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Give away your code, but never your time

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Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#111

Post by falcor84 »

vjeux wrote: post #109
cavneb wrote: post #72

As much as I agree with the sentiment behind this post, I disagree with the implementation. The nature of open source code is collaboration. Paying for collaboration seems like it would hinder progress altogether and possibly direct the project into a direction that is not suitable for the poor majority not paying. One more thing that bothers me is that money for maintenance should not come from developers. This is l…

You're likely going to be shut down by GitHub. They have a special section in their ToS that prohibits advertising. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#k-... > Short version: We do not generally prohibit use of GitHub for advertising. However, we expect our users to follow certain limitations, so GitHub does not become a spam haven. No one wants that.

>They have a special section in their ToS that prohibits advertising

Ehm, your quote does not quite support your statement:

>We do not generally prohibit use of GitHub for advertising

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#112

Post by matt4077 »

adekok wrote: post #20
outoftacos wrote: post #5

I've never really worked at a place where we had any spare time for open source project development, nor time to opine on the social issues of the day. Must be nice, but I feel like a very small, privileged few actually live in that world. The rest of us have work to do.

I'm not sure why the downvotes, other than you express an unpopular opinion. My experience has been two extremes: 1) companies that use open source, modify it (to the extent that it's largely proprietary), and deride the open source community that competes with them 2) companies that use open source to leverage non-core functionality they need... and move on with their real value-add Companies in the style of (1) nev…

I think both of your "extremes" are flawed, but for a lack of time I'll just add the big one you missed entirely:

0) Companies funding the full development of large OSS projects. Examples: MySQL, Postgres, nginx, Chrome, Tensorflow, React, (Most of) Linux, Redis etc. etc.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#113

Post by sbov »

isaaclyman wrote: post #29

Devil's advocate: How about an issue/PR tracker that lets users pay for priority? A simple bidding system. If BigCorp International is willing to pay $200/hour for IE10 support, they can be next on your list. And afterward, an bug with significant community support totalling $50/hour, pledged by 50 different users. With allowances for your own preferences as maintainer and the needs of the community, of course, but g…

Someone did that, back in 2003! It looks like its changed over time (and its security certificate is recently expired).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountysource

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#114

Post by notamy »

hartator wrote: post #25
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #8

> We also need to bury the idea that any developer who submits an issue or pull request is automatically entitled to the attention of a maintainer. > The message to users should be “do whatever you want with the code, but pay us for our time if you want to influence the project’s future.” So, for me, this goes against the reasons I decide to give my personal time to the community. For me, creating an open source proj…

The issue is donations don't work even if you have a large user base.

This this this. If you provide a service for free, the vast majority of your user base will never care about giving you money, and will just stop using your service and find another one if you try to start charging them for it instead of keeping it free. One of my side-projects has ended up here and it's been a huge pain to deal with.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#115

Post by [deleted] »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #93
bkovacev wrote: post #21

I dislike the key suggestion. What's the point of open-source - if not to give back? It's a developer's codex/morale to answer. It seems the author is salty about the fact he doesn't make money from open source, but is investing a lot of time. Well my dear colleague, offer support to the bigger companies that use your software in production or use that software to sell another. Simple. Open source was never meant to…

Your employer benefits financially from the open source community. People who purchase software cheaply due to lower barrier to entry and more competition also benefit. As a coder I generally don't benefit so don't feel the need to give back. As a coder the tsunami of FOSS is a negative. My job is now to glue free modules together rather than design stuff. I'd be quite happy to pay for a compiler if I had to.

[deleted]

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#116

Post by badminton1 »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #92
badminton1 wrote: post #12

I disagree. By using a small project and reporting bugs you are helping to test it, giving feedback and allowing it to grow. Also, reporting a bug sometimes saves the maintainers the effort of finding the bug themselves... something that actually takes time. A better policy is to encourage people to help fix the bugs they report, with a test case or a pull request if possible... something actionable.

maybe some sortof point system would be nice. You get points by providing good bug reports, good forum answers, good PRs, good code reviews, providing tests, donating, etc., but you can lose points by wasting people's time or being a jerk, for instance. Then maintainers can prioritize PRs by people with good points, regardless of how they got the points (be it from donating time, code, or other ways of helping the co…

The problem I see with that is that people gain and lose interest in a project over time.

Some other people become disenchanted with how the project is going and try to fork it when it doesn't go their way. This is not inherently bad... many good projects come from forks... but it is not an ideal situation to have.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#117

Post by kalat »

The author has many good points however it's either his writing style (thinking), ideas, or conceptual mental model where he is missing the point of open source. It is actually a bit confusing. His title doesn't correlate with what he writes later which contains several somewhat vacuous statements. People love to work together and produce something for the common good, humanity wouldn't be here without that good feeling and collaborative spirit. open source comes from people's time, time has led us to a point where open source is everywhere. Not all people are greedy, every coder owes another coder their livelihood. I think this draft just needed like 100 more edits. Also, "Many" does not equal 3.

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#119

Post by broodbucket »

sbov wrote: post #113
isaaclyman wrote: post #29

Devil's advocate: How about an issue/PR tracker that lets users pay for priority? A simple bidding system. If BigCorp International is willing to pay $200/hour for IE10 support, they can be next on your list. And afterward, an bug with significant community support totalling $50/hour, pledged by 50 different users. With allowances for your own preferences as maintainer and the needs of the community, of course, but g…

Someone did that, back in 2003! It looks like its changed over time (and its security certificate is recently expired). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountysource

Bountysource is definitely still active, though not as utilised as it should be. The cert expiring is obviously dodgy but it's only expired by a few hours and assumedly will be fixed soon

Re: Give away your code, but never your time

#120

Post by quickben »

falcor84 wrote: post #111
vjeux wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're likely going to be shut down by GitHub. They have a special section in their ToS that prohibits advertising. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#k-... > Short version: We do not generally prohibit use of GitHub for advertising. However, we expect our users to follow certain limitations, so GitHub does not become a spam haven. No one wants that.

>They have a special section in their ToS that prohibits advertising Ehm, your quote does not quite support your statement: >We do not generally prohibit use of GitHub for advertising

It's a TOS, worded for PR, besides which it's unenforceable and at the whim of GitHub.

It's like building a business on Google Reader or FB Parse.

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