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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#261

Post by thefunnyman »

rileytg wrote: post #235
supportlocal4h wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of facets to open source contributions. One big facet is the whole itch-scratching thing. If you know longer itch, stop scratching. That's ok. Maybe when you stop scratching, it will start to itch again for you or for someone else. If nobody steps up, it just means it doesn't itch enough. Abandonware is not such a bad thing. It served its purpose for a season, then the world moved on. Nobody's out the…

This applies well for things like a java package where the itchy generally have the skills to scratch. I think of these things as having numerous benefits, namely saves your company/team time; most of the time, in this case I think boo-hoo if the person working tirelessly for no compensation stops doing that... Pay them or do it yourself. (I am currently doing-it-myself with an abandoned java package my team relies o…

In such a case, maybe Wordpress themselves should extend some engineering capacity for maintaining popular OSS plugins for their ecosystem.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#262

Post by ericb »

onion2k wrote: post #93
wccrawford wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

This is a serious shortcoming in github's current UI. There's no easy discovery for which forks are active.

It would be useful if there was a checkbox "Actively Publicly Maintained" in forked repos that defaults to Off.

That way, on the forks page of a repo, if someone is offering an alternative, an "actively maintained" check mark (and perhaps a date) can be shown and it can bubble to the top of the "forks" list.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#263

Post by Fordec »

andrewstuart wrote: post #34

The pattern is familiar: * open source project * success * no monetary reward, maybe just cost * burnout * project abandoned This is why I don't try to make any open source projects - what's the gain? I'd only do it if it paid money. If people aren't willing to pay then I'm not willing to work.

Yep, I've stopped owning Open Source projects. All projects are for me now, and I reap the minuscule rewards from being all the only benefactor of the effort. But at least it's not a net negative burden of time sink, support, server costs, hosting, burnout, etc.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#265

Post by rkntt »

zksmk wrote: post #256
cnml123 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies rarely contribute back except for very few projects like gcc and LLVM. FAANG does hire OSS devs, but a lot of them don't really do that much apart from being excellent politicians. To be fair, they don't get any time for OSS development in the first place. However, they do have time for politics and often ruin the projects. People play along because they want to get hired at GNAAF. As a result, these projec…

A bit off topic, but instead of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) I much more prefer the MAAAF or FAAAM acronym (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft) because their monopolies basically make them a mafia family, and I don't really see Netflix belonging in the group.

That's a good point, also Netflix rarely has bad press as far as I know.

MAAAF for Mafia of MAGAF (Make Google Great Again, F...) are nicer.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#266

Post by tnorthcutt »

elric wrote: post #250
christophergs wrote: post #189

At my last gig I got budget to bring in the maintainer of an open-source testing library we using for some really important stuff. We paid him $1500 for a couple of days consulting. He showed us how to fix a couple of tricky bugs and gave a talk to the eng team. At this point we've more than recouped the investment. He was psyched to see his tool being used and I feel the visit contributed to him continuing to mainta…

About a decade ago, Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo fame set up fosstithe.org, which was about encouraging companies to set aside some percentage of your profit to donate to FOSS projects. Alas, the website no longer seems to exist. I still think it's a great idea, and every year I donate 5% of my profits to FOSS projects I like. Convincing corporates to do the same is a little trickier. They want things like invoices…

Not every FOSS developer has a consulting gig.

But they could! It's as easy as saying "I can consult on $topic, please contact me to discuss details."

Then you charge money and do the work.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#267

Post by dabockster »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #233
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing 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…

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small busi…

> "open source" is for suckers

First time I've heard that on HN ever. This needs to be common knowledge so more people realize how valuable they really are.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#268

Post by dabockster »

cnml123 wrote: post #242
zxzax wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never liked that approach, it's leading with the stick and not the carrot and IMO it defeats the purpose of open source. It cuts away one of the main benefits of open source -- that companies can use it and start contributing back to it right away with no friction. AFAIK Microsoft, Amazon and Google actually DO hire a lot of open source maintainers at this time, for exactly this reason.

Companies rarely contribute back except for very few projects like gcc and LLVM. FAANG does hire OSS devs, but a lot of them don't really do that much apart from being excellent politicians. To be fair, they don't get any time for OSS development in the first place. However, they do have time for politics and often ruin the projects. People play along because they want to get hired at GNAAF. As a result, these projec…

Not just politics, but often they'll couple OSS to their own build systems and stuff. Yeah, it might be 50ms faster on paper, but that whole project now depends on that company's OSS licensing allowing that dependency to exist publicly. That's some really scary power.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#269

Post by dabockster »

apocalypstyx wrote: post #259
ergot_vacation wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small busi…

> The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small businesses) can use it for free. Everyone else needs to pony up. It's absurd that a ton of the software allowing giant corporations to run day-to-day is not only created but ACTIVELY MAINTAINED by an individual or groups of individuals for free, as if they were running a soup kitchen. Microsoft,…

> This is neither free nor open by either the OSI or the FSF's definitions.

In the famous words of Peter Griffin, "OH MY GOD WHO THE [expletive] CARES?!!"

If someone isn't being paid for their work, then any version of OSS isn't really sustainable long term.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#270

Post by chrchang523 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #42
radarsat1 wrote: post #7

Of course it's terrible to become burnt out and it feels awful not having enough time to work on an open source project that you love. But, is it just me or has it become rarer for open source project maintainers to feel free to let projects go? 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 realize that as the original author one feels a sense…

Often a project, a club, or even a company only hold because of one passionate individual. Once he is gone, it is the end. It is very hard to find someone with the same level of motivation. Projects stop being maintained, clubs cease activities, and companies get taken over for short term profit. It is particularly apparent in schools. Students start something, then they graduate and do something else. Most of the ti…

There is an interesting "converse" to this observation for open-source projects, though. Namely: if a nontrivial abandoned project is still widely used, it probably represents a major career opportunity for anyone willing to take over maintenance.

This isn't purely hypothetical: it's the foundation of my own career.

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