The things nobody wants to pay for
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#2I don't know much about the Kernel or testing it, but I submitted one fix years ago that I ended up testing it manually, and that was enough for it to be accepted. I think that's just the culture, which might seem odd to some, but also I imagine it would make coordination almost impossible if they were sticklers for testing. I've also known companies to run full integration tests instead of using stuff like unit tests. Maybe that's more suitable for Kernel testing due to how complex the kernel space environment is. Wondering if anyone has more context.
On a different note, I think it's true that the Linux desktop still sucks in 2024. At this point I would be willing to pay a substantial amount for stuff to be clean, consistent, and "just work" on the desktop. Doubt we will ever get there, but maybe companies like Valve will clean it up enough.
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#3I don't know much about the Kernel or testing it, but I submitted one fix years ago that I ended up testing it manually, and that was enough for it to be accepted. I think that's just the culture, which might seem odd to some, but also I imagine it would make coordination almost impossible if they were sticklers for testing. I've also known companies to run full integration tests instead of using stuff like unit test…
Of the ones you listed, consistency is the big downside for me. It seems like there's multiple options for everything in the Linux ecosystem. From the beginner questions (e.g., which distro), to the nerdy questions (e.g., systemd vs sysvinit), to the ones in between (e.g., vim vs emacs). I sometimes wonder if GNU Herd would have been better at this, since everything would be designed by the GNU folks for one unified ecosystem.
I don't think Valve will fix it TBH. They only care about Linux UX on their hardware, i.e. Steam Deck. I don't see why they would fund things like KDE, or features in the kernel beyond the ones that they need for their products to work. (Not that I think they're assholes for this; just that it's unfortunate)
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#4Markets approximate an algorithm where you line up everyone who can do a job by willingness to do it, then pick the cheapest if someone is willing to pay that much.
In the case of open source, that algorithm usually identifies volunteers. Sometimes it identifies businesses. Sometimes people come up with clever ways of funding projects (Red Hat the enterprise was genius from this perspective, they organised a solution to tragedy of the commons in core infrastructure and made a lot of money doing that).
I suspect there does need to be a regular social renewal to resolve the tragedy of the commons problem. I expect that the network of OSS foundations and companies will regularly becomes corrupt and ineffective and need to be purged then replaced. That implies there is a fine line of healthy complaining - people need to communicate where the problems are by complaining, but it is useless trying to blame people like kernel maintainers for poor testing. It is good to stop and appreciate how beautiful the dance is; this is one of the purest free markets we have in the world and it is pretty amazing how well it hangs together since it looks like a hearty sneeze could bring the whole thing down.
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#5This echoes the problems we see in LLVM. Tooling is de-prioritized in several large corporation-funded open-source projects.
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#6AI can help with documentation. Simple tool can annotate all files and function using ChatGPP4 in few hours, then check it for correctness and completeness, then fix bugs, for few hundred dollars.
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#7I don't know much about the Kernel or testing it, but I submitted one fix years ago that I ended up testing it manually, and that was enough for it to be accepted. I think that's just the culture, which might seem odd to some, but also I imagine it would make coordination almost impossible if they were sticklers for testing. I've also known companies to run full integration tests instead of using stuff like unit test…
Of the ones you listed, consistency is the big downside for me. It seems like there's multiple options for everything in the Linux ecosystem. From the beginner questions (e.g., which distro), to the nerdy questions (e.g., systemd vs sysvinit), to the ones in between (e.g., vim vs emacs). I sometimes wonder if GNU Herd would have been better at this, since everything would be designed by the GNU folks for one unified…
They are very much upstreaming things a lot, in ways that support more than just their hardware, which results in general boost for everyone.
They definitely could have done it differently and in cheaper ways (just look at every embedded platform).
As for KDE, Steam Deck runs KDE.
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#8AI can help with documentation. Simple tool can annotate all files and function using ChatGPP4 in few hours, then check it for correctness and completeness, then fix bugs, for few hundred dollars.
That wouldn’t help with the issues described in the article, I think. That is, license violations (LLMs happen to produce almost-verbatim copies of copyrighted works at times) and lack of volunteers (you’d need to hire a technical writer to ensure the generated documentation is actually correct and complete, and nobody is going to want to accept being hired for cheap for fixing AI-generated documentation).
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#9I don't know much about the Kernel or testing it, but I submitted one fix years ago that I ended up testing it manually, and that was enough for it to be accepted. I think that's just the culture, which might seem odd to some, but also I imagine it would make coordination almost impossible if they were sticklers for testing. I've also known companies to run full integration tests instead of using stuff like unit test…
> clean, consistent, and "just work" on the desktop
In my experience, most Linux desktop environments are leaps and bounds ahead of Windows here. What specifically do you want fixed?
Re: The things nobody wants to pay for
#10I once compared Linus Torvalds' net worth to Warren Buffett's net worth. I think they are both extremely capable individuals in their fields. Torvalds earns about 10 million per year. With that income, it would take Torvalds 12k years to reach the same net worth as Buffett (about 124 billion).
Put differently, Buffett could personally fund 10k open source contributors 200k per year for their lifetime (60 years) if he wanted to.
So maybe that's the solution? Convince billionaires that open source software is a philanthropic endeavor?