My boundaries as an open source developer • Hacker News Board

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#221

Post by hawkesnest » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

smashah wrote: post #162

mwattsun wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is: most companies are taking economic advantage of the generous spirit of open source developers. That needs to stop. SPONSORING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS Rich Hickey - December 15, 2020 https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source... HN Thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335

Sponsorship is not a panacea unfortunately as corporate use of a project is not proportional to the maintainership burden. Hopefully the industry can fix this one day.

If you could even get it! Think about all the millions of dollars dealing with the Log4J issues last December. How much has that prompted sponsorship of any logging libraries by the affected companies? Not much, from what I've seen.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#222

Post by specialist » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

If my OSS projects ever get traction, I'll probably forward support to a public listserv or web bbs thing. Extra credit for wiring that up to some kind of ticketing and bug tracking thing. Automate the FIFO queue.

Biggest benefit to me will be transparency. Everyone can see exactly where they are in my priority queue.

Huh. Could lead to some fun incentive structures. Want my attention? Then pay me. Like charge $1 per slot. So moving from 100th to 5th place would cost $95. Maybe increase the price-to-slot logarithmically.

Any way. It's nice to dream. A small inhibitor to me working on my OSS fulltime and exclusively is figuring out how to pay for food and rent and insurance while saving humanity (from itself).

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#223

Post by roastytoasty » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #142

A few years back I was in a role where it was my job to maintain a small but non-trivial open source project (~1500 github stars, 5 core contributors). I burned out after about two years in that role. People repeatedly demanding help in the github issues without even providing repro steps. Hate mail to the project email list from users angry we didn't implement the feature they want in the latest release. We had peop…

I don't understand, if it's open source why don't they just add whatever features they want.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#224

Post by Nadya » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

pabs3 wrote: post #173

Nadya wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who sit on the Open Source side of things constantly muddy the waters and claim they are one in the same. Those who sit on the Free Software side of things are adamant that they are related but different. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... The important bit is here: > “Free” and “open” are rivals for mindshare. Free software and open source are different ideas but, in most people's…

I meant to ask who is muddying the waters by claiming that "open source" == "source available" rather than the Open Source Definition published by OSI?

Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development. They can still be technical users - hell they can even still be programmers - just not already entrenched ones. You're going to have to correct them and go "No I mean this" in the same way that the Free Software movement has to correct people with "Free as in freedom, not as in beer."

See the "Common Misunderstandings of “Free Software” and “Open Source”" section of the article I previously provided. This is a known issue by both OSI and FSF.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#225

Post by cxr » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #80

bachmeier wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as I don't understand the original comment, I also don't understand yours. You don't need to push to the original repo because open source allows you to make your fork available to others. The developer of the original has a right to decide to accept your changes or not, so I fail to see why it matters that your PR isn't accepted.

Just as I don't understand the original comment, I also don't understand yours The way Github e.a. use forks dilutes the larger meaning of the word, that's what this thread is about. When people used to talk about forks, they always mean a community fracture over differences of opinion: gcc vs egcs, xfree86 vs xorg, ffmpeg vs libav, openwrt vs lede, glibc vs eglibc, kde4 vs trinity, gnome3 vs cinnamon vs mate. The co…

> The common-use term of "fork" on github [i]s just a band-aid for lack of contributor access control

More accurately: it's a consequence of GitHub's early decision to reject the traditional currency of open source (patches) in favor of imposing dark pattern-infested workflows on hosted projects and their contributors.

When you accept patches, anyone can easily create an account, submit their patch, and then be on their way. GitHub's opting for an unnecessarily heavyweight pull request workflow instead, though, meant that contributors were required to set up a personal on-GitHub copy of the desired repo, point their copy on their local machine at that as a remote, and push to it. At that point, they're already paying the cost of project hosting overheads just for contributing to a project that isn't theirs. When it comes time to start their own project, or evaluate whether it's worth it to continue hosting their existing projects elsewhere, pressure to choose GitHub cones into play that wouldn't otherwise if there were a level playing field. Fast forward nearly 15 years of network effects, and you have it as a nearly unavoidable multi-billion dollar behemoth.

