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So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

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Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#151

Post by kkoste »

karaterobot wrote: post #7

In my unasked-for opinion, he should absolutely give up on this project, and take a salaried job that'll let him support his family and not have to deal with the entitlement issues and lack of perspective the community evidently has. If half of what's in this post is true, he's shown admirable restraint: I'd have burned it all down the first time someone got pissy about a free thing I gave them.

> I'd have burned it all down the first time someone got pissy about a free thing I

Sadly this is the state of open source projects. People feeling entitled and doing nothing but complain. It's sad really because negative compacts often have a more lasting impact than positive ones.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#153

Post by sambeau »

flumpcakes wrote: post #149
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #64

I understand and expect most of the comments here would be about the state of open source, and I know we of course, by definition, are only getting one side of the story, and I also know that no country is perfect. But holy shit, I had immense sadness and sympathy for his legal woes and the fact that he was imprisoned . Again, obviously the US is no panacea when it comes to incarceration, but holy shit, first thing I…

He was imprisoned because he hit pedestrians and one died. I don't know about you, but the way I drive I wouldn't hit pedestrians if they were laying in the road, maybe if they ran out in front of me. It doesn't sound like he has any sympathy for killing a woman at all, so the "woe is me I'm not a governor's son so I went to jail when others wouldn't have" is distasteful at best.

> "at 3 AM, I was driving home. Two deadly drunk 18-years-old girls in dark clothes decided somehow to crawl across a poorly lit highway"

There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#155

Post by robocat »

politician wrote: post #54

If he weren’t Russian and subject to OFAC sanctions, I would gladly wire him $1000 tonight if he would give up this project. The web is utterly broken. This one guy is enabling a multi-billion dollar advertising ecosystem for nothing? Absolutely insane.

Patreon Inc and Open Collective Inc (non-profit) are both US companies. You can let them worry about any potential sanctions.

He gave you three options: https://opencollective.com/core-js https://www.patreon.com/zloirock or Bitcoin bc1qlea7544qtsmj2rayg0lthvza9fau63ux0fstcz

Or are you just posturing?

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#156

Post by jabl »

karlshea wrote: post #142
jabl wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the coreJS maintainer stops working on it and it bitrots for a year or two, maybe the babel people will magically find the manpower to maintain it then. As it stands, why should they spend their time maintaining a fork of a project that is still maintained and in good shape?

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe the current subject matter expert that’s been pouring thousands of hours into this project should be funded by the billion dollar companies that rely on him, same as what’s happened to the projects at the top of the ecosystem.

> Or maybe the current subject matter expert that’s been pouring thousands of hours into this project should be funded by the billion dollar companies that rely on him

Ideally yes, but as we've seen time after time, charity as a business model doesn't work with corporations. I think the coreJS maintainer would be fully justified to take another job, and then work on coreJS as a hobby as much or as little as he likes. Nobody needs to martyr themselves so that a bunch of billion dollar advertising companies can save a buck.

Maybe in the future we decide to finance core open source projects as public infrastructure through taxes, or those billion dollar corps set up some kind of foundation to fund them, but for now the whole situation is highly dysfunctional and one cannot blame maintainers who put the financial interests of themselves and their family ahead of producing open source.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#157

Post by paydevs »

ufmace wrote: post #117
kypro wrote: post #106

I always heard people talk about how "open source is broken", but I'm honestly in shock after reading this. Is this normal? That one guy can contribute code that is used on thousands of the top websites worldwide and not one of the numerous multi-billion dollar companies that use his code are even willing to donate an amount equivalent to an average developer's salary? I mean, how is this that possible? It's not like…

The problem that a lot of people don't get is that corporations can't just donate money to things like that to be nice. They have accounting and legal obligations, they can't just throw money around for funsies. If you phrase things their way, like selling them a product on contract, you can easily get tens of thousands from them. But a "please donate" link on your site won't get anything.

[dead]

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#158

Post by oleks637 »

lxe wrote: post #51
BadRed wrote: post #27

I recognize his challenges, but not sure if I can look past his victim blaming and "both sides bad" war rhetoric.

What would you say if you were in Russia? Would you publicly pour out your complete thoughts, whatever they may be, in a popular blog post with your name signed underneath? With an unfunded OSS project, a family to support and criminal history? Don't forget, you can't just "say stuff" in most corners of the world.

It looks like Denis is actually supporting russian government and their lies about this war - https://twitter.com/roman01la/status/1625254253156528147 . He literally spreads russian propaganda points and blames Ukraine for being attacked.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#159

Post by newswasboring »

ebjaas_2022 wrote: post #136
EdwardDiego wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But no one owes him anything. I strongly disagree. Only because so many people feel that he owes them something.

It's the nature of most types of volunteering work. If you sign up to be the conductor of your local choir, you have the same thing. People start expecting you to do stuff. If you're going to be in that role, as ploxiln says, you need to be OK with that part of it. You have to be OK with the thanklessness of the task, and you have to seek your rewards elsewhere. Still, I feel very sorry for zloirock, and I hope that…

> You have to be OK with the thanklessness of the task, and you have to seek your rewards elsewhere.

Is this really how we want the world to be? Someone who is trying to help needs to be ok with being treated badly? I can understand not being put on a pedestal, but I think a "thank you" and a bit of gratefulness is warranted by people actively being helped.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#160

Post by imiric »

scrollaway wrote: post #25
imiric wrote: post #11

If you're working for a company that relies on OSS, please suggest establishing an OSS fund to specifically support projects like core-js. Have the company pledge some percentage of profits, where employees decide how the funds get appropriated. E.g. by popularity, relevance, love, or whatever other criteria feels right. Think of the Humble Bundle sliders, for example. It's heart breaking to know that the world's lar…

> employees decide how the funds get appropriated. E.g. by popularity, relevance, love, or whatever other criteria feels right FWIW this is not the way. Distributing based on these criteria means most of the funding will go to those who already receive most of the funding. It does not solve the XKCD/2347 problem, which is exactly what this guy is encountering : People who maintain unknown software, software you don't…

> Distributing based on these criteria means most of the funding will go to those who already receive most of the funding.

It depends on the strategy used. If we define "popularity" as "number of our projects that depend on this OSS project", then the distribution should be fair, and projects like core-js would be well compensated. This could all be automated, and the popularity ranking could be fixed and used by default, so that employees could add additional funding by voting on their most used and loved projects. I think both approaches would work well.

In any case, my suggestion was to create a company-wide OSS fund to begin with, which most companies don't even bother with. The strategy of how they're appropriated can always be improved after that.

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