Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Open source” is broken

christine.website

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 357 posts

Re: “Open source” is broken

#211

Post by mbrodersen »

esarbe wrote: post #5

I seriously doubt that open-source is broken. What is broken is companies using open-source to build their products, expanding to billion dollars total revenue and not giving anything back in the long run. This will - as shown in the latest example - come back to bite them. It's the classic tragedy of the commons; everyone is willing to profit from the public good and nobody is willing to invest resources into it.

If you provide work/code for $0 then you yourself signal that your work is worth $0. So why should companies spend more than $0 on your work? If you truly think your work is worth more than $0 then put that in your licence for companies. It isn’t rocket science.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#212

Post by mbrodersen »

uniqueuid wrote: post #8
esarbe wrote: post #5

I seriously doubt that open-source is broken. What is broken is companies using open-source to build their products, expanding to billion dollars total revenue and not giving anything back in the long run. This will - as shown in the latest example - come back to bite them. It's the classic tragedy of the commons; everyone is willing to profit from the public good and nobody is willing to invest resources into it.

I agree. What's broken is liability of those companies relying on open source but not taking responsibility. One way to hold them accountable is to apply regulatory pressure in case of security breaches, which has started to happen (albeit not nearly enough). Is there any other way I'm not seeing?

Why should companies pay more than $0 for something the creators ask $0 for? That doesn’t make sense at all. Do you pay more than the asking price for stuff you buy?

Re: “Open source” is broken

#213

Post by hgs3 »

anxrn wrote: post #94

A tool that inspects a company's software dependencies and generates a report of open source dependencies, state of support, and easy ways to fund (direct corporate funding, or even employee + corporate match) would be super useful.

That functionality should be built into package managers.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#214

Post by mbrodersen »

xena wrote: post #163
kortilla wrote: post #156

> If log4j2 is responsible for your company's success, you have a moral obligation to donate to the person who creates this library thanklessly. This is absolutely not what open source is about. The author just sounds completely against open source, which is fine, but don’t lecture people for not paying for that which was intended to be free.

I'm the author in question. I'm not against open source, I'm against the culture of taking without giving back.

Nobody is taking anything. You provide code for $0 and then get surprised that people pay $0 to use it. Can you see anything wrong with this picture?

Re: “Open source” is broken

#215

Post by mbrodersen »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #162
charcircuit wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to money. There's nothing broken about that. If you want to make money it would be a good idea to make a business plan. Making and maintaining a piece of software and giving it away for free isn't a great business plan, or at best it's an incomplete one.

> No one is entitled to money. There's nothing broken about that. If you want to make money it would be a good idea to make a business plan. This attitude totally ignores how hard it is to actually run a software tooling business and collect when you have a free/community offering. Take the Obsidian note app, for example. It's technically free until you start using it for revenue-generating, work-related activity per…

People pay $ all the time for things they value. If people choose not to pay $ for work you do then accept that they don’t find it valuable enough to spend $ on.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#216

Post by mbrodersen »

suriyaG wrote: post #128
montroser wrote: post #73

No, it's not broken -- it's thriving. Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money. Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers. Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don't have to…

I mostly agree with your argument. But, if we just de facto accept everything for how it has been in the past. Then we stop making things better, for everybody involved. Is Open-Source thriving? yes. Can we make fix the places where it's broken? Also, Yes.

If you give your work away for $0 then the world will expect to pay $0 for it. That’s it. It isn’t rocket science. If you value your work make companies pay for it.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#217

Post by mbrodersen »

jchw wrote: post #179
zozbot234 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR - the person who coined "open source" in the first place! - agrees that this is a problem worth addressing. See his Loadsharers initiatve http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/ (more info at https://esr.gitlab.io/loadsharers/ ) discussed http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8383 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8387 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8403

I think most people, at least certainly myself, do not disagree that open source infrastructure projects are often underappreciated and underfunded. However, there's a dramatic difference between the way that ESR's LBIP initiative frames the problem vs this article (not to single anyone out - this article expresses a commonly held belief among plenty of influential and intelligent people, and no doubt the person who…

There is a simple solution: make companies pay for it. Don’t give your work away for $0. It isn’t rocket science.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#218

Post by mbrodersen »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #148
montroser wrote: post #73

No, it's not broken -- it's thriving. Everyone involved has their own incentives, and gets to make their own decisions about when and where to invest their time and money. Some devs are in it for the passion, some for the experience, some for the challenge, some for the learning, some so their work will live on when they change employers. Startups get to use well-tested community supported libraries and don't have to…

I think this argument massively ignores the underlying message of this blogpost: addressing that the human beings that make and use software aren't always treated as, well, human beings. > A maintainer goes to jail for vehicular manslaughter and a bugs needs fixing, no problem The author didn't seem to hint that open bugs in core-js or its usefulness to its community of users are / is problematic. They hinted that ma…

If you give away your work for $0 then people/companies will value your work accordingly and pay no more than what is asked. What is so surprising about that? Do you pay more than what is asked for when spending $ yourself?

Re: “Open source” is broken

#219

Post by mbrodersen »

bachmeier wrote: post #181
kelnos wrote: post #25

Open source isn't broken. The software will continue to get built regardless of funding levels, clearly. But when vulnerabilities like this are found, no one -- especially corporate users -- gets to complain. Any complainers should be immediately told to fund the software they use, or shut their entitled mouths. Open source is fine. The culture of companies -- nearly all of them, including the one I work for -- that…

> The culture of companies -- nearly all of them, including the one I work for -- that freeload off this work is what's broken. Absolutely. Originally, we had free as in freedom software. Then businesses did their best to redefine it as free as in free labor software. That's the entirety of the anti-GPL movement. The thing about the GPL is that you can dual-license your software for companies that don't like the GPL.…

The companies are paying exactly what the price tag says it is worth: $0. What is so surprising about that? If you want companies to not “freeload” then change the price tag for companies.

Re: “Open source” is broken

#220

Post by jchw »

mbrodersen wrote: post #217
jchw wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people, at least certainly myself, do not disagree that open source infrastructure projects are often underappreciated and underfunded. However, there's a dramatic difference between the way that ESR's LBIP initiative frames the problem vs this article (not to single anyone out - this article expresses a commonly held belief among plenty of influential and intelligent people, and no doubt the person who…

There is a simple solution: make companies pay for it. Don’t give your work away for $0. It isn’t rocket science.

Yeah, except by creating such an obligation, you are essentially throwing out the core concept of something being open source or free software. That's not solving the problem, that's more like giving up on it.
Post reply on HN