It's such a transparent growth hack inspired by the underhanded tactics used by social networks that folks' unwillingness to even acknowledge its negative impact on productivity and privacy is really infuriating—not to mention the negative impact itself.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#226

Post by cxr » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #224

pabs3 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant to ask who is muddying the waters by claiming that "open source" == "source available" rather than the Open Source Definition published by OSI?

Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development. They can still be technical users - hell they can even still be programmers - just not already entrenched ones. You're going to have to correct them and go "No I mean this" in the same way that the Free Software movement has to correct people with "Free as in freedom, not as in beer." See the "Common Misunderstandings of “Free Softwar…

You're bordering on tautology.

> Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development [what "open source" means]

Where's the shock? Asking anyone about something that they're uninformed about and expecting an informed response is silly.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#227

Post by cxr » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #84

lamontcg wrote: post #5

Once again I wish github would allow the ability to limit who could open issues and PRs in order to do development in the open with a trusted/vetted set of collaborators without being subject to every zero-effort bug report from users.

I'm also not enamored of the fact that you can log into Github/Gitlab/etc. with accounts from everywhere (Gmail/Facebook/Twitter/etc.). I suspect that making someone go through the signup dance stopped a LOT of the worst level of morons. Is there a code hosting service that allows public viewing but still forces people to sign up for an account before being able to do actions?

Where do you see the ability to open issues and pull requests by signing in with Google without creating a GitHub account?

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#228

Post by mikepurvis » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #154

mikepurvis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I related pretty strongly to this. I've never tried to monetize, and the community I'm mostly working in (ROS) is populated almost exclusively with exactly the sort of kind, considerate people who will happily roll up their sleeves to take a crack at it themselves, given a little guidance. Nonetheless, there are dozens of effectively abandonware ROS projects out there attached to my name— drivers for some sensor I sh…

> And in some cases I've just granted PR authors write access and been like "there it's yours now." But none of these end states feel quite right; in all cases I end up feeling guilty and unsatisfied with how it turns out. What feels wrong with this? Personally I'd much rather hand a project over to someone else than leave it completely archived.

It's the ideal outcome, I guess. But a number of projects end up just re-abandoned six months later after the person merged their own thing and pushed a release with it. I guess that's good for having moved it forward at all, but it certainly doesn't feel like a complete solution.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#229

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #142

A few years back I was in a role where it was my job to maintain a small but non-trivial open source project (~1500 github stars, 5 core contributors). I burned out after about two years in that role. People repeatedly demanding help in the github issues without even providing repro steps. Hate mail to the project email list from users angry we didn't implement the feature they want in the latest release. We had peop…

This is a problem of socialized open source on platforms like github. At some point you have to just say 'no'. But yes, some "consultants" just shamelessly abuse your work for themselves.

Of course if you make it your job, it will come with all the negatives a job can entail.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#230

Post by Nadya » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

cxr wrote: post #226

Nadya wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development. They can still be technical users - hell they can even still be programmers - just not already entrenched ones. You're going to have to correct them and go "No I mean this" in the same way that the Free Software movement has to correct people with "Free as in freedom, not as in beer." See the "Common Misunderstandings of “Free Softwar…

You're bordering on tautology. > Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development [what "open source" means] Where's the shock? Asking anyone about something that they're uninformed about and expecting an informed response is silly.

Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people think it means "source-code publicly available". But if the argument about common misperceptions being muddied water is not entirely convincing for you we can take another look at how the terms are defined.

The Free Software Foundation disagrees that "Open Source" and "Free Software" are the same thing. The discussion about whether they are the same thing should end there if we are to accept that the authority defining "Open Source" are correct in their definition of "Open Source". The same credence should be given to the authority defining "Free Software" providing the correct definition of "Free Software". If we are to accept both of these definitions as given by the authorities defining the terms - then they are necessarily different because the authority defining one of the terms says so despite any attempts of another authority who did not define the term at claiming otherwise.

In other words: X defines X and says X = X and X != Y. Y defines Y and says Y = Y and Y = X. Since X defines X and Y does not define X we must accept that X != Y per X's definition of X despite Y's attempt at redefining X such that Y = X.

It's uncharitable to point to OSI's definition of "Open Source" and OSI's claims that they are one and the same while completely ignoring FSF's definition of "Free Software" and FSF's claims that they are different.