An illuminating post. The original author seems to be worried about being seen as a whiner, but I found it to be exceptionally lucid and informative.
What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#12I looked at the article going in with a somewhat sympathetic view. But after reading that the person is at Microsoft, I thought "Well, good. Maybe now he will know what it was like about 10 years back for folks who were probably working just as hard as he is, plus having to deal with the absolute jackass behavior of the same company he now works at."
Karma?
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#13I see this as a consistent thread in OSS projects - lack of a sustainable biz model. Have you tried joining any not for profit foundations?
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#14Apparently you've avoided one of the greatest joys of open source... forks. I worked for 7 years on an open source project with hundreds of people subscribed. My most trusted maintainer started a drumbeat about project goals that ended up causing two forks, decimating the user community, and destroying a lot of potential. Even more interesting is that all I ever seem to get, if I get mentioned at all, is negative pre…
> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for me (not all full-time). The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support. If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent percentage of them will pay you to do it for them. But it has to be the right market, too. Sellin…
So you have an economic incentive not to make it too usable?
(This isn't an entirely serious complaint, but usability does tend to be an issue in Free software, and as you say consumers have no interest in paying for anything)
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#15I looked at the article going in with a somewhat sympathetic view. But after reading that the person is at Microsoft, I thought "Well, good. Maybe now he will know what it was like about 10 years back for folks who were probably working just as hard as he is, plus having to deal with the absolute jackass behavior of the same company he now works at." Karma?
So the unpleasantness and stress he deals with as part of a good-faith and unpaid effort to provide something of value to the wider community is perfectly fine because a decade ago his current employer caused problems for other open source developers? He's getting bad karma because of something other people did?
I'm struggling to comprehend the thinking that makes such sentiments seem remotely reasonable or rational.
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#16This reads as if the author were not suited for that kind of work. Yes, working through code and figuring out what it does, and why it does it that way, and whether it can be improved is work, maintainer's work, and if it's stressful, hard or not fun to you, than maybe you just shouldn't do it.
I have seen the other side in this situation. I've found it at times very hard to get reports about real bugs to developers. While some developers won't even listen to you if you tell them why their code is broken, others actually tell you what you need to do to give them what they need, and then they work on it. Shoutout to the xorg/mesa people; I've found them to be of the latter type.
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#17I looked at the article going in with a somewhat sympathetic view. But after reading that the person is at Microsoft, I thought "Well, good. Maybe now he will know what it was like about 10 years back for folks who were probably working just as hard as he is, plus having to deal with the absolute jackass behavior of the same company he now works at." Karma?
So the unpleasantness and stress he deals with as part of a good-faith and unpaid effort to provide something of value to the wider community is perfectly fine because a decade ago his current employer caused problems for other open source developers? He's getting bad karma because of something other people did? I'm struggling to comprehend the thinking that makes such sentiments seem remotely reasonable or rational.
Well, if you want to be that precise about the usage of words like karma, lets just say it is the organization's karma. I would like to think others can see my first comment as rhetorical.
Although I am now curious. If I found a way to link it to his karma would you actually like to hear about it?
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for me (not all full-time). The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support. If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent percentage of them will pay you to do it for them. But it has to be the right market, too. Sellin…
So you have an economic incentive not to make it too usable? (This isn't an entirely serious complaint, but usability does tend to be an issue in Free software, and as you say consumers have no interest in paying for anything)
> So you have an economic incentive not to make it too usable?
And... do commercial companies don't have the same incentive?
The difference with me is that I have pride in my work. I do good engineering.
The reason I charge for services is that designing complex RADIUS systems is hard. It's about specialized expertise in esoteric technical areas.
There are 100's of 1000's of sites using my software who have downloaded it gratis. They have small needs, and the basic software works.
As for usability... it's a pet peeve of mine. Everything is documented. You get full information about what the system is doing, and why. That's usability that none of the commercial products have.
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#19Apparently you've avoided one of the greatest joys of open source... forks. I worked for 7 years on an open source project with hundreds of people subscribed. My most trusted maintainer started a drumbeat about project goals that ended up causing two forks, decimating the user community, and destroying a lot of potential. Even more interesting is that all I ever seem to get, if I get mentioned at all, is negative pre…
> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for me (not all full-time). The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support. If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent percentage of them will pay you to do it for them. But it has to be the right market, too. Sellin…
>But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-starter. You need to sell to people who have money.
What about small businesses? Is that a pipe dream, or do you think it's possible to get them to actually spend money on service and support? (I'm asking because I have a business idea for software which would only appeal to SMBs, generally smaller ones I think.)
Re: What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for me (not all full-time). The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support. If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent percentage of them will pay you to do it for them. But it has to be the right market, too. Sellin…
>But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-starter. You need to sell to people who have money. What about small businesses? Is that a pipe dream, or do you think it's possible to get them to actually spend money on service and support? (I'm asking because I have a business idea for software which would only appeal to SMBs, generally smaller ones I think.)
The problem with SMBs is marketing. How do they know to use your software? What is the cost of sales?
I've had 6 months of negotiations with customers. For a large contract, that's OK. For a small one, it's not worth my time.