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The things nobody wants to pay for

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Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#121

Post by internetter »

satiric wrote: post #3
zeroCalories wrote: post #2

I don't know much about the Kernel or testing it, but I submitted one fix years ago that I ended up testing it manually, and that was enough for it to be accepted. I think that's just the culture, which might seem odd to some, but also I imagine it would make coordination almost impossible if they were sticklers for testing. I've also known companies to run full integration tests instead of using stuff like unit test…

Of the ones you listed, consistency is the big downside for me. It seems like there's multiple options for everything in the Linux ecosystem. From the beginner questions (e.g., which distro), to the nerdy questions (e.g., systemd vs sysvinit), to the ones in between (e.g., vim vs emacs). I sometimes wonder if GNU Herd would have been better at this, since everything would be designed by the GNU folks for one unified…

Valve does fund KDE

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#122

Post by nox101 »

ho_schi wrote: post #74
nox101 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes open source Swift, LLVM, Clang, WebKit, darwin. They already spend millions on open source. Google makes open source Android, Chromium, Go, Dart, Flutter, Lit, ANGLE, Dawn. They also spend millions on open source. Microsoft makes C#, F#, VSCode, Electron, Powershell, and further Microsoft is providing free hosting for probably 95% of all open source projects (github) as well as free CIs (github actions) a…

Looks like mixing somewhat open-source with free-software? Again. Remembers me of late 90ies. And the intentions. It is fine to care about individual requirements but not all target the common society. Flutter and Chrome (Blink) are mere exclusive Google projects, they just shall strength Android, ChromeOS and their cloud business. Same for Microsoft stuff, they add stuff which strength their cloud business - with Li…

I'm not really sure what your point is. Nearly every open source project is started in the interest of the people who create it.

Chromium is used by Electron and through that 1000s of projects. Element, VSCode, Slack, Discord, Figma, Signal, Twitch and thousands of open source projects. It's also the basis for Edge, Brave, Opera, and several other browsers.

Flutter is also used by 1000s of projects both commercial and open source.

Android is also used by thousands of projects, Fire sticks, Refrigerators, TVs, USB Stick Computers, Security systems, and on and.

All of these are "helping the commons". I've personally written 4 Electron apps. 2 are open source. They wouldn't exist without it as I wouldn't have had the time to make apps for multiple platforms.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#123

Post by tonyedgecombe »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #57
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My career solely exist because of foss. You are likely an excellent software engineer. Why would a company not have hired you to work on non-foss software?

They did. But how do you think I got interested in software in the first place? How do you think I practiced my skills ? How do you think I created my toolbox, met my peers, solved problems beyond my reach, and eventually created a company, while feeling good about it?

A lot of us did all that before FOSS was a big thing. Yes I did have to get my wallet out to buy a copy of Turbo C but it wasn't much of a barrier (at least compared to the hardware costs).

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#124

Post by hashtag-til »

jeffbee wrote: post #63
hashtag-til wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many thousands of companies use LLVM in their products and benefit from the technology. As it is an open source project, in an ideal world, it would e fair to assume they would somehow contribute back, but instead they just take it for granted as there is a group of people who make it available for free. (please read to the end before posting your "wHy pUt iT oPeN-sOuRcE tHeN???" bigoted comments) Don't get me wrong:…

> they just take it for granted I just looked at 1 page of the most recent commits to the LLVM project and every single one of them is from a corporate developer. I can't imagine how to arrive at the conclusion that the industry takes LLVM for granted. The major LLVM subprojects that I follow are not just largely written and maintained by large companies, but were also initially invented and contributed by them.

And how many companies are those? FAANG, major linux distros, plus a small list?

Now compare that with the corporate user base…

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#125

Post by BiteCode_dev »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #123
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. But how do you think I got interested in software in the first place? How do you think I practiced my skills ? How do you think I created my toolbox, met my peers, solved problems beyond my reach, and eventually created a company, while feeling good about it?

A lot of us did all that before FOSS was a big thing. Yes I did have to get my wallet out to buy a copy of Turbo C but it wasn't much of a barrier (at least compared to the hardware costs).

