Recap of the `funding` experiment

End-user open source software doesn't face this problem as often and I would wager is a lot more important for creating an open source ecosystem which serves people rather than serving techbro startups. I'm not saying that libraries are unimportant, but rather that there's not a lot of use-cases for JavaScript layout library #1,480 other than making some web app for some techbro startup, which is pretty far removed from anything useful to end-source. If you write projects which enslave yourself to techbro startups, don't be surprised when you end up enslaved by techbro startups.

I use the AGPLv3 for most of my software, because I don't work for free, for the most part, and want to use the strongest copyleft license available to ensure this. That parasitic corporations fear copyleft and the AGPLv3 in particular is just icing on the cake.

If you don't want your software used in this way, then don't use a permissive license. I sometimes use the most permissive licensing, the CC0, when I write something truly trivial and don't believe I could get away with making it copyleft. Perhaps you understand this general approach, but also that people would simply use a different implementation of your libraries if you did this is the issue here. You don't mention Free Software once this entire article though, so I find that unlikely.

But telling maintainers to bury their appeals where no one bothers to look is not the answer, either.

I vehemently oppose giving Github even more influence in the form of financial payments to its users. That's asinine and I refuse to use Github.

No one knows the value of a sponsor message in the terminal since this has never been tried before. That’s why this was an experiment.

The value is nil. I don't need to take a flame to a rabbit to know it will burn.

Fellow open source maintainers and open source contributors have, by and large, been supportive of the experiment. Open source “consumers”, not so much.

I'm not an open source maintainer, but I write Free Software libraries and I've voiced my opinion in the other thread here. This paragraph creates the impression only those who don't contribute disliked what you did. For the record, I found it and continue to find it suitably amusing.

Many supporters expressed their dislike of advertising – even advertising where the sponsors are carefully selected and the implementation does not track users or collect data.

Advertising is inherently awful and nothing will change that.

Approximately 100% of the Fortune 500 use open source code. Maintainers are just starting to wake up to our own power. Expect to be surprised. This certainly won’t be the last open source funding experiment.

I suggest investing in Free Software and not open source; is it any surprise that the rebranding of software freedom specifically tailored to corporate interests encourages this?

Even for simple single-purpose packages, there’s a non-trivial ongoing maintenance burden. Especially when you’re maintaining hundreds of packages, as many in the Node.js community do.

I've taken a look and I could probably claim hundreds of packages as well, if I wrote many, trivial packages, which is most of what I saw under your name. I currently have five libraries, two or three of which are somewhat trivial, not counting complete programs and other such things. It seems unfair to claim hundreds of packages when many of them seem so trivial and this is also never mentioned.

When you choose a more permissive license, it may still be free software, but it may not promote a level playing field. This suits a lot of companies, but it's not that good for programmers (unless you are in the employ of said companies). As an independent programmer, copyleft (or share-alike) is your friend. I find it strange that this is a controversial point.