give back with conditions they can't accept.
You can say it's on them, for choosing the license they chose, they accepted that this could happen, but on the other hand, isn't that exactly what we're criticizing companies for?
Re: Side projects
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I've no good answer for your question, since I'm sponsored by Pivotal, but if we consider the percentage of open source software created, only a small percentage is sponsored. Many developers simply do it for free, as I did it in the first year of Redis developments, because I had an alternative stream of money to pay the bills. So, my point of view, is that the IT ecosystem is broken and IT companies a…
> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?
Making everything virally GPL doesn't solve the problem of nobody paying for open source development.
I actually think if everything out there was GPL'd, it would make it even more difficult to build businesses and make money from open source software, because you couldn't use open source in a proprietary project if you so chose.
I think instead we need a set of incentives in which it's a terrible idea to use software, open source or not, without sharing a fair slice of the value you're getting with the author(s). How to actually implement this is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re: Side projects
#17I'm another believer that focussing in 1 thing is overestimated.
"There’s a myth when it comes to what we’ve been taught about focus. Doing only 1 thing isn’t focusing. It’s essentially just doing 1 thing. Following a course of action until completion is FOCUS" - Hodan Ibrahim
Interesting related read: http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/psychological-marketing-my...
Re: Side projects
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?
As someone who likes the GPL and supports the idea that all software should be Free, the thing that bothers me about it is how "closed" it is to projects based on other Free licenses. GPL projects "take" from BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects (in the form of libraries, supporting software, etc) and only give back with conditions they can't accept. You can say it's on them, for choosing the license they chose, they accepted…
The aim of the GPL is to ensure that the recipient of a program has the right, from a legal stand point, to obtain and modify its source code and redistribute the result under the same license.
The FSF is hostile to proprietary software and criticize liberal licenses because they don't provide these guaranties.
Re: Side projects
#19Thanks for Redis. It has come a long way over the last six years. Looking forward for your "few side projects for the next years" to come.
Rather than start a new thread, I'll add my congratulations here.
Congratulations, Antirez!
Re: Side projects
#20I hope this question isn't too forward - but my main question is 'how did you afford to do this?' I have had plenty of fun little side projects (some finished some not), but my main project is my salaried position. Aside from being independently wealthy, how can one create and maintain a long term open source project as a full time job. Consulting on the side? Donations? Something else? P.S. Thanks for Redis :)
Maybe we should turn our open source projects into businesses? At least make it clear we're open to taking money for extra features and/or support?
I mean, I have a whole list of projects I would like to support in a meaningful way through a subscription for some service, but it seems finding a way to do this is itself a hoop to jump through. Even if I'm super benevolent maybe I'm not willing to do HR/accounting work in order to exercise my benevolence.
I know about Gittip and the like, but if you're a business (the only kind of entity with meaningful money to throw at this problem), you'd rather have a clearcut way to pay for a service, not a platform for dropping pennies.