321–330 of 377 posts
I’m hoping that with GitHub getting into the donation game, things will get a little better for funding open source. This is just the symptom. It’s really difficult to convince people to part with just $100 a year to fund something critical to our org. I do fund some projects, but there are plenty of others that I use regularly that I don’t fund monthly
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, I wasn't confused before but now I am. Look, all I'm saying is if some javascript developer guilts me into donating to open source, the right thing for me to do (I feel) would be to start from the top of the open source chain. * Operating system * Code versioning * Container system * CI/CD etc... It's a long way down before I get to "standard - the javascript linter configuration file".
That's a bit like arguing that Bernie Sanders should give up his housing in Vermont, because No True Socialist would own a house. A good action which is done with good intentions is wholely good, regardless of other good or bad actions that may occur in the same space. You could donate to all of those projects, but there's no moral imperative to visit them all in order of importance, just because they all played a pa…
There is a lot of concern in this thread about open source projects needing funding and they're not wrong. There are a lot of projects that are underfunded--most of them, in fact. However, it's not like the developers of and contributors to these projects naively go in thinking they're going to get paid anything. They graciously choose to make the fruits of their efforts freely available regardless of compensation. A…
The rationale from the author of the package who adding advertising is enlightening and definitely worth reading. https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/
> If even I – with my fortunate position – can’t make a comfortable living working on open source, then how is anyone else supposed to make it work? If living comfortably is Feross's goal, why not get a job? This is a high profile programmer in one of the highest demand, highest-programmer-wage places in the world. What am I missing?
The alternative is Feross gets a job, and everyone invents their own stuff in-house, and we end up with 'open source' that is just what profitable companies want to have as open source. The set of things companies decide to open source is not a good overlap with the set of software that should exist.
Most of us use vim. That’s ad supported and I think most us can agree it’s not awful. It’s certainly possible to do ads well (maybe even more common in terminal software.) I personally don’t have any experience with ads in NPM though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I think my wording in the original post is to blame here. What I was trying to get across was that Feross has previously been vocal about his belief that his software was both FOSS and monetarily free. Now, he seems to be exploring the possibility that his code can still be FOSS, and monetarily free in concept, but perhaps walks the path Facebook, Google, et. al have that has lead to the much maligned cliche' "…
Well, the GNU project itself, and its founder (RMS), who is by any standard a strict follower of that philosophy, thinks that Free Software should be sold - and for as much as one can charge [1]. I'd say that the two are not really on the same path; if anything, they work against each other. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Really ads in a terminal is a needless attack vector that is a dumpster fire for security that is part of the reason /why/ they have so many detractors.
Really ads in a terminal is a needless attack vector that is a dumpster fire for security that is part of the reason /why/ they have so many detractors.
A console.log in your npm package post-install is an attack vector? Sure, there are many nasty things you could do in a packages post-install, I think a text based ad is the least of your concerns.
But here's an idea instead: we already have a Sponsor feature on Github, so how about a command in the package manager that lists all packages that could be sponsored, similar to how packages can be audited ?
That way everyone in on an equal footing instead of money going to money.
And if it's not enough, how about using private repos where you need a subscription to access the package ?
It's inspiring how quickly ad tech devs can band together to completely remove all ads from their ad tech development environment.
I've had a theory for a while now that the only reason devs are so ok with working on ads is because they never see any (with pihole/ublock/hosts/etc...) and they don't know how creepy they are. On the rare occasion I have to turn off my adblocker I'm almost always amazed by how well the ads are tracking me - and that's while I'm actively trying to prevent it from tracking me!