I guarantee that when I was an intern making 40% of minimum wage, it made all the difference.

Plus, let's not pretend most of us were not pirating all the paid stuff. Is that what we want our industry to be based on?

What's more, FOSS is so much more collaborative the docs, tutorial and communities made me grow so much faster than anything else professionally.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#126

Post by JetSpiegel »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #35

Open source is the biggest voluntary transfer of wealth from the working class to the business/investor class ever. Software in the modern economy is the "means of production" and software developers have given it away free to the business/investor class. The investor class, happily funds software startup gambles that people pour their lives into knowing that most will fail but they will still statistically make bank…

I think Free Software is the means of production, but it's not a wealth transfer, it's capitalist value destruction, it's the elimination of entire swathes of the economy. It's a purely communist system of socialist common good.

The profit of the big corps almost never results from the FOSS itself.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#127

Post by narag »

makomk wrote: post #102
narag wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same person, but I've recently switched from Windows 10 to Debian stable with KDE, so I can share my experience. It doesn't really sucks. Instead, I'm happy I have no longer to put up with the growing number of Windows annoyances. The balance is definitely positive. That said, there are a number of issues that I've found. Some of them are solvable via configuration, some of them are not. I'll omit a couple of…

Whilst it's not that easy to discover you shouldn't have to be holding shift before you start dragging, it's generally only whether you're holding it down when dropping the items that matters in KDE from what I've seen.

It does not work for me. It's the first thing I tried, because it works this way in Windows for different devices... that is neither ideal, but still better than the crappy menu.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#128

Post by detourdog »

ho_schi wrote: post #113
detourdog wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before AT&T was broken up it was illegal to connect a fax machine or any other unauthorized equipment on their network.

I think this wasn’t an either/or decision for the (drumroll) Regan administration. I’m also afraid that our Fax machines were even a priority. btw. Germany has a law which enforces the endpoint and declares that customers attach their own modems. Democracy allows citizen to decide - we can prioritize people’s needs over companies?

I was just setting the environmental expectations the American phone network. The real disruption was the move to data networks. Architectural I think AT&T needed to set-up an out of band channel to control the network separate from the data channels.

This channel I think was the A channel of an ISDN line which had 2 b channels.

I once had a Cabbie in NYC tell me about Citibank getting the first Fax Machines installed in NYC. They connected the Manhattan Office tower with the Queens office.

They remember it getting installed and there was a long lang time before anybody used. The opinion was that it didn't make sense compared to all the better ways to move documents.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#129

Post by dirkhh »

leosanchez wrote: post #29
huijzer wrote: post #10

I once compared Linus Torvalds' net worth to Warren Buffett's net worth. I think they are both extremely capable individuals in their fields. Torvalds earns about 10 million per year. With that income, it would take Torvalds 12k years to reach the same net worth as Buffett (about 124 billion). Put differently, Buffett could personally fund 10k open source contributors 200k per year for their lifetime (60 years) if he…

> Torvalds earns about 10 million per year Source?

There's no source since this is a made up number. It massively overstates his income.

Re: The things nobody wants to pay for

#130

Post by _ph_ »

Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #32
jorvi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect there does need to be a regular social renewal to resolve the tragedy of the commons problem. Wouldn’t the solution offered on LWN work great? Just excise a tax (well, I guess a licensing cost) for open source use to any corporation that is above x$ amounts of revenue. Make it a tiny percentage (0.1%?). 2022 revenue: - $400 billion, Apple - $200 billion, Microsoft - $120 billion, Meta - $80 billion, AWS $…

Or, give a tax deduction for contributions to open source. This is America, new taxes are nearly impossible to pass, tax cuts are much easier to pass.

I think this is a great idea and it just feels right. If you tax something, you have the challenge on how to distribute the money in a proper manner if it isn't repurposed to something else in the first place.

But having tax deductions solves the problem. There is an incentive to support open source, but the companies can decide themselves where the effort goes.

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