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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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101–110 of 966 posts

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#101

I think this is fair for him to do, and well within his rights. He’s clearly frustrated. I wish there was a better way for open source projects to solicit donations. It’s hard to get your boss to pay for software; it’s extra hard when you get no additional value. I feel like open source would have more luck if Issues could have attached bounties. I may not think to donate to faker.js, however as someone with access t…

BountySource did this. It failed.

That's because their product sucked, they charged excessive fees, and they were actively hostile to their users.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#102
On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0]

Pretty crazy story, all in all!

He seems to be in some pretty dire straits, and is reacting to the perceived grievance of others profiting off of his work. All in all, I don't think this is the best way to handle the situation, although building some kind of SaaS API is probably not really possible for something that can be trivially implemented and operated locally. However, many other SaaS APIs have seemed equally trivial in the past and have been extremely successful, so it still might be a useful avenue to explore if he can sort out his legal troubles...

[0] https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-susp...

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#103

I am not religious but labourers in the vineyard stuck with me from school: The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble(D) against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they…

Making an ethical judgment based on religious text is a serious folly.

As opposed to basing them on...some system you came up with?

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#104

[this comment was deleted as HN doesn't pay me to contribute to the discussion]

I wonder, how much shareholder value FOSS, either in a package manager or otherwise, has added to MFAANG and other technology companies over the years?

A few years ago, someone did break a package that many companies cloned and integrated... the internet nearly broke...

My guess; a disruption in services is one thing that’s not already “priced in” to the stock market.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#105
post #9
post #3

It's actually really sad that someone who has easily generated millions of dollars of value with their work gets nothing for it. Yeah yeah, it's open source, but it still sucks. I'm assuming they can't be compensated easily due to legal reasons?

They won't be compensated easily due to cheapness reasons. Anything legal is just an excuse (assuming Marak isn't on some terrorist blacklist or something).

Interesting you should mention that, New York Post claims he was arrested for having bomb-making materials in his apartment which may be related to the apartment fire he discusses on his Twitter!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032426

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#106
post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

That's all just called capitalism.

or rather it is not paying for free stuff and internet-enabled global scale.

Not really sure whether capitalism really plays a significant role here more than simply allowing enterprises to exists

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#107
post #3

It's actually really sad that someone who has easily generated millions of dollars of value with their work gets nothing for it. Yeah yeah, it's open source, but it still sucks. I'm assuming they can't be compensated easily due to legal reasons?

The problem is that adding some open source code to a project when it's free is simple, easy, and can be done without oversight (it shouldn't, but it can). If the code couldn't be added without paying the owner a sum of money and receiving a licence in return (i.e. something that would have to be archived and looked after), then it all gets more difficult. Budgets have to be allocated, spending authorised, receipts processed, etc. This would require approval from authority, and they would want assurances frrom the supplier that the code is well-maintained, does what it says it does, etc. Someone would have to review the code, and that costs time and more money. They might even have to review multiple alternatives to ensure that the project selected is the right project. At this point commercial suppliers get invited into the room, who send professional salesfolk to a meeting with management, and the whole ball game changes.

This isn't "management bullshit". It's what should happen in a well-run organisation with a good procurement process.

If you want to sell your software, that's the game you play, and you better hite professional salesfolk to get your cash. If you don't want to play that game, then give it away for free. But don't whine later that it created "millions in value" and you didn't get any of that.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#108
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Australia the streaming options for music/video are better than our previous options for CD's/cable. A three month subscription to Spotify costs less than a single album would cost me 20 years ago.... not even account for inflation. A monthly Netflix subscription is 20% of the price that cable would cost here 5 years ago.

> Spotify You don't own the music. You can't share it, use your own software to analyze, shuffle, remix it, etc. > Netflix subscription But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc. Except now instead of one easy to use interface to access it all, it's spread out all over the place and inconsistent as hell. And more expensive!

> But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc.

Outside of the USA there’s far less choice, so less subscription overflow

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#109

I think this is fair for him to do, and well within his rights. He’s clearly frustrated. I wish there was a better way for open source projects to solicit donations. It’s hard to get your boss to pay for software; it’s extra hard when you get no additional value. I feel like open source would have more luck if Issues could have attached bounties. I may not think to donate to faker.js, however as someone with access t…

BountySource did this. It failed.

There’s a ton who have tried variations of adding money to open source! None have managed to stick for some reason.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#110

I am not religious but labourers in the vineyard stuck with me from school: The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble(D) against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they…

Making an ethical judgment based on religious text is a serious folly.

Personally I'm an atheist, but I still find this piece of religious text interesting. It tells us that this is as old problem as human civilization is. How do people share the work and the fruits of the labour?
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