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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

#561

Post by na85 »

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…

>Whatever the case, developers are starting to believe that voluntary free open source contribution is for smucks.

In today's environment, it kind of is for shmucks. How many times have I seen the same tired FreeBSD copypasta about how FreeBSD powers netflix and playstation, and won't I please donate because netflix and sony are parasites who won't pony up the dough to keep FreeBSD solvent.

Why on earth would anyone directly subsidize these CEOs when they could get paid to do it instead?

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

#562

Post by runawaybottle »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #535
anon73044 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty common size from the big box and home & garden type stores. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sta-Green-43-lb-15-000-sq-ft-32-0-1... I'd be suspicions if he had 10-20 bags and didn't run a landscaping company or multiple acres or grass to maintain.

For an apartment in NYC??

My drugs and alcohol spidey senses are tingling.

I’d be so pissed if my next door neighbor in my apartment building was doing that.

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

#563

Post by josephcsible »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #447
dvdkon wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one wouldn't use a library licensed like this. There are ideological reasons, but more practically, let's say I run a server that provides a public service. At some point, it gets a lot of traffic and I want to accept donations or use ads to fund the hosting. Under such a licence, I'd be completely at the mercy of the author, who could effectively shut down the server.

Or you could pay the author for his/her work from your income. I could be wrong but it seems obvious to me that semi-commercial licenses would explode the amount of open code available, because instead of devs working for corporations, corporations would end up working for them. Commercial licensing - open code, free for non-profits, per-seat or per-user pricing for for profits with an official license, forks are con…

> But we don't have this because Stallman is a zealot and he wanted to Make A Point about purity.

Uh, he's okay with selling exceptions.

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

#564

Post by jiofih »

donmcronald wrote: post #555
part1of2 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What billion dollar industry is built on top of faker.js?

None, but think of it in the context of time = money. Discussions about self hosting development environments will be filled with people claiming it's not worth the opportunity cost to spend the time setting up and maintaining anything yourself when you can pay $X per month and make it someone else's problem. In the same context, how long does it take to write something like faker.js? I've never used it, but I see co…

Almost every project I worked on had a shitty version of faker, written in half an hour for specific needs. It’s a very cosmetic thing, as you’d never rely on this type of dataset for testing actual behaviour of critical code.

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

#565

Post by DubiousPusher »

elcritch wrote: post #235
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…

Yikes, what you describe could easily be a decent portion of HN people’s homes. Don’t forget the anti-social, unpopular with the neighbors bit either. And of course the NYPost appears to thrive on drumming up scandal.

Also, never forget how these intitial police investigations are wrong all the time. How do they know this is potassium nitrate? Was it labeled? Does it look like it? Smell like it? Taste like it?

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

#567

Post by jiofih »

aantix wrote: post #518

Along these lines, I wonder if a progressive pricing structure would ever work for SAAS? Larger companies pay more, solo devs pay less. All based on the email domain they register with. https://twitter.com/aantix/status/1299773332699721730

That’s how nearly every SaaS offering already works. Enterprise pricing.

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

#568

Post by DubiousPusher »

woah wrote: post #498
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…

40 pounds of potassium nitrate?

There is no reason to implicitly trust what a police officer tells a reporter or says at a press conference during the initial investigation of a crime.

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

#569

Post by derefr »

jonrimmer wrote: post #539
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I use his work, but for me the situation is more complicated my prior experiences with the author. He's been making similar complaints about his lack of renumeration for quite a while. In an older GitHub where he requested contributions, I pointed out that he had barely worked on the project for many months (at that time), and not published a new version to npm in years[1], despite making a $600 withdrawal from his O…

You might see that as “volatile”, but I think I can see what he’s getting at. A charitable reading of his whole stance:

• We can enter into a formal contract where I actually do owe you work-on-this-project in exchange for pay;

• but without such a contract, donations to me are just that — donations — and don’t influence my work;

• but this is an open-source project, so you’re free to put whatever work you like into it, and keep/use/share the results (in your own space, that I don’t have to referee.)

• I’ll just be over here, doing what I want, unless/until someone makes a contract with me to do what they want. (Which, of course, they’re not obligated to do; they could just as well hire someone else to fork and maintain the project, rather than hiring me. That’s their choice.)

• So, in short, you’re not the boss of me; unless you’re literally my boss. (A patron is not a boss.)

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

#570

Post by BlueTemplar »

ganafagol wrote: post #20

You sir have misunderstood the concept of open source software. As an open source author or maintainer you don't do the work for others and then expect some kind of compensation. The idea instead is to do the work that you would have done anyway because somebody else paid you or because you did it for fun, and then you publish it to use the community to help you fix issues. A philantropic motivation is nice but not n…

> That's why I like the term "open source" better than the original "free software". If you get the root motivation that RMS had for the "freedom" aspect of it, then that's the same thing,

That's revisionism : Open Source split from Free Software because they wanted to give freedom to companies to profit from it. With predictable consequences…

> but too many people read it as "for free". Like apparently the author of this article. And that's just wrong.

Indeed.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

And this is why 'free' is a very bad adjective to use in this context. IMHO 'libre' is way better.

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