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Paying people to work on open source is good

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Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#101

Post by jart »

jpetso wrote: post #84

If we're going to ignore the "official" meaning of open source, then let's take a step back to consider why open source is worth supporting in the first place. Open source guarantees to me, the user, that competition among vendors will be possible and fair in the future. This is exactly the point that many "fake OSS" licenses try to take away. Okay, maybe it's possible to fork for personal on-prem use, but god forbid…

Those are some pretty twisted reasons to support open source. First of all, you are not a "user" if you use open source. You are an owner. Open source gives you the freedom to control the development process of the software. It sounds like what you want is the freedom to have other people serving you. Also, an inventor who chooses to reserve some rights to control their invention is not acting anti-competitively. You're disagreeing with both law and morality by thinking that. You are not entitled to anything. Open source usually happens because the inventor has nothing to gain from exerting personal control through legal means over their invention. So what it in effect does, is it gives you the power to take control and participate in its development, as an equal, rather than a mere consumer. You can't walk into open source with the consumer mindset because that's just not how things work. Companies like Microsoft that retain full control over their software will break their backs to serve you, because they're the only ones who can. But you can't expect that kind of service from people who are simply trying to give you the DIY tools to do it yourself.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#102

Post by debo_ »

acdha wrote: post #96
debo_ wrote: post #87

Did anyone following this in Mastodon-land specifically see any reaction to "luxury automated gay space communism?" I would be surprised if he wasn't blasted for that. This article came across as much less ranty than I expected based on his disclaimer. I think he pretty much perfectly articulated the noise around funded open source.

It’s been quieter there than here other than done licensing derails. I think most people are desensitized to it after a decade of memes: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/fully-automated-luxu...

Ah, my self-imposed limits on internetting have saved me here. This is the first I've heard it. Thanks for the link.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#103

Post by onthecanposting »

hardcopy wrote: post #51

A few weeks ago a wrote in to my Senator on the complete lack of government funding for independent engineers/small projects building FOSS (USA). NLNet in the EU is awesome. We really should have something like the NLNet in the USA.

I'm undecided if it would be a net good or bad. If you think government should subsidize infrastructure that creates value that's hard to bill to users (like roads), then software is a pretty logical extension. However, given my personal knowledge of transportation project delivery and the astronomical amount of waste it includes, I suspect this might just make things worse.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#105

Post by lnxg33k1 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #85
hardcopy wrote: post #51

A few weeks ago a wrote in to my Senator on the complete lack of government funding for independent engineers/small projects building FOSS (USA). NLNet in the EU is awesome. We really should have something like the NLNet in the USA.

[flagged]

Government should definitely be involved in investigating collectivity money to create value for everyone, and has a spending power that, frankly, is semi idiotic to compare to what a single guy can do “you should use your money” does not make practical sense

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#106

Post by jpetso »

jart wrote: post #101
jpetso wrote: post #84

If we're going to ignore the "official" meaning of open source, then let's take a step back to consider why open source is worth supporting in the first place. Open source guarantees to me, the user, that competition among vendors will be possible and fair in the future. This is exactly the point that many "fake OSS" licenses try to take away. Okay, maybe it's possible to fork for personal on-prem use, but god forbid…

Those are some pretty twisted reasons to support open source. First of all, you are not a "user" if you use open source. You are an owner . Open source gives you the freedom to control the development process of the software. It sounds like what you want is the freedom to have other people serving you. Also, an inventor who chooses to reserve some rights to control their invention is not acting anti-competitively. Yo…

I am an owner if I can exercise control over the software at hand. That's entirely my point - there is open source that a rando like me can hop in and improve, sometimes requiring difficult discussions about how to go about it exactly, but always with the experience of the user as a priority. (User can be an end user, but also a developer who's using an open source library/framework.)

And then there's "open source" where the code is accessible but the user experience takes a backseat to corporate interests, CLA requirements provide a one-sided transfer of copyrights, hobbyist contributions are systematically steamrolled by optimizing build pipelines and development processes for internal company use, and large-scale directions are decided in a private meeting room without involving community contributors.

If an inventor reserves some rights to control their invention for their own benefit, I have no problem with that. There's plenty of commercial software out there, people are working hard to provide value to customers, and I've been part of this system too.

