21–30 of 348 posts
It's definitely time for him to let this project go, working on it is a literally thankless task and the level of entitlement shown towards his work has been infuriating to watch. The outrage towards him daring to ask the community for help , something done in an act of desperation, is a real wake up call for open source maintainers - the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it f…
I wrote this sentiment earlier[1], but I'll repeat it here. If a dev wants money for his work, he should license his work as appropriate and demand payments. If a dev releases his work free-as-in-libre and/or free-as-in-beer, they don't get to complain if the donations are "insufficient". Or to put it another: Of course a company won't pay up if they don't have to. This guy seems to be considering making his work int…
He should 100% try to find regular sustainable work somewhere instead of working on this project. Secondarily, find a lawyer to write up a contract for $80/hr for companies to sign and have him do work on core-js when they need an update or a feature. He can give an estimate on hours, send them a contract, get it signed and have the work done. If the people asking for feature requests and updates don't want to pay, t…
he's in Russia, isn't this sanctioned?
I wonder if external banking is possible: a Russian goes to a supermarket in Russia, he buys food, he pays by transferring money from his e.g. Swiss bank account to the supermarket owner's Swiss bank account. The supermarket owner wins because s/he basically managed to trade local goods for foreign currency (the Ruble is on shaky ground), the customer wins because he gets to eat.
I think I remember paying for a hotel in Russia using PayPal but transferring the money to a German bank account of the hotel owner's cousin or something...
I wrote this sentiment earlier[1], but I'll repeat it here. If a dev wants money for his work, he should license his work as appropriate and demand payments. If a dev releases his work free-as-in-libre and/or free-as-in-beer, they don't get to complain if the donations are "insufficient". Or to put it another: Of course a company won't pay up if they don't have to. This guy seems to be considering making his work int…
Of course they get to complain. Complaining and doing nothing to change the situation is what's problematic.
Doing work without reward, even if you did not expect any in the first place, can be soul-sucking, and it is totally normal to complain about it.
You don't do FOSS for the recognition/glory, but complaining about the hatred, hypocrisy, and complete lack of respect of the industry towards FOSS is normal.
The backlash he got after he "dared" ask for help was completely uncalled for. I'd even say this, it's the user who does not get to complain, let's remind everyone of what most FOSS licenses include:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
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…
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 even realize you're using, but which is so useful it ends up used everywhere.
OpenSSH (via OpenBSD) faced that issue in 2014 (https://www.osnews.com/story/27519/openbsd-will-shut-down-if...), and got funding because the story got attention. I suspect core-js after this post has also solved his problem for the time being thanks to this post (assuming it gets enough attention; seeing as it's at the top of HN now, I bet it will). But this is not viable. People in open source often do not see money as a resource, but as a corruptor, so they refuse to touch it unless strictly necessary; to a fault. (I should know; I was in that situation as well for years. Out of idealism I also refused to touch money. Now I work in fintech, so clearly I changed my outlook; but old me would probably hate current me.)
What a soul-crushingly sad and difficult read this was, though. Jesus.
She was a quiet person, who did her job exceptionally well. Yet, most people didn’t know her or didn’t realize her importance. I am certain she wasn’t paid that well either.
Point being, nobody is going to reward you, unless you ask for it. I once spent 4 years at a job, I did my job well. Didn’t get a single dollar raise. I didn’t ask, nobody cared either. Most I got was some praise in team meetings once in a while.
The most disgusting part of the story is all hate and vitriol thrown at him. By people using his software for free, by people who are likely not even a tenth as good as he is - both as a person and as a programmer. All this in an industry with plenty of money. This is super depressing. I genuinely hope he gets to spend his future happy
I recognize his challenges, but not sure if I can look past his victim blaming and "both sides bad" war rhetoric.
But let's avoid flamewars irrelevant to the discussion.
This is such a depressing post about the sad state of open source. I can't imagine continuing to maintain the package after what happened. I want to encourage zloirock to forget about this and move on. I think it would be best for him to take a good paid job, live with his family and enjoy a vacation.
But it's also a depressing post about the sad state of single source. I work in a portion of the software world that interacts with real world widgets, 5 factory buildings are right next to mine. "Single source" is a cuss word around here. We do everything we can to avoid it. I think it's awesome what this guy has done; terrible that it's just one guy. A whole aspect of open source was that it shouldn't become reliant on a single source like this. It's supposed to leverage the gestalt of cooperation. I agree with you, it really is too bad.