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Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
131–140 of 146 posts
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? Most FOSS desktop software is not commercial to begin with, however there are companies like JetBrains that do sell quite successfully to Linux users, even as their core product is FLOSS.
Exactly, because everyone failed to monetize it. JetBrains sells developer tools, a very niche market, specially when a large majority of FOSS is allergic to paying for tooling. In fact I would bet a large percentage of those Linux users are using Android Studio or Community variants. It would be very interesting to know how many of those users has JetBrains actually managed to monetize on.
> It would be very interesting to know how many of those users has JetBrains actually managed to monetize on.
> developer tools, a very niche market
Overall yes, but on GNU/Linux, most users are still some kind of a developer.
I don't have numbers, but JetBrains did say that most users of their products use the paid version and that their Linux business is a healthy one. I am on Linux and subscribe to all their products and have colleagues and friends that do too, so we do exist.
I also paid for Githost.io when I was using GitLab.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#133This seems mostly like a Silicon Valley filter bubble talk.
All the great places I worked with valued:
- People's time. Any extra red tape was aggressively and actively hunted and killed on the spot.
- Self-sustainable business model. No venture capitalists, no investors of any kind. They walked before they ran.
- Not hiring more that they can pay for in a year.
- Less people doing more in exchange for hefty salaries and job security. As business needs grow, the company's leadership turns inwards and people seriously discuss how can they optimize people's time and efforts better without burning them out. I've seen 5 juniors replaced with 1 senior a number of times.
- Respect and appreciation. Be it a few days off after a lot of work, or 20-50% extra salary that month, or just a collective thank you from several people -- all of these go a VERY long way towards loyalty and sense of camaraderie that make people stick around for 10 years.
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Open-sourcing your code serves a number of goals:
- Shows that you are open to be vulnerable and that you are ready to do better. However, sometimes it's just a PR stunt and no pull requests or comments are ever addressed.
- Serves to attract young and enthusiastic programmers which is often times not such a good thing -- the company might need people who they can guilt-trip into 17-hour coding sessions to get N projects off the ground in a short time frame. Sometimes they actually need the fresh perspective though. So 50/50 here.
- Shows that you care about your ecosystem even if you don't actually open-source your own product but a number of libraries that you managed to extract from your monolith over time.
...and a few others. But open-sourcing stuff in a corporate setting is mostly a PR move.
So really, this article is not at all valuable nor does it even give an interesting side perspective.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think the MBA speak for this is “commoditising you competition”. It’s when you use open source or zero pricing to either offensively or defensively to nullify an advantage your competitor has. Google attacks Apple by offering an open source OS (Android). Now everyone can make a phone. They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium). Microsoft defends against irrel…
> Chris Lattner tried to open source [...] LLVM LLVM was open source from its beginning: it was Lattner's research project. Apple acqui-hired it/him, and they have a private fork. I agree that it's pretty remarkable that Swift, which was conceived at Apple, was opened up, however.
I think it make sense from a cost/benefit analysis. Swift was created to make it easier for developers to write iPhone apps. Open sourcing the code provides developers with example code (given it was a brand new language), and more eyeballs to potentially look through the code to improve it whereas google open sourcing search should just allow bing to catch-up.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
For one, delta-sync was built into the Dropbox client from the very beginning, and I'm getting the impression from this thread that Nextcloud still doesn't have it till this day: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/417 This is a major contributor to sync UX, and by no means trivial to implement. Another example is their file stubs implementation (Project Infinite) that works across platforms, which is also no…
> This really seems like a matter of the OP not knowing what they're missing and then flaunting that ignorance. In fact, I added that I never used Dropbox to give context on my perspective. I am not sure that qualifies as 'flaunting that ignorance'. Regarding the delta-sync feature: That is, in fact, a feature neither Nextcloud nor Owncloud posses at the moment. On the other hand, it would not be that beneficial to m…
The only thing keeping me in Dropbox is the fact that I use several very important apps (one of which is an encrypted password vault) across very different OS-es -- think iOS, Android, Windows and macOS.
They offer transparent syncing so all your app instances work with the same data and sadly trying to get the developers of the apps to include self-hosted solutions (with added configuration step: the IP/port) is not happening and isn't likely to happen.
And both Apple and Google aren't open to the idea of allowing cross-ecosystem app synchronization (think game you play for an hour on your iPad but then want to play it on your specialized gaming Android device when you are out and about later; in the case of games this problem is solved by using Google or Facebook as login providers on all your devices). And until that's true then Dropbox and other popular cloud storage providers (mainly Google Drive and OneDrive) will always have a place.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you go through your dev career thinking only people who write and use open source code are brilliant you'll miss out on the opportunity to learn from some of the industry's best developers. There are loads of people working on entirely closed source projects who are very, very good engineers. Not every project is web.
Not all open source is web crap. Not all open source is on GitHub, or has a website and is even indexed by search engines.
The recently announced https://sr.ht is a good example.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#137On the contrary, I’ve found that companies who are actually doing hardcore software engineering, where the code is the main value driver for the business, rarely open source their best stuff, but they’re great places for engineers. Google doesn’t open source its self driving car code. Facebook’s value driver is the network, not the code, so it can open source anything. Dropbox’s client is amazing and is not only clos…
Think the MBA speak for this is “commoditising you competition”. It’s when you use open source or zero pricing to either offensively or defensively to nullify an advantage your competitor has. Google attacks Apple by offering an open source OS (Android). Now everyone can make a phone. They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium). Microsoft defends against irrel…
> They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium).
Imo chrome and android are about being able to ensure ads are delivered.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#138Artsy CTO here. I am excited to see this article and, putting aside that it quotes me :) A couple of things I wanted to highlight that are not in the article and should have been. - Pay attention to how Microsoft has used open-source to turn things around in terms of developer credibility. - Becoming open-source by default can still be an advantage as 99% of companies don't do it. It can still fix your hiring pipelin…
Why didn't you open source before ElasticSearch invented something better than yours?
Was the code your core business proposition? I doubt it but still asking.
Was there a bureaucratic blocker -- or golfer-type rich guys with strong bias who simply don't get software? Or was it something else?
I mean, I am pretty sure you guys knew for a long time that this moment has been coming. What kept you from reacting a bit earlier?
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Google actually does open source a significant part of their reusable libraries. I'm thinking about stuff like Leveldb, Tensorflow and Angular off the top of my head, but I'm sure there is a lot more. Some companies do seem to be ideologically opposed to open source (I'm looking at you Balmer-era Microsoft) but Google has always seemed to have had a certain commitment to it.
I think a Javascript frontend framework like Angular has to be open source by definition. Or is there a way to close source it?
Once the output is built and uglified, you will not reverse engineer it back to the source that google started with. JS projects are not not much different from any other built project. Probably closest to .Net or Java IL once uglified. Still higher than WebASM, but still not he same as source.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Artsy CTO here. Interestingly for the first 2 years we were conquering the frontier of nearest neighbor search applied to art, using some pretty new algos. Then ElasticSearch just built something 10x better and we tossed our entire codebase. I wish we just did it in the open, the advantage was quickly lost to a stronger open-source effort.
I mean, exactly? When you had some novel tech, you kept it to yourself. Now that you have market power, you develop out in the open. Perfect game plan.
Or don't do it. Whatever works for you. I don't know if it would be as appropriate at my current company, but I certainly see it as an option, having experienced the benefits.