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“Open source” is not broken

nadh.in

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Re: “Open source” is not broken

#141

Post by xchaotic »

megous wrote: post #132
sidlls wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That all sounds like project specific issues. A lot of FOSS projects are exceptionally well documented. The same with the attitude, some are wrose, some better. It doesn't seem like this is specific to FOSS licensing.

I work with a company that contributes to some open source but most of the code is closed-source. I feel that the reason many enterprises pay for the software is that when there's an exotic bug that only happens with LDAP with a certain cypher being used, they know it will get fixed (because it's funded by support/maintenance fees). While there may be exceptions, I just don't see OSS contributors going out of their way to fix such edge cases. So perhaps the solution for some open source project issues might be to not-opensource it.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#142

Post by convolvatron »

orblivion wrote: post #75

A half baked idea, curious what people think: Would it be possible to create an insurance policy against these major FOSS vulnerabilities? The insurance company would then require audits of your tech stack, and fund security research. This is analogous to what car insurance companies already do. And then companies who are not insured are viewed as suspect, etc etc. There's apparently a misalignment of incentives beca…

car insurance companies hires actuaries that correlate driving speed to payout and adjust rates accordingly.

if you think that software quality and risk can be so easily quantified then you clearly dont have your hands in software.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#143

Post by gtsop »

xena wrote: post #55
gtsop wrote: post #7

Re the author of "open source is broken": The irony of bashing open source on a websiate using systems/code/infra containing thousands of open source lines of code which I am sure he hasn't paid for... has probably escaped his attention. Honestly, I am not sure why there is an argument anymore. Let people write or use free or proprietary software as they see fit. You all know the pros, you all know the cons, make a d…

As the author of that article, I am starting to prefer they/them pronouns. It would be nice if you could update your comment to refer to me correctly, however this is not a demand. There is a lot more happening behind the scenes than you know of, I make a tiny fraction of my donations public knowledge.

Yes you are right, i apologise, will update.

Edit: it seems like i cannot edit it anymore, but it was not meant to be disrespectful or on purpose.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#144

Post by wongarsu »

evandwight wrote: post #115
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…

Ubi won't touch tech salaries. People don't need to maximize income. I volunteer because I have enough and money isn't the only objective. Open source doesn't need to pay faang salaries to exist.

Exactly, UBI doesn't need to pay faang salaries for some people to give up their jobs to maintain projects they love.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#145

Post by smitty1e »

c-smile wrote: post #124
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.

Moltke seems more credible than Marx:

“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.”

http://connect2amc.com/118-strategic-planning-moltke-the-eld...

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#146

Post by wutbrodo »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #118
evandwight wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubi won't touch tech salaries. People don't need to maximize income. I volunteer because I have enough and money isn't the only objective. Open source doesn't need to pay faang salaries to exist.

There are a lot of people who are very good at coding who don't care for high salaries. Despite mainstream pop being the most profitable, many musicians pursue niche genres.

This still doesn't make UBI relevant to this discussion. It's already fairly trivial for a talented SWE to make UBI-level income working 10 hours a week by picking up software contracts here and there. Eng already have access to the levels of income that UBI would provide, with plenty of time left over to dedicate to open source, and yet this path is relatively untrodden.

Plenty of engineers (myself included) already leverage the flexibility and surplus pay of the industry to opt out of the "40 years of 40 hours" ratrace. But they do so to varying degrees, and evidently aren't spending enough of that surplus on OSS to fix the problem we're discussing.

I don't see what UBI would materially contribute to this dynamic.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#147

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#148

Post by twelvechairs »

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…

In rebuttal I'll paraphrase a little from Paul Ramsey (maintainer of 20-year open source project PostGIS)[0]

His basic view is that Open Source is the dominant model today, but tension comes as very little of the value produced comes back to the community that creates this value. He argues this will always be 'the bare minimum' by virtue of economics, but that if something important slows down too much someone will put some money in it. But this is a model that operates and works. It is borne out by his history in postgis, which is maintained by a small number of people mostly in moderately-profitable service companies, in the red-hat mould. He's concerned about value being captured by cloud companies though who frequently don't employ open-source maintainers however. Some of this is further expounded in another talk by him here [1] (slides at [2]) on the future of open-source where he is very bullish.

[0] from about 19:00 onwards here https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-88

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ5_NnrBHjo

[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-PAgIk9--nedCdfMGEwh...

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#149

Post by sangnoir »

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…

> For me the long and short of it is: the only way I can foresee open source working in the way the purists want is if there is a universal basic income.

I suspect I'm a "purist" by your measure, and I disagree completely. University professors, students and volunteer contributors/maintainers will continue to exist going forward. Nothing has to change.

The problem is that this doesn't "scale" at the rate demanded by corporations, and corporate engineers[1]. The problem is not with FOSS - it is on the voracious consumption side. I suspect the volunteer vs corp usage will follow the Predator-Prey cycle, with volunteers being the prey. When the predator population grows too large, it will set off events that will lead to its population collapsing to a sustainable level. The onus is on startups/medium & large corps to help scale FOSS - not UBI or the like where the corps continue to freeride (which is fine, to a point)

1. Disclosure: I'm also one, in addition to being a volunteer contributor. I volunteer as a way to give back to an amazing project, and I earn a salary that meets all my needs.

Re: “Open source” is not broken

#150

Post by gtsop »

bigbillheck wrote: post #27
gtsop wrote: post #7

Re the author of "open source is broken": The irony of bashing open source on a websiate using systems/code/infra containing thousands of open source lines of code which I am sure he hasn't paid for... has probably escaped his attention. Honestly, I am not sure why there is an argument anymore. Let people write or use free or proprietary software as they see fit. You all know the pros, you all know the cons, make a d…

> The irony of bashing open source... This is literally the 'yet you participate in society' argument.

No, this is a falacy. As a living being you don't really stand any chance of not participating in society in some way or another.

However the author has the following options: - pay for proprietary stack of technology to publish their website - pay for the open source software they are using (donate) - not do any websites and publish their opinion on other social media or even physical print. Write a papper, print flyers - do literally nothing

All of these are actual viable options. Not participating in society kinda isn't an option if you wanna live

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