No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This • Hacker News Board

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#31

Post by gkoberger » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:40 AM UTC

I think this is fair for him to do, and well within his rights. He’s clearly frustrated.

I wish there was a better way for open source projects to solicit donations. It’s hard to get your boss to pay for software; it’s extra hard when you get no additional value.

I feel like open source would have more luck if Issues could have attached bounties. I may not think to donate to faker.js, however as someone with access to a company credit card, I’d definitely attach $100-$500 (or more!) to certain Issues. (Tobi from Shopify recently did a $10k bounty to get OBS working with Zoom, and someone claimed it.)

I do wonder why GitHub hasn’t done more here (I know sponsorships exist). It feels like they have the opportunity to build an open source Upwork... an army of people who create software and get paid a living, except in this case they also contribute to good. GitHub already changed how people work, and now they could do it again.

EDIT: after reading his Twitter, it seems something is going on with him. https://twitter.com/marak

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#32

Post by ganafagol » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:40 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

I agree with your sentiment, but this is not the right reaction. It won't improve anything.

What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down?

You are free to adjust the license to prevent this. But then tomorrow everybody comes and rants about that the GPL is too restrictive. That's the price we pay for this. It's the license that keeps work free.

The right reaction is not to stop producing open source software. The right reaction is to adjust the license.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#33

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #3

It's actually really sad that someone who has easily generated millions of dollars of value with their work gets nothing for it. Yeah yeah, it's open source, but it still sucks. I'm assuming they can't be compensated easily due to legal reasons?

Looks like he does get paid a little bit by half a dozen companies/employees - maybe $1200/month? https://opencollective.com/fakerjs#backer But yea, people aren't paying because they don't want to pay.

I've written something similar at work in the past, and the work required to support a single fixed scenario is so much less than the work required to support a generic tool that it would have felt hard to justify paying for something instead of building it, if I'd known about this at the time.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#34

Post by aboringusername » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

[this comment was deleted as HN doesn't pay me to contribute to the discussion]

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#35

Post by noisy_boy » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #3

It's actually really sad that someone who has easily generated millions of dollars of value with their work gets nothing for it. Yeah yeah, it's open source, but it still sucks. I'm assuming they can't be compensated easily due to legal reasons?

There is a "Sponsor" link right at the top of the Github page. Companies sponsor all sorts of initiative so I don't see the what legal reasons would prohibit sponsoring here.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#36

Post by adwn » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

ganafagol wrote: post #20

You sir have misunderstood the concept of open source software. As an open source author or maintainer you don't do the work for others and then expect some kind of compensation. The idea instead is to do the work that you would have done anyway because somebody else paid you or because you did it for fun, and then you publish it to use the community to help you fix issues. A philantropic motivation is nice but not n…

Did you mean to reply to someone? Because your post doesn't fit the original link at all.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#37

Post by bdcravens » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #16

bdcravens wrote: post #5

Certainly his right; his project (though it has a very permissive license), his time. It sounds like he's tired of working on it, and he requires sponsorship to make it worthwhile. Let's say he doesn't, and the project is forked. This begs an interesting question: does he own the npm name? "faker" has mindshare, not just in JS; if he's unwilling to work on it, would it make sense for the NPM organization to reassign…

Given that NPM hasn't done so before, I find it very unlikely they would do so now. More likely, the fork would become "faker2" if they don't want to come up with a new name.

I'm not sure they haven't. Their dispute process even outlines this as a use case: "This process is an excellent way to: Adopt an "abandoned" package"

https://www.npmjs.com/policies/disputes

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#38

Post by MaximumYComb » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #21

Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? Apple is telling us we can't run our own software on their goddamned devices, yet they built their empire on open source. Look at Facebook, Google, Amazon. They've extracted all the blood they can and given us back scraps. AWS is repackaged software you pay more for. Yes, it's…

Here in Australia the streaming options for music/video are better than our previous options for CD's/cable. A three month subscription to Spotify costs less than a single album would cost me 20 years ago.... not even account for inflation. A monthly Netflix subscription is 20% of the price that cable would cost here 5 years ago.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#39

Post by ganafagol » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #31

I think this is fair for him to do, and well within his rights. He’s clearly frustrated. I wish there was a better way for open source projects to solicit donations. It’s hard to get your boss to pay for software; it’s extra hard when you get no additional value. I feel like open source would have more luck if Issues could have attached bounties. I may not think to donate to faker.js, however as someone with access t…

Please stop painting open source as a donation-based development model. That's completely distorting what it is about.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#40

Post by ganafagol » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

dtech wrote: post #23

ganafagol wrote: post #20

You sir have misunderstood the concept of open source software. As an open source author or maintainer you don't do the work for others and then expect some kind of compensation. The idea instead is to do the work that you would have done anyway because somebody else paid you or because you did it for fun, and then you publish it to use the community to help you fix issues. A philantropic motivation is nice but not n…

It's also fully his choice to no longer do that...

Absolutely. I would even encourage people to stop do this kind of thing.

It's just that the rant demonstrates the misunderstanding, which is what I'm trying to point out.