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

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

#51

Post by gkoberger »

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…

Hmm, I agree with you, but this is a bit different. It’s not like someone took faker.js and started charging for it. It’s a tool that the author chose to give away, and other companies used. There’s literally nothing even asking people to pay, other than sponsorships at the bottom of the README.

You can’t expect companies to pay if you never ask!

I’d love to see GitHub create more avenues for paying for software. Shareware-esque licenses with an easy way to pay, bounties attached to Issues, etc. I think companies _would_ pay (if given a reason); right now it’s framed as a sponsorship (not even a donation!) so the thought process for a company (assuming they even notice it and consider it) is “well, I don’t think it’s a good marketing expense for us” and that’s it.

I’d say most people using faker.js aren’t big companies trying to fuck over a random dev. It’s an employee typing “npm install faker.js”, and genuinely never thinking about it.

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

#52

Post by Fordec »

I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Years ago software was fully build on the backs of a multitude of giants within their niche domain.

But for a while now large companies have been adopting a model of taking from open source contributions and raking in billions. The original social bargain of "pay it on" has been broken by the Bezos of the world raking in billions. And yes, as others have pointed out, nobody owes you anything, this has down the line knock on effects of ingraining having to build widgets inhouse for the thousandth time because all the talent went and put it into their day-job instead of the community. Maybe a partial factor because the industry has expanded and matured so much in the past three decades that name recognition is harder to filter out among the noise by merely doing good work.

Whatever the case, developers are starting to believe that voluntary free open source contribution is for smucks. Which will hamper innovation and morph the industry to how, well, every other industry operated before tech came along. Siloed and slow.

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

#53

Post by cool-RR »

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…

It's not stealing when you've given it away, explicitly and out of your own free will.

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

#54

Post by gkoberger »

ganafagol wrote: post #39
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.

Okay? This particular project is soliciting donations:

“Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities.”

I’m not really sure what your point is, because you never actually made one. You just said I was wrong.

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

#55

Post by [deleted] »

ganafagol wrote: post #39
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.

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by vinkelhake »

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…

What a sad zero-sum way of looking at things. Your open source software doesn't go away because some corporation decides to use it. The companies you list have made substantial contributions to open source.

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

#57

Post by jstgord »

ganafagol wrote: post #32
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…

Another potentially _right_ solution is for programmers to have a union, and put pressure on employers such as google/amazon/facebook/apple to donate x% of their profits back to open source initiatives.

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

#58

Post by throwaway744678 »

throwii wrote: post #26
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…

Similar on Github, how do you announce new forks and get people to come to you instead of opening issues which can be closed?

I've seen a few abandoned projects where the first issue is by someone announcing their fork and their willing to continue maintenance, merge PRs, etc. Not an ideal situation, but sometimes it proves helpful.

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

#60

Post by echelon »

MaximumYComb wrote: post #38
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.

> Spotify

You don't own the music. You can't share it, use your own software to analyze, shuffle, remix it, etc.

> Netflix subscription

But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc. Except now instead of one easy to use interface to access it all, it's spread out all over the place and inconsistent as hell. And more expensive!

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