So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

One way you can plausibly interpret the "other side" is to be about sanctions, not necessarily Ukraine.

This story is one of the reasons why I don't understand why people are so enamored with FOSS. The entire ecosystem is a gigantic free-rider problem. If you cannot exlude people from using your software despite the fact that they don't pay, you're not capturing the value you provide. The result is, in line with econ 101, undersupply and lack of investment.

It's not just the author but this is how many free software projects look. People living on 1800 bucks a month providing millions in value to billion dollar companies. Completely bizarre status quo.

I always heard people talk about how "open source is broken", but I'm honestly in shock after reading this.

Is this normal? That one guy can contribute code that is used on thousands of the top websites worldwide and not one of the numerous multi-billion dollar companies that use his code are even willing to donate an amount equivalent to an average developer's salary?

I mean, how is this that possible? It's not like when a company the size of Spotify uses core-js they just add it to their project without thinking. No, they know how important the project is. They know the effort involved in building and maintain a project like core-js. Yet they can't even throw the dude a few thousand dollars a year to say thanks?

Am I missing something here? Is the fact that he's Russian having an impact on the companies willing to offer him support?

It honestly seems insane to me that so many people are able to reach out with messages of hate for adding a donation message to free software, but only a handful of people / business would offer support.

This wide usage of core-js comes from being used by some very widely used libraries. Most developers don't install core-js directly. It always comes as an indirect dependency through other projects like babel, so if he wants to work full-time on OSS and earn good money, he should maybe look at becoming a member of Babel or a similar funded OSS project.

Yes. But I think it also shows a common misunderstanding of "open source" (and even "free software").

What he did was incredibly valuable to a huge number of successful people and corporations. But no one owes him anything. That's the point of open source. If they did owe him something, they wouldn't have used it. They used it because it was great, it was established/known, it was available with no strings attached whatsoever. Again, that's the point, that's why it's popular.

But also, he owes them nothing. He doesn't have to keep maintaining the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and flexible package, as a full-time job, for free. He could could have just stopped after his first couple years where it was an inherently fulfilling passion project, he could just put in a couple hours a week, whatever. People would make do, it would still be quite valuable for a lot of people for a long time. Or those other projects and companies would come up with an more up-to-date alternative when really needed.

You really don't have to be a martyr, and we don't have to "give up on open source" or whatever. You can just make stuff available that you wanted to do anyway. Sometimes it leads to bigger opportunities, sometimes (usually?) not. Don't slave away and sacrifice your personal life because of what you think you deserve if you do, that's not going to materialize that way.

Remember this is all stuff just offered up with NO WARRANTY, NOT EVEN FITNESS FOR PURPOSE etc. And in practice it's super super valuable that way. Even without you sacrificing yourself. Let companies spend the big bucks on it, just work on what's fun in your free time.