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Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

gavinhoward.com

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Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#41

Post by im3w1l »

mgaunard wrote: post #4

The reasons you write open-source code: - training purposes to better yourself - as a showcase or to build up your reputation to get hired - because you have a niche need in your personal life that no one else already solved None of those reasons are invalidated by big corporations using open-source without paying back.

Writing the software and releasing it with a non-foss license might be a better fit for such a person. Free for personal use? Sell it for a modest fee? Put the source on github without allowing people to modify it? Many possibilities.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#42

Post by dragonwriter »

sam_goody wrote: post #11

Although I agree with many of the sources of frustration mentioned in the article, there is a way: For most software projects, there should be a way to buy a commercial support license. For many, such a license should be required for use in any org which is over X employees. Even if not enforced, this way a conscientious dev can justify for paying for the license. In addition, for some of the deeper "plumbing" projec…

> As an open source coder, I theoretically love the above

The above is not open source, it's a pretty common free (gratis) for limited use, paid for other use commercial/proprietary license of the type tons of non-open-source software uses. (E.g., Visual Studio.)

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#44

Post by scotty79 »

For me open source is like math. You don't work on math so that people will thank you for working on math. You don't expect people using math you developed contributing back to math or paying you. You get paid however you managed to organize getting paid. And work on the math for the math and nothing else.

If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what it is.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#45

Post by hacknews20 »

The blog is really mixed up and conflates different issues. It uses a tiny set of not representative examples to validate a conclusion the author has already come to. I totally agree that some people and companies take advantage of what others do for free, but that is not new and would be true if you said the same about the relationship between employees and employers or similar. It’s also true that when people go above and beyond someone somewhere could blame or take advantage of the extra those people gave - again not new and totally possible in any scenario or market. We’ve all been there and bought the T-Shirt. The author has expectation mismatch, perhaps taking a break and then making a final decision is best.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#47

Post by watwut »

vermilingua wrote: post #24

As a fresh CompSci graduate, is it worth it/valuable to try and work on OSS; or am I more likely to just get in the way? If so, what are some good resources for getting started?

Thr biggest risk is that your pull requests will be ignored. You won't be in a way at all. Even very good pull requests are often ignored for reasons unrelated to quality. Don't do anything big before you are reasonably sure the project will process your commit.

Surf through projects to find ones that seem to be interested in contributions. Red flags are many ignored unresolved pull requests or too much hostility in project.

Some projects have issues labeled with "beginner friendly" or some such. Have a look there and try to fix something. If it turns 9ut to be boring, move onto another project.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#48

Post by scotty79 »

aborsy wrote: post #37

Log4j vulnerability is mentioned. But is proprietary software more secure than FOSS?

It's not, but it's not what the author is talking about. He's mostly talking that FOSS is a thankless job creating artifacts that will get appropriated by some greedy corporation.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#49

Post by baybal2 »

> Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

They are putting it wrong. You do not work on open source for compensation, but because you want to.

People who got into opensource with sole aim at scoring high profile job with some dotcom make no good for the state of opensource community.

Big, high profile open source projects die from maintainer/contributor dilution who confuse supporting an oss project with full time job.

There is a critical mass limit of such people introduced into OSS projects, past which irreversible "toxicity chain reaction" starts. Then "Foundations," "Steering Committees," "CoC councils" start to grow like barnacles on the body of the project, and it soon dies because normal people can't, and wont do this stuff.

Re: Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

#50

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

"Since companies steal Open Source software without a care in the world"

If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts.

People have different reasons for working on open source. Some want to make money from it, others don't.

As an example, I don't know the full ElasticSearch story, but if Amazon's fork was legally allowed by the license, it worked as intended. People insist on open source precisely because they don't want to be dependent on one vendor's decisions.

Isn't ElasticSearch worth billions? Would they have become as popular if they hadn't been open source?

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