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Skip is now free and open source

skip.dev

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Re: Skip is now free and open source

#111

Post by nine_k »

nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

This is a wrong framing. I don't want to depend on anything fundamental that would be limited by my ability to pay. The problem is not the money, but the enforcement, the licensing. It usually implies closed source, problems provisioning (a separate license for CI/CD?), and ultimately stuff like hardware crypto keys and online checks.

This is acceptable for highly specialized software with hundreds or even dozens of installations (like some mega-CAD systems). It should rather not be the case for smaller-time, widespread tools. It just doesn't work well, like the maker of Skip noticed. It stunts the development of the tool, making it impossible to meaningfully contribute.

With that, I'm all for paying open-source developers: via donations, sponsorships, hiring them for contract work, or full-time. I'd like this to be a socially accepted norm, expected behavior for corporations, but not a legally enforced requirement.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#112

Post by palata »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #106
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS, because unlike any other field, we are employed in the field that makes the tools our field uses, and distribution and manufacturing costs are zero. People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to. If the rest of the economy worked like this we would be in full-blown utopia. Selling software to softwa…

> The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS > People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to This maybe sounds true on the surface, but isn't really? Prior to VSCode, Visual Studio was the most-used editor by professional developers for a very long time, with Sublime Text and Jetbrains' IDEs being close behind, and the paid options are still…

I believe that there is a difference between developers as persons and developers as employees.

As a person, I don't think that I am very likely to pay for the tool I use to develop in my free time.

As an employee, I need to convince my company to pay for the tool. If it is a subscription, that's even worse. So well-known ones like Microsoft tools might already be approved, but for not-so-famous ones, it's harder.

If I want to depend on a third-party library/tool, I need to convince my company that the licence is fine, that the security is fine, and if it's not free I need to convince them to pay for it.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#113

Post by d0liver »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #91
nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS, because unlike any other field, we are employed in the field that makes the tools our field uses, and distribution and manufacturing costs are zero. People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to. If the rest of the economy worked like this we would be in full-blown utopia. Selling software to softwa…

> Manufacturing costs are zero

No. The fact that you built something yourself doesn't make it free to produce.

More over, you __won't__. You simply cannot build all of the things that you could buy at scale. What if you had to write all of your own video games? Or operating systems?

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#114

Post by tonyhart7 »

nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

this is simply not true, in tech "free" software actually one of the most expensive software you can buy

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#115

Post by didibus »

nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

I've paid for tools in the past, but I think there's a difference, the value of a lot of our tools isn't that great, but more importantly, there is a huge cost to adoption. Going in blind on a paid tool, putting in the time to learn and train yourself to use it, that's a high cost for something that you need to pay for entry and recurring after, that maybe 50 hours into it you start to realize you don't like it.

When I've paid for tools, it tends to be a tool that was free for me to start using, that is now part of my workflow and I love, and I am worried it won't continue to be maintained or updated so I pay for it.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#116

Post by nodja »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #106
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS, because unlike any other field, we are employed in the field that makes the tools our field uses, and distribution and manufacturing costs are zero. People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to. If the rest of the economy worked like this we would be in full-blown utopia. Selling software to softwa…

> The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS > People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to This maybe sounds true on the surface, but isn't really? Prior to VSCode, Visual Studio was the most-used editor by professional developers for a very long time, with Sublime Text and Jetbrains' IDEs being close behind, and the paid options are still…

I've been programming since ~1999 and anecdataly don't remember programmers having a culture of paying for their dev tools. On linux everything's free, and on windows I've used a plethora of freeware IDEs/compilers/etc. from turbo pascal, dev c++ (that's the name of it), later on eclipse took the stage in it's buggy mess and right before vscode there was atom. The only people that I know that used visual studio either got it for free for being a student/teacher, had their job pay for it, or most commonly: pirated it.

According to this[1] site visual studio had a 35.6% marketshare, tied at #1 with notepad++.

[1] https://asterisk.dynevor.org/editor-dominance.html

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#117

Post by tonyhart7 »

is there product level app that handle really "complex" interaction or somebody really use this (other than template project in example gallery)

because after experiencing flutter/RN, crossplatform framework/tools really hard to get right and this is with fb and google resources btw.

sometimes you must really deep in shit and realize that you make mistake to choose these technology

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#118

Post by lmz »

nodja wrote: post #116
anonymous908213 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS > People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to This maybe sounds true on the surface, but isn't really? Prior to VSCode, Visual Studio was the most-used editor by professional developers for a very long time, with Sublime Text and Jetbrains' IDEs being close behind, and the paid options are still…

I've been programming since ~1999 and anecdataly don't remember programmers having a culture of paying for their dev tools. On linux everything's free, and on windows I've used a plethora of freeware IDEs/compilers/etc. from turbo pascal, dev c++ (that's the name of it), later on eclipse took the stage in it's buggy mess and right before vscode there was atom. The only people that I know that used visual studio eithe…

Turbo Pascal was not freeware when it was new.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#119

Post by anonymous908213 »

nodja wrote: post #116
anonymous908213 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS > People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to This maybe sounds true on the surface, but isn't really? Prior to VSCode, Visual Studio was the most-used editor by professional developers for a very long time, with Sublime Text and Jetbrains' IDEs being close behind, and the paid options are still…

I've been programming since ~1999 and anecdataly don't remember programmers having a culture of paying for their dev tools. On linux everything's free, and on windows I've used a plethora of freeware IDEs/compilers/etc. from turbo pascal, dev c++ (that's the name of it), later on eclipse took the stage in it's buggy mess and right before vscode there was atom. The only people that I know that used visual studio eithe…

> or most commonly: pirated it.

Yes, I'm aware. That's the problem elucidated in the article. Developers expect everything for free, even though the price of tools relative to what they get paid to deliver products using those tools is completely trivial. This reluctance to pay for anything harms developers themselves most of all. If developers normalized a culture of paying for things they use, more developers would be able to develop their own independent software and sustain themselves without being beholden to $awful_corp_environment to pay the bills. But because developers will do anything they can to avoid paying I'm pretty pro-piracy for students and such. It is an extremely good thing for learning to be as available as possible, even to those in poverty, so that they can make something better of their situation and contribute more to society than if they were locked in to low-knowledge careers solely by virtue of the random chance of their upbringing. But people who make a living off software development never graduate from the mindset of piracy. Even for open-source software, the vast majority of users never contribute to funding those projects they rely on. If we think open-source software is good for the world, why are we so opposed to anyone being able to make a living creating it? The world's corporate capture by non-free software is a direct result of our own collective actions in refusing to pay anything for anything even when we can afford to.

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