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NPM Bans Terminal Ads

zdnet.com

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Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#141

Post by guitarsteve »

MattyRad wrote: post #107
huntaub wrote: post #8

The rationale from the author of the package who adding advertising is enlightening and definitely worth reading. https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/

This is highly unrelated, sorry, but does anyone know the zsh theme used in that post ( https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png )? I didn't see anything like it in the list of zsh themes ( https://zshthem.es/all/ ). The colored arrows look very appealing if they're contextual, like if they denote the status of git files (deleted/edited/added).

My ZSH looks like that, though the arrows are less bold. I don't remember configuring it much, if at all. I think it might be close to the default theme.

In my case, the arrows are purely stylistic. They never change color or ordering.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#143

Post by langitbiru »

The creator of Ruby on Rails, DHH, wrote about Open Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/open-source-beyond-the-market/

To put in a nutshell, his strategy is making money somewhere else (Basecamp) then express himself without any expectation by developing open source project (RoR).

My strategies are similar to his strategy: 1. Create a LGPL/MIT/BSD opensource projects without any financial expectation to fulfill self-expression need and achieve fame, 2. Create GPL / dual license projects that I want to sell / commercialize (the downside is I can not expect other programmers to contribute to these projects).

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#145

Post by locke3891 »

swiley wrote: post #85

Most of us use vim. That’s ad supported and I think most us can agree it’s not awful. It’s certainly possible to do ads well (maybe even more common in terminal software.) I personally don’t have any experience with ads in NPM though.

From the vim website: "Why those ads?

The profits made from ads and links on vim.org go to ICCF Holland to help poor children in Uganda."

Is there somewhere you can point that states ad profit is going to developers?

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#146

Post by wvenable »

ToFab123 wrote: post #84
cj wrote: post #11

While I don't particularly like the idea of stuffing ads into npm logs, I don't have the same visceral negative reaction that many people have in these HN threads on this topic. The overwhelming majority of the people complaining about this are well-paid tech workers writing code for well-funded companies that profit off of open source code without providing any reciprocal value to the open source projects in return.…

I work on Enterprise projects and we rarely (never) contribute back financially, because we cannot for practical reasons. It is simply not possible for us to add a "donation" cost to our projects. That will not get past accounting. A license, on the other hand, we would have no issues purchasing that. We purchase (expensive) licenses to proprietary software all the time. We could and would do the same for the open so…

Enterprise companies pay for "support" all the time. It's usually utterly pointless and very expensive annual fee that lets you enter a support ticket.

Enterprise companies also don't like to run "unsupported" software. So there is definitely an opportunity here.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#147

Post by guitarsteve »

guitarsteve wrote: post #141
MattyRad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is highly unrelated, sorry, but does anyone know the zsh theme used in that post ( https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png )? I didn't see anything like it in the list of zsh themes ( https://zshthem.es/all/ ). The colored arrows look very appealing if they're contextual, like if they denote the status of git files (deleted/edited/added).

My ZSH looks like that, though the arrows are less bold. I don't remember configuring it much, if at all. I think it might be close to the default theme. In my case, the arrows are purely stylistic. They never change color or ordering.

Ah, I found it. It's the default(?) theme called "sorin" from zprezto: https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#148

Post by jalfresi »

kortilla wrote: post #120
tempguy9999 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you said > However, if the concrete implementation of trying to get money is unwanted and unexpected ads, then the correct focus of discussion is the criticism of that ad delivery method But he'd already said, prior to that > I'm not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn't). He'd already said no to them; you're both in agreement. There's nothing to argue about. Having agreed that nobo…

You’re missing the point and illustrating it further. The comment was garbage because it derailed the entire discussion around terminal ads to try to direct it to FOSS funding. It doesn’t matter if they both agree that text ads are bad. It’s basically a “think of the children” derailment except it’s “think of the poor foss dev”.

I think you are making an extremely valid point; i often see the same “think of the children” argument made when discussing advertising and the web. Likewise, no one is saying websites shouldn’t have an income.

Re: NPM Bans Terminal Ads

#149

Post by benologist »

kortilla wrote: post #132
benologist wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To write React Facebook needed 20 years of R&D done by open source... jquery, mootools, long list of dead stuff today we needed to learn from. If Facebook needs 1000 projects to show them how to produce the best React then they need to keep 1000 projects in the pipelines so they can build the best successor to current solutions too. That's why they need to fund open source.

No they don’t. They didn’t find any of those projects and it worked out quite well. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

They need all those projects to surface good ideas and they need all that parallelism to identify mistakes they can avoid.

Without it what do they base decisions on? React would be guesswork or an internal tool built in isolation that only solves their specific problems if even that good.

This is how software is evolving. If there is no parallel evolution it will take 1000x longer to do so. If it takes 1000x longer to evolve it takes 1000x longer to invent opportunity and savings for FAANG.

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