The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
blog.hiri.com
The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
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Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#2I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#3I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.
I read it but I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. Sure, there are people like Stallman, there are others who are more 'pragmatic'.
World keeps turning.
Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#4There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software.
I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#5I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.
FOSS is something I aspire too, I still use some proprietary software but as I dream at a Star Trek world similar I dream that in future I would work only on FOSS.
If there is a choice use FOSS app A or proprietary app B I will use A if it does what I need, as a developer I adapted the open source apps to my needs where with proprietary apps I could never done it.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#6I’m not a developer and I don’t have a strong opinion on open-source software either way, but I’ve always wondered: does the fact that developers and other technical people have (comparatively) excellent job security affect their attitude toward free labor and products? If developers had a job outlook similar to say, musicians, would open-source be as widely-used and praised as it is now?
Surely some academic economic work has been done on a situation like this?
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#7No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place.
Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance. I'm not saying it's wrong per se, but it doesn't inspire goodwill or good sentiments either. Trying to deride people with a strong sense of ethics regarding software production and use by comparing them to religious fanatics is misguided as best, malicious at worst.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#8There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.
It's not fully FLOSS but double licencing your library GPL and commercial license is another business model, and it seems to be working fine for companies doing this.
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#9I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.
[deleted]
Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality
#10My 2c: the author has something to say and I mostly agree with many of the things he is saying. However, his choice of labels (fundamentalist mentality / reddit / FOSS defender / etc.) hurts intelligent discussion -- whoever is disagreeing would be tempted to counterattack with a label ("copyright nazi", etc.) rather than discuss the post on merits.
Maybe author hopes that choice of words would stimulate discussion, but I think all it stimulates are flame wars reusing old slogans. So the content may be interesting, but the form struggles to make it underwhelming.