“Open source” is not broken • Hacker News Board

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#121

Post by sidlls » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

haukem wrote: post #92

sidlls wrote: post #32

Open source is most certainly broken, and not just due to the various financial, freedom and security issues these two articles focus on. My biggest peeve: documentation is often minimal (e.g. API docs only) or filled with useless toy examples that are effectively just rephrasing of API docs. The entire underpinning of free and open source software is silly: software in this context isn't an academic pursuit producin…

Writing documentation is boring, adding new features is more fun to do. Someone working on open source to have fun is more likely to invest their time in more features instead of better documentation. Here companies or users like you could step in and contribute better documentation or pay the original authors to improve the documentation.

Why on earth would I labor for free on someone’s vanity project, no matter what utility it provides otherwise? And why would a company pay a person who has already shown he or she does not value their own labor in that way?

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#122

Post by danenania » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

rdpintqogeogsaa wrote: post #97

loic-sharma wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you say, but FYI docs is one of the easiest yet most valuable thing a person can contribute. As a maintainer, I wish I had more feedback and contributions to the docs!

As someone who wrote large parts of the docs for a project: The reason that I imagine few people do it is because if you get involved with the documentation, you will be on the hook for tracking the library closely and keeping the documentation up to date; there will be an implicit, external pressure that the documentation continues working. That becomes a lot of work very quickly, so I tend to only get involved in l…

Updating docs should be part of the responsibility of adding a new feature, just like adding tests and making sure no existing tests are failing.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#123

Post by indymike » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #3

It seems like both sides of this supposed debate are saying precisely the same thing, with one side ("how dare we suggest anything is wrong wth open source") taking umbrage for no apparent reason. The premise of "both" arguments is that open source maintainers are being exploited.

> The premise of "both" arguments is that open source maintainers are being exploited.

A lot of the business models that are exploiting OSS and OSS maintainers are very much parasitic. I think industry needs to be reminded that the first rule of being a parasite is "don't kill the host." That is what is happening as companies monetize open source and then don't support the team creating and maintaining the software they are exploiting.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#124

Post by c-smile » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #72

>If FOSS was broken, the internet as we know it today wouldn’t exist; the countless marvels of technology that we take for granted and techno-economies that thrive on them wouldn’t exist; I guess I just vehemently disagree. Nearly all of the early open-source software that made the internet possible was produced in universities. The only reason it was sustainable was because it was professors being paid by the univer…

> the only way I can foresee open source working in the way the purists want is if there is a universal basic income.

Essentially honest FOSS will be available when we evolve to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"[1] type of society.

Human race is clearly on asymptotical track to that. But not yet.

[1] (C) 1875, Karl Marx.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#125

Post by jollybean » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #107

jollybean wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point here. People's time is valuable, especially expert developers. The 'Code' only part of the issue with respect to input cost. Someone has to maintain that dev. account, maintain their skills, stay on top of distribution policies, probably take on some legal risk, keep the build kind of up to day. That takes skill. We mostly want it that way so that distribution is clean and clear and r…

That $20 doesn't go to the dev. It goes to Apple, and, in the USA, requires doxxing yourself to the vendor to get a copy of free-as-in-freedom software. That's unacceptable and repugnant, and it doesn't have any bearing on the volunteer labor. There is such a thing that's free: free software. It was produced with volunteer labor (but doesn't have to be - look at golang!), but the end result/product is free-as-in-free…

You're not grasping the part where there is material work and labour in most parts of the value chain including maintenance, inspection, and distribution of builds.

Only 15% of that $20 goes to Apple - while that may be a few points to high, it's not egregious.

The rest of that money goes to the person responsible for maintaining the build, which is 'work'.

"That's unacceptable and repugnant, "

This is a completely naive view, tantamount to saying 'People should work for me, for free, because I said so, and it's repugnant for them not to!'.

"what I want to achieve with this free software is that anyone be able to access it without barriers whatsoever, including payment. "

For 'source code' - this is already possible, because 'source code' can fairly easily be provided 'for free'.

But a maintained and up-to-date build, for specific platforms, with all of the unavoidable regulatory overhead - has cost.

If you want that to be 'free' - again you're expecting someone to labour for you.

There's an easy answer to this -> it's $20 on the App Store.

If you want to do free labour and make it free, you can do that.

But otherwise this 'moral indignation' and 'repugnance' at people who are unwilling to labour for you, for free, is a problem.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#126

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

jbirer wrote: post #111

My philosophy (albeit it might not be shared by many) is that if you are going to do a job, either do it well and all the way through or don't do it. I see many half-assed (for the lack of a better term) open source jobs where the developers do not respond to criticism and feedback in other words than "you should be grateful we did X and Y after all", with an air of arrogance and saintliness for even doing anything.…

[deleted]

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#127

Post by sidlls » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #102

k__ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. OSS is broken, but I'd even go so far and say that most of software is, because money is often an after thought.

And by broken, you mean what?

Can’t speak for the GP, but from my perspective: misaligned incentives (financial and technical), poor documentation, buggy important edge cases, toxic attitudes, egos, and so on. In short: it’s broken the same way any other development is, except it also includes the extreme end of economic exploitation.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#128

Post by frizzle112 » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

Author describes a classic tragedy of the commons situation - many reap the benefits but there's little incentive to invest in OSS.

Analysis from there is weak. The incentives I think fairly clearly lead to major underinvestment in open source relative to the ideal level because of the incentive problems Even if there is some investment and some significant success if there was investment of time and money order proportional to usage of major OSS components.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#129

Post by ploxiln » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #33

I recently looked into open sourcing Homechart ( https://homechart.app ). It's free to use already (for self hosting), but some users wanted it to be open source (almost entirely for auditing purposes, but I doubt they'd even read the code). I don't want anyone using it for commercial purposes, and I found a few licenses that would prevent this-- namely Commons Clause, but at the end of the day I didn't see a benefit…

There are always going to be some people asking for more. Your app is not open-source and you already have that. Don't open-source it if you don't want to, or don't allow issues/requests for the open-source version if you don't want to.

Understand that some people will avoid your app and look for something that is open-source, for various reasons. So they can be confident they'll never have to pay, so they can theoretically fix bugs and port to newer platforms if they need to, so they can be confident there is no underhanded reporting or remote-control in the software, whatever. When looking for something, I value and prefer open-source alternatives, myself.

But that's not everyone, and that's fine. You don't have to open-source your app.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#130

Post by bluefox » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

Solutions involving companies paying directly to the people whose code they use miss the point.

The reason is that software shared with the world is often shared out of passion and idealism. If only code that's useful to some companies is paid for, the world of free (as in beer or otherwise) software as we know and love is still unsustainable, and not just because fledgling projects tend to be inferior in many ways to everything that came before.

Some software is written simply for the fun of it. Future Crew were kids writing demos and putting them out (by the way, an executable for a program that's written in assembly is not so far removed from its source code; so whether they put out the source code or not is immaterial, here the point is "free as in beer"). These demos were unlikely to be directly useful to companies, but we were still amazed by them and some of us got into programming because of them. Do you want to live in a world where only people who produce software that's useful to some company can sustain themselves?

Their parents provided them with food and shelter, so they didn't have to think too hard about writing and releasing it. People in this thread claim that they don't feel exploited, probably for similar reasons. They probably have an income or enough money to make them feel comfortable giving something away. What happens when circumstances don't go your way, though? Then, while you live off your savings, see them shrink day by day, you realize that society doesn't give you the basic stuff that's needed for living, so why the hell should you give anything away? If you already gave stuff away while you were fat and healthy, and this stuff is being used profitably by others, the resentment can only grow.