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Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

gavinhoward.com

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Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#161

Post by danuker »

h2odragon wrote: post #160
danuker wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> got me booted from several platforms This bothers me. Can I get some more detail and drama? > Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing If you want to share your work with close friends, you could use say, self-hosted Gitea or GitLab.

> more detail and drama? I'm really not certain myself wtf happened. Maybe I just fell victim to my own paranoia. Maybe quoting MLK and supporting an Amish school really are that controversial. Maybe it was the "naked lizards" video game mod. Since i mentioned it that way, I'll also mention that I've been tempted to resurrect a site for some reason or none simply because up until last year, I had had some online pres…

> the inevitable drama of offending someone by existing

I offend, therefore I am!

> and host horse porn i[f] i feel like it.

Sounds like a Tor hidden service might work better for you, for the sole reason that it's harder to shut down.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#162

Post by imachine1980_ »

scotty79 wrote: post #130
rndhouse wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the value is in the maintenance. In responsiveness to changing demand. I bet all the valuable FOSS software you can think of today is maintained.

Sure, but you could argue if it's useful because it's maintained or is it maintained because it's useful? Both. But to what degree?

i think is usefully because is maintained, most of the time when you search for project you search for trust and being continues maintained is key proxy for that, ins't the only one openbox is trustworthy(the last update is some years ago) but is trustworthy in part because you have a long record of doesn't having problems.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#163

Post by jefftk »

Radim wrote: post #114
fivelessminutes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a licencing 'race to the bottom'. If there is a liberally-licensed alternative, resources will divert to that.

Right, you cut to the heart of things. There is a licensing "race to the bottom" happening. Which makes sense from the demand side (of course people want free). But where does the supply side come from? Why does the floor keep constantly dropping? Who are these developers, always willing to do more for less? In my experience: * Some of it: people who open source their hobby projects. The personal upside of investing…

I also see what you're describing, but I see it as a good thing. This is software available for me or anyone else to use for anything we want. This has many benefits, including that it makes everything else just a bit cheaper because it can depend on standard widely used components.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#164

Post by mpol »

cobertos wrote: post #73

Only certain FOSS is worth working on for me. Here's my heuristic as of today. * Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless. * Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself…

> Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself anymore.

I think there is still some middleground possible. It can still be enjoyable doing small support stuff for it and to keep it running and fixing small bugs, without any big rewrites or big features. I once cared about those things and I might still do. Just keeping it running might feel better than discarding it.

It all depends on personal preferences, the type of users and their communication, if you still use the language, etc.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#165

Post by js8 »

southerntofu wrote: post #154
cobertos wrote: post #73

Only certain FOSS is worth working on for me. Here's my heuristic as of today. * Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless. * Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself…

> Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. So true. I'd expand on that with a more specific example: game modders. When i look at all the energy spent on game mods which bring significant (gratis) value to commercial games, i can't help but wonder what the FOSS gamedev ecosystem would look like if all those dedicated people put their energy on free-software ecosystem. Minecraft for example made…

While I agree with the broader point, I don't think Minecraft example is accurate. Historically, most MC mods were freeware closed-source, only few years back (around 1.10) lot of them became open-sourced. So I don't think open source was a big consideration for modders.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#166

Post by southerntofu »

js8 wrote: post #165
southerntofu wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. So true. I'd expand on that with a more specific example: game modders. When i look at all the energy spent on game mods which bring significant (gratis) value to commercial games, i can't help but wonder what the FOSS gamedev ecosystem would look like if all those dedicated people put their energy on free-software ecosystem. Minecraft for example made…

While I agree with the broader point, I don't think Minecraft example is accurate. Historically, most MC mods were freeware closed-source, only few years back (around 1.10) lot of them became open-sourced. So I don't think open source was a big consideration for modders.

You are correct. I meant that Mojang was saying they would consider open sourcing Minecraft itself when it's ready and has raised sufficient funding (have we reached this point yet?). My point was that modders are providing significant value for free to private companies (and are happy to do that as lon as they're credited) and i wish such energy was directed towards a FOSS game ecosystem instead of continuing to enrich the same crooks who derive money off dark patterns (subscriptions, lootboxes) and exploited workers (gamedev industry is famously harsh).

Also, each software has its guidelines to build mods. I feel like if a game had modding guidelines suggesting to open source, modders would be more than happy to do so; if not, open-sourcing a single-person project can be considered more work (eg. setup git).

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#167

Post by csdummi »

cobertos wrote: post #73

Only certain FOSS is worth working on for me. Here's my heuristic as of today. * Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless. * Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself…

No post body was provided.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#168

Post by bbarn »

Subsentient wrote: post #87

My advice is for the OP to make his build system GPLv3 licensed and sue anyone who willfully violates that license. Open source still has lots of life left in it, but copyleft licenses are now increasing in importance, and the days of letting it slide when a company violates your license are now gone. To decide on what license you want, ask yourself, do you want this to improve software as a whole, or do you want thi…

> My advice is for the OP to make his build system GPLv3 licensed and sue anyone who willfully violates that license.

Except that filing a lawsuit costs money, and if by nature your product is free, where are you getting the money for said lawsuit, and what damages are you suing over? You might be able to get a cease and desist order for copyright, but then what?

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#169

Post by fxtentacle »

Djejdbdbsjs123 wrote: post #155
h2odragon wrote: post #106

Resonates. I just wrote a little script to give me some model geometry numbers. I'm sure others could use this, I wrote mine because all that exists online is half-ass Jskirpt pages that are covered in ads and offer a slightly different form of this calculation than I want. Once upon a time I would've published this somewhere and let anyone else who wanted those numbers for a project of their own at least have a chan…

I don't understand that attitude. If you simply pushed the code to a github repo with a note that you won't be providing any support and disable the issues page, why would you feel any burden?

I did exactly that with a Heroku buildpack. They featured me in their official registry anyway. Shortly afterwards, I started receiving insults via my github commit email from people who were Heroku customers and furious that my (free + OSS + unsupported) buildpack didn't work like they wanted to. They paid for Heroku support and mistook my OSS for a Heroku product, so they felt like they are rightfully entitled to me providing support.
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