Where I take issue is when we ask for special treatment of "open source" whose main purpose is to benefit commercial entities in doing business. Companies should figure out on their own how to keep their mission-critical software alive, that's their business. If Django suffers because lots of profitable outfits can't figure out a way to finance what they build upon, let them eat dust. They'll figure it out eventually when their services start falling behind on all fronts.

As a charitable coder, I'm going to invest my time into providing value for end users, not companies. That's the kind of open source we as a community/society should focus on supporting and financing. Imho.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#107

Post by johngossman »

Good piece, but it buries the lede. I suspect the reaction would be different if it started with the conclusion. Otherwise, the title and introduction sounds like another article about direct contributions to maintainers instead of being agnostic about how the maintainers get paid. I think “Purity only serves to limit open source’s value to society” is a great debate topic.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#108

Post by hardcopy »

onthecanposting wrote: post #103
hardcopy wrote: post #51

A few weeks ago a wrote in to my Senator on the complete lack of government funding for independent engineers/small projects building FOSS (USA). NLNet in the EU is awesome. We really should have something like the NLNet in the USA.

I'm undecided if it would be a net good or bad. If you think government should subsidize infrastructure that creates value that's hard to bill to users (like roads), then software is a pretty logical extension. However, given my personal knowledge of transportation project delivery and the astronomical amount of waste it includes, I suspect this might just make things worse.

I like NLNet model. NLNet isn't a government agency. NLNet is a nonprofit foundation that is responsible for distributing certain government grants, such as NGI Core Zero, which are themed for particular goals.

I definitely wouldn't want FOSS projects to apply directly to a government agency.

https://nlnet.nl/foundation/

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#109

Post by jart »

jpetso wrote: post #106
jart wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are some pretty twisted reasons to support open source. First of all, you are not a "user" if you use open source. You are an owner . Open source gives you the freedom to control the development process of the software. It sounds like what you want is the freedom to have other people serving you. Also, an inventor who chooses to reserve some rights to control their invention is not acting anti-competitively. Yo…

I am an owner if I can exercise control over the software at hand. That's entirely my point - there is open source that a rando like me can hop in and improve, sometimes requiring difficult discussions about how to go about it exactly, but always with the experience of the user as a priority. (User can be an end user, but also a developer who's using an open source library/framework.) And then there's "open source" w…

You should be supporting and financing open source that elevates knowledge.

Knowledge is the resource that open source distributes which folks fight to control. It's like the fruit you'd grow on a farm. You could argue about whether or not the fruit should be distributed more to the city folk or the country folk, or ask questions about how much money the farm is making, but I'd say you should be focusing on getting the farm to grow more fruit, since that's the only way to be sure everyone becomes richer as a result.

Scientists do a great job discovering knowledge, but open source is what makes it useful and able to be used. Any open source project that's helping to elevate know-how is a project worth supporting.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#110

Post by tzs »

em-bee wrote: post #78
tzs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll respond to the little part where it puts using a "non-OSI approved license" under the umbrella of open source. It's not OSI approved because it isn't open source, as the community defined it long ago, and as it still makes sense for it to be defined So what would you call a license that meets OSI's open source definition [1] but has not been OSI-approved? OSI no longer approves new licenses unless they think t…

So what would you call a license that meets OSI's open source definition [1] but has not been OSI-approved? arrogant, as in: do you really believe that your project is so different that one of the existing approved licenses will not do? (addressed to the hypothetical project with such a license) i mean, i am with bruce perens who believes that we need to rethink licenses completely to address many problems that have…

> do you really believe that your project is so different that one of the existing approved licenses will not do? (addressed to the hypothetical project with such a license)

Actually, I think it would be pretty easy to have a project for which none of the existing OSI approved licenses will do without even being all that different, ever since OSI approved AGPLv3.

AGPLv3 contains a distribution requirement that triggers for your program if you have users who are "interacting with it remotely through a computer network".

Now all it takes is wanting a license similar to that, but with the trigger being different. Maybe a project agrees with AGPLv3 that if you run their program on your server you should have to give the users source, but wants that to also apply to users who are interacting with it locally on a computer network, or are interacting via some method other than a "computer network" such as serial terminals.

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