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Sunsetting Jazzband

jazzband.co

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Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#51

Post by bombcar »

satvikpendem wrote: post #27
mentalgear wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the open-source experiment has failed. Hundreds of billion-dollar companies have been built on millions of hours of free labor, on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers. Yet, apart from token gestures, these exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back. For the next generation of OSS, it would be wise to stand together and introduce a new licensing model: if a…

There are licenses like that, just don't call them open source. They're just another form of proprietary software albeit sometimes also being source available. If you want to make money, make commercial software and sell it. It's funny to see people complain about people taking what they gave out for free, it's like having a lemonade stand with a huge sign saying "free" and being surprised people take the lemonade.

Especially since it's just a disguised and unenforced bait-and-switch - FREE OSS LIBRARY that DOES EVERYTHING YOU NEED for FREE!

Oh, by the way, when you use it and are dependent on it, give me big bucks.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#52

Post by quadrifoliate »

rtpg wrote: post #38
vova_hn2 wrote: post #33

> Jazzband was always a one-roadie operation. People asked for more roadies and offered to help over the years, and I tried a number of times to make it work – but it never stuck. Not sure what exactly prevented him from accepting more people into the role of "roadies"...

The level of trust required is immense. We’re talking about a position where you get the keys to the kingdom to a very large number of projects I would say that having roadie level access is equivalent to having access to Django core. I have never seen a recent Django project that isn’t pulling something from jazzband Despite this I think it’s important to highlight that even in that world jazzband had a lot of infra…

Why are we assuming that there were lots of volunteers in the first place? If this is such a high-trust position, it should be called something other than "roadie". I thought it was common knowledge that the term "roadie" is considered mildly derogatory, and that the modern word was more specific and skill-based, i.e. "stage manager", etc.

As an N=1 example, I myself have some experience with various Django packages including some Jazzband ones. Around 7 years ago I looked at this organization, thought about volunteering to be a "roadie", and specifically decided not to do so due to the terminology. I'm pretty sure that something like "Looking for trusted co-maintainers with a history of FOSS contribution" would draw in more folks than "Looking for roadies".

If you're going to say "well no one complained", guess what, I didn't either. People will just quietly decide to not volunteer due to stuff like this; leading to a shortage over time.

Summary: Branding and acknowledgement matters, so check carefully what you call the volunteers that you're expecting tens of hours of free work from.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#53

Post by camgunz »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #47
sc68cal wrote: post #17

Jazzband maintained some incredible Django packages and tools that made it possible for me to build a system at my $JOB that would have been impossible to do on my own. It is a true tragedy of the commons situation where I was expected do more with less, and I didn't have the ability to contribute back/donate anywhere near the value that these projects provided to $JOB or myself. I did contribute personally, but it's…

By this point, this take is old to the point of being tiresome. People should get what the deal is with open-source maintainership at this point. They should’ve gotten it back when Jazzband started. Nothing has changed since then. If you don’t want big companies using your stuff and not pay for it, don’t publish OSS. If you have some expectation that Google is going to write you a fat check, put it in the license—eve…

It was an insane mistake to disdain the GPL.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#54

Post by Dylan16807 »

bombcar wrote: post #51
satvikpendem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are licenses like that, just don't call them open source. They're just another form of proprietary software albeit sometimes also being source available. If you want to make money, make commercial software and sell it. It's funny to see people complain about people taking what they gave out for free, it's like having a lemonade stand with a huge sign saying "free" and being surprised people take the lemonade.

Especially since it's just a disguised and unenforced bait-and-switch - FREE OSS LIBRARY that DOES EVERYTHING YOU NEED for FREE! Oh, by the way, when you use it and are dependent on it, give me big bucks.

Not big bucks. Small bucks would fix the problem.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#55

Post by rcxdude »

mentalgear wrote: post #13
iqihs wrote: post #6

is it unrealistic to think the companies that benefit from orgs such as this could donate a fraction of a percent of their wealth to keep them going? the responsibility always seems to fall most on those with the least resources.

It seems the open-source experiment has failed. Hundreds of billion-dollar companies have been built on millions of hours of free labor, on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers. Yet, apart from token gestures, these exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back. For the next generation of OSS, it would be wise to stand together and introduce a new licensing model: if a…

Keep in mind giving stuff away for free is going to be much more popular than any other price. Don't discount that these projects are popular _because_ they are OSS, and if you introduce another model then one potential outcome is that no-one with money actually uses them.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#56

Post by surgical_fire »

iqihs wrote: post #6

is it unrealistic to think the companies that benefit from orgs such as this could donate a fraction of a percent of their wealth to keep them going? the responsibility always seems to fall most on those with the least resources.

Yes.

Companies optimize for profit, all else be damned, no matter the damage they cause to the world around them.

In that sense, I fully expect companies to extract all value they can from Open Source without paying not contributing nothing in return.

The world would be saner if more people understood that.

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#58

Post by WhyNotHugo »

comet_browser wrote: post #31

Jazzband's model was interesting precisely because it tried to solve the bus factor problem by distributing maintainership across a community. The fact that it's sunsetting suggests the problem runs deeper than just individual maintainer burnout. The real gap is that there's no natural mechanism for projects that are critical infrastructure for many companies to capture even a tiny fraction of the value they create.…

> Jazzband's model was interesting precisely because it tried to solve the bus factor problem by distributing maintainership across a community. The fact that it's sunsetting suggests the problem runs deeper than just individual maintainer burnout.

Indeed, but it also failed due to the same reason: a bus factor of 1 in terms of who administrates the whole thing.

Each project could have multiple maintainers, but Jazzband itself (e.g.: the infrastructure, org, etc) had a single person responsible, and this didn't scale.

I don't mean to bash on the person who took charge on this BTW, I'm merely describing the situation. I greatly appreciate the enormous effort taken during so many years!

Re: Sunsetting Jazzband

#59

Post by Eridrus »

username223 wrote: post #43
Eridrus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mostly just sounds like a poison pill that commercial entities wouldn't use, and if you want that you can already use AGPL. Especially as the cost of producing code drops, the value of libraries decreases.

> Especially as the cost of producing code drops, the value of libraries decreases. Does it? If the cost of slop that (1) no one understands, and (2) no one can be sued for if it misbehaves drops to zero, what have we gained? A "library" is code plus reliability and accountability. (Yes, GPL disclaims liability, but that's why consultants exist.)

Reliability is important for sure, but as you noted, there is no accountability for library maintainers.

I'm not saying all libraries will go to zero values, just that their value is decreasing.

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