Don't use MIT. Use a GPL.
Sorry everybody, I failed with you
171–180 of 357 posts
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#172> big companies are using the project and need a lot of things as well from it in order to keep their projects healthy, but in most of the cases this is a talk in just one way.
This is everything with what's wrong with open source. Many companies treat open source as something they have a right to consume and no obligation to support financially or with dev time. Some poor schlub is on the other end working their butt off and feeling guilty, while the company realizes all the value...
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#173> big companies are using the project and need a lot of things as well from it in order to keep their projects healthy, but in most of the cases this is a talk in just one way. This is everything with what's wrong with open source. Many companies treat open source as something they have a right to consume and no obligation to support financially or with dev time. Some poor schlub is on the other end working their but…
Yes, I've seen corporate presentations on that matter, which basically focused on the zero-cost aspect. Well, you get what you pay for, I guess.
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the Java world we have the Maven repository dependency aggregators like mvnrepository.com that accidentally serve as some kind of citeseer equivalent. I assume similar things exist for the package managers of other languages as well? But obviously most commercial usage remains invisible. I could imagine a hybrid cultural/technological approach were dev teams publish/are allowed to publish at least usage metadata w…
For javascript packages, npm lists which other packages which depend on any given package, and how many times a package was downloaded in the last week. That gives you a rough sense of usage, but it can also be super mysterious. As an example, here's a package I wrote which I haven't touched in 3 years: https://www.npmjs.com/package/jumprope There are no projects on npm which depend on this, and yet it gets downloade…
Rope took 5610 ms. 0.001122 ms per iteration, 891k iterations per second
JS toString took 3463 ms. 0.003463 ms per iteration, 288k iterations per second
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#175Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…
> there needs to be a way of getting paid You said you worked on the library at Intel . Doesn’t that qualify as getting paid for your work? That’s not the usual setup when developers talk about getting paid for their OSS contributions, usually off the clock, so its not clear what the lesson is here besides politics/resourcing at big co (which is a real but distinct problem). This situation was supposed to be where OS…
Based on FOSS surveys I have seen, majority of OSS contributions are paid for that way. The off the clock for free contributions are smaller part of it all.
I think the off-the-clock long term OSS maintenance is rare, because it is actual work. And contrary to stereotype, no matter how passionate you are, you will burn out if you work two full time jobs at the same time.
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I've been working on a Go library for 8 years now that I'm sure is used by quite some people and companies, and I've been close to burnout and letting it go at least twice. I'm super happy when people just "Buy me a coffee"--not for the coffee but for the feedback you get that someone is using your project, so it's valuable for someone. I'm very grateful for that, even without financial support. I think GitH…
> I think GitHub should really have a way for users of your repository to somehow illustrate that they're using your project. Well "stars" are kind of like that. Also the insights page tells you how many times your repo is being cloned per day, so that's one metric you can use to see how "used" your project is. You can also search GitHub for the name of your project and see how many other projects are cross referenci…
One thing you may encounter is that a large company may be using it for many things internally, and that still shows up as just a handful of clones, because they have some central artifact caching service in place.
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot o…
There are endless examples of forks that pick up where some other project left off. They give it a new name, explain what's going on, and move on. If it's seen as hostile, that means the original project is still active and doesn't need this?
This has happened with some pretty big names, too. gcc did this, and so did Jenkins. Didn't node.js do this a few years ago, too?
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a community aspect to consider though. You and I could both decide to continue some open-source project. The community will (reasonably and maybe even “rightly”) look to the original maintainer for guidance on which 0, 1, or 2 forks they suggest to continue.
It's even worse with other patterns, e.g. when the original project is suffering from some bit rot, the maintainer is unresponsive for months, independent forks spring up to fix that rot and suddenly you get a bout of activity in the original project and then another lengthy period of silence.
This is truly frustrating, and happens in organizations as well. It is admirable when people actually make decisions.
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work?" I've seen lots of these calls for help fail. And someone else points out: It's open source. Literally anyone can continue the work at any time. There's no need for the original creator to find someone else to continue it. Anyone can just do it.
Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot o…
There's version control other that Git / GitHub / etc. It's even possible to forego version control and just release tarballs somewhere.
Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you
#180Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…
> there needs to be a way of getting paid You said you worked on the library at Intel . Doesn’t that qualify as getting paid for your work? That’s not the usual setup when developers talk about getting paid for their OSS contributions, usually off the clock, so its not clear what the lesson is here besides politics/resourcing at big co (which is a real but distinct problem). This situation was supposed to be where OS…
> You said you worked on the library at Intel. Doesn’t that qualify as getting paid for your work?
It just shifts the problem along; instead of getting paid, you need to justify to Intel why they should pay you. Showing that you're keeping customers happy, building Intel brand value etc. can be part of that, but only if they give you feedback.