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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

#501

Post by sokoloff »

rglullis wrote: post #489
sokoloff wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers have made massive gains overall by commoditizing their complements. Linux OS is almost surely the largest single example of this. How many fewer developer jobs would there be now if every OS installation cost what Solaris used to cost (or even what Win2K8 Server cost)?

> Developers have made massive gains overall by commoditizing their complements Sorry, I am not following. What is the implication here, that application developers and Free Operating Systems are complemetary products? > How many fewer developer jobs would there be now if every OS installation cost what Solaris used to cost? Of course the market would be much smaller without FOSS, but how does this relate to what I a…

> application developers and Free Operating Systems are complementary products

Yes, that was my point (or at least application development and OSes are)

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

#502

Post by schwartzworld »

jml7c5 wrote: post #267
lollmao wrote: post #189

Unrelated, but why do people prefer to assume gender over just using gender-neutral pronouns? Not a native English speaker but I've seen this a lot, especially on HN even when there's no indication of subject's gender whatsoever. Or is it just weird to use they/them? Thanks

It's a weird problem with the language. Despite many attempts, with proposals like "xe" and "thon"[0], English never picked up a good gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. [Yeesh, that's a mouthful of adjectives.] As recently as 15 years ago, using "they" to refer to a single individual was derided by many as grammatically incorrect. It was common in colloquial speech, but frowned upon in writing, mostly beca…

> singular "they" is ambiguous

Isn't ambiguity the point of using such a pronoun?

I'm curious what the 'recommended' strategy was for situations where gender was unknown. "Someone robbed me; he or she took my wallet"?

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

#503

Post by pietrovismara »

andrey_utkin wrote: post #475
pietrovismara wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.

> This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job. > Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay. > We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for u…

> As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job.

We could still have many more if it was viable to do it without being forced to have a day job. Especially when your software is used by many succesfull companies.

> "OS project"

It stands for open source project. I don't get your quotes here.

> Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay.

You talk about law, I talk about ethics.

> We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses".

Using "commerical licenses" hurts every use cases that is not profit based. Having mixed licenses adds a lot of complication for the mantainers on top of the already difficult volontary development.

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

#504

Post by stonemetal12 »

wolfgke wrote: post #248
thaumasiotes wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term of art is "source available" - "open source" means something different.

As far as I am aware, a usual term of art is also "shared source" (this term was in particular used by Microsoft in the past).

My understanding was "shared source" was MS's particular license for "source available" not their term for the practice.

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

#505

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Fordec wrote: post #52

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 o…

> I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately.

Open source is a niche. The vast majority of developers don’t participate in open source. If they do, it’s simple bug fixes that they need for their paid jobs. The number of people creating and releasing significant open source projects is vanishingly small relative to the entire pool of developers.

I think it was a mistake to tell entry-level devs everywhere that open source was some sort of secret cheat code to boost one’s career. On the hiring and recruiting side of things, seeing open source contributions is helpful, but it’s almost never the deciding factor in hiring someone. Meanwhile, Internet forums for juniors are full of anxiety about creating side projects and GitHub profiles because young developers think it will get them to the head of the hiring line. It’s a recipe for a lot of disappointment in open source.

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

#506

Post by darkwater »

marcinzm wrote: post #499
tastroder wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah well, just saw the house fire tweet and sent him a few bucks. Guess I'm on one more list now. There seem to be a few articles that are at least not half filled with the ramblings of an elderly neighbour: https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discov... https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... Emotional distress se…

>Naming suspects in these cases seems so weird from a non-US perspective, there's not even been a court case. As I understand it, the original reason for this is to prevent the police from simply making people disappear. It's a public check on what the police and government do to people.

Even in that case is the WRONG solution to a problem.

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

#507

Post by nmeofthestate »

nrmitchi wrote: post #460
nmeofthestate wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cops said FDNY fire marshals are combing through Squire’s charred, first-floor apartment to determine the cause of the blaze, an FDNY spokesperson said. The fact that his apartment is 'charred' suggests he was doing stuff in it. Could be he took the materials with him as he was trying to escape out the back window, or that's just where he was storing them so they wouldn't be found if a search was conducted. I think…

> The fact that his apartment is 'charred' suggests he was doing stuff in it. Or, it suggests that there was a fire, which is not really up for debate. > Could be he took the materials with him as he was trying to escape out the back window You are making up a hypothesis to make someone sound guilty with no evidence. > I think it's useful that this was reported on, because it could make people more wary of shelling o…

Yes I'm sure it's all just a big misunderstanding.

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

#508

Post by baobabKoodaa »

tastroder wrote: post #217
wjnc wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the police would ransack my family home after a fire you could probably write the same article. Charred RPi's and lots of computer parts, enough wiring for a new house, lots of chemicals (cleaners, fertilizers, other chemical agents with regular gardening use cases), ultimate survival guide and related parts ("This guy was prepping for something!"). The naming of suspects is just adding insult to injury. If he's i…

Ah well, just saw the house fire tweet and sent him a few bucks. Guess I'm on one more list now. There seem to be a few articles that are at least not half filled with the ramblings of an elderly neighbour: https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discov... https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... Emotional distress se…

I agree it's terrible that the papers named him so early, and I do think we should give him the benefit of the doubt, but given the information out there right now, there is a reasonable chance he actually was making a bomb. It seems to me like people are willing to jump to the opposite conclusion simply because he's "one of us". Let the investigation play its course.

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

#509

Post by pietrovismara »

solatic wrote: post #478
pietrovismara wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who do you think a "regular dev" is? Someone who's not employed by a fortune 500 company, probably the 99% of devs?

Why is it evil for a large company making a large profit to exploit your free work, but not a small company making a small profit? They're both benefitting from work you're doing without paying you. Personally I don't see an qualitative difference, just one of degree. Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers.

Because a small company, by definition, doesn't earn millions and usually has very small margins (if none, if they're still in the startup phase). A large company can definitely afford to contribute more.

> Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers.

Offering commercial licenses adds a lot of work on top of the already difficult development of OSS projects. I don't understand why you think that the situation can be fixed using existing solutions, when the problem arised with these solutions already in place.

Perhaps we need something different??

Edit: I also completely reject the notion that everything should be commercialized. OSS is the antithesis of this. Down with commercial licenses, down with rich capitalists exploting people's voluntary work.

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

#510

Post by vmception »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #467
arthurcolle wrote: post #102

On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0] Pretty crazy story, all in all! He seems to be in some pretty dire strait…

For all those people in this thread praising his work, now's the time to put your money where the mouth is. If you have used his work, push your companies to sponsor/donate. Asking irrelevant questions like whether he has a job does not help the situation. The community's response to events like this is what determines the future of open source. People like to complain about copyleft vs libre licenses. But if you hav…

Yeah but it is also hilarious when the contributors of free open source software rage quit when they realize others can use their work for free while the contributors forget to make money.

Software developers, man!

For a bi-weekly hilarious rage quit, check out Andre Conje on twitter!

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