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Open Source Maintenance Fee

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Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#231

Post by [deleted] »

jackdawipper wrote: post #230
robmensching wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that FOSS is being destroyed by entitled consumers. Note: I'm not saying you're an entitled consumer, but I interviewed many maintainers of successful Open Source projects. The number one issue for all of them was entitled consumers.

Yea that is actually more a symptom of post-war generations, so isnt exclusive to OSS. Ask any employer how its going with their new young staff members. but what I see causing far more problems in the OSS community is greedy patreon gatewallers who poach all they can from the devs, then put it behind a patreon wall and charge money for it. Them and corporate swooping in are a bigger problem than whining on a github…

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#232

Post by AndyNemmity »

threemux wrote: post #228
robmensching wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn't been the case as of yet. We've had many large companies just pay the sponsorship. Honestly, the problem is not the EULA, it's the need for more flexibility in invoicing than GitHub Sponsors provides today. To say it another way, legal is cool with it, the challenge now is making it easy for procurement.

Honest question: how would you know if companies stopped using the product as a result of this change? Presumably the only ones you'd hear from are ones that managed to get through the process far enough to complain about procurement (which is definitely another issue, pretty sure GitHub Sponsors doesn't do net 60...)

right, we wouldn't mention it at all. no way legal would approve it, so we'd just move to something else.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#233

Post by pabs3 »

robmensching wrote: post #219
jononor wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea. But it is missing something to actually get money out of companies, I think? Because even when there are people in a company that are nominally willing to pay, there is usually so much friction/hassle to actually get money out of a company - that it most often ends up not happening for open source. Unless there is something that "forces" them.

Yeah. My experiences with the OSMF is that companies won't pay for charity, but they will comply with licenses.

Hmm, companies often use GPLed software without complying with the license (for eg Vizio is being sued right now), so I wonder why the OSMF situation is different.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#234

Post by queenkjuul »

optymizer wrote: post #169
queenkjuul wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canonical and Lenovo both make lots of money already. Sucks that Lenovo doesn't think supporting Linux on your laptop is important.

> Sucks that Lenovo doesn't think supporting Linux on your laptop is important. This is the downside of not owning both software and hardware. The integration is lacking. I already gave money to Lenovo when I bought my laptop, and clearly they're not going to support Ubuntu. Maybe if I gave money to Ubuntu, they would support this hardware. It's worth a try, because leaving it at "sucks" is not acceptable.

Yeah life isn't great over here in Ubuntu on Asus Land. It's ok, but my laptop is dead when i pick it up way more than it should be.

Linux and laptops have always been a develops combo ime. Honestly at many issues as i have with my Asus, it's the best Linux laptop experience I've had yet

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#235

Post by jononor »

pabs3 wrote: post #233
robmensching wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. My experiences with the OSMF is that companies won't pay for charity, but they will comply with licenses.

Hmm, companies often use GPLed software without complying with the license (for eg Vizio is being sued right now), so I wonder why the OSMF situation is different.

Some percentage will not comply. Either in bad faith or just lazyness/incompetence/accident/whatever. But as long as that number is relatively low and a decent chunk pays "their dues", it is not really a problem.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#236

Post by elsjaako »

derefr wrote: post #229
elsjaako wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of those issues that only exists in theory, not in practice. If a company reports a bug in a clear and helpful way, it's probably going to get looked at anyway. Also, if a company cares enough about Wix to bother finding and documenting a bug, they should be willing to pay $60 for the software. So this is only a problem in the case where a company finds a bug, decides to report it, refuses to pay…

Careful with your wording, as I think you're slipping the goalposts a bit: the thing this "Open Source Maintenance Fee" is pushing back against here wasn't specifically bug reports. It was issues — a more general category, which, besides bugs, also contains feature requests . (And that, I think, is where this problem does exist "in practice.") As you say, I don't think anyone's going to demand money to look into an (…

I completely agree! My comment about bugs was only in response to the parent poster mentioning that they would want a company to still report bugs that affect a lot of users.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#237

Post by [deleted] »

mirsadm wrote: post #111
20k wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if its one time payment, companies will just leech off of it indefinitely. It'd be great if companies were contributing, but its gotten to the point where you have to assume heavy bad faith from everyone involved

I am starting to think that the open source licenses need to be updated to specifically exclude large tech companies and force them to pay.

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#238

Post by zvr »

robmensching wrote: post #135
zvr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's what a number of organizations have set up since March.

No. Not really. There are 406 forks, and ~10 were created in the last 5 months. The other people on this thread are more correct.

The number of publicly visible forks does not represent the number of organizations compiling their own binaries and internally mandating the use of such binaries.

Mind you, I never implied that there are thousands or hundreds of such cases. But there are some.

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#239

Post by foxglacier »

robmensching wrote: post #224
foxglacier wrote: post #182

I've always treated WiX as one of those "finished" projects that never needs updating. I'm still using some old version from 10-20 years ago. What could they possibly be still changing? Didn't it just work already?

Well, we've had a few CVEs to work around Windows vulnerabilities, and one of our own making. :( We've also improved the integration with modern Windows build systems. Now adding some features to the language to make it easier to use for simpler installation packages (still more work to do). In this day and age, it's very hard for software to sit idle.

Thanks. Perhaps I'd better finally update :)

Re: Open Source Maintenance Fee

#240

Post by jackdawipper »

jackdawipper wrote: post #119
trjordan wrote: post #31

I love the innovation. The basic idea here appears to be: - Nobody wants this to be closed source. The code is freely available, and you may do with it as you want. The marginal cost to distribute the code is 0, after all. - The maintainers, as people, don't want to do charity work for companies. Their time is limited, and if they're going to support revenue-generating activities, they want a cut of the revenue. So e…

pull back the layers. This is the usual masking of the facts. A rose by any other name... is after money. FOSS is destroyed the moment that is introduced to the mix. Its like political sells - begin pushing a small degree, they wont notice the temperature as it rises over time until its closed source and corporate. This is how you kill off FOSS, or your project. "corporate creep" I call it.

after further consideration, I actually think I am wrong in this case. It's really just looking for fair payment in exchange for work provided to those that are commercial interests or who can afford to pay it. Which is totally fair and my point doesnt apply here.
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