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What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

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Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#71

Post by yencabulator »

transpute wrote: post #5
bruce511 wrote: post #4

Congrats to FreeDOS for 30 years. This is perhaps a good example of a project being more than the product. By which I mean, we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose, and yet it continues. Of course I generalise, but the original premise ("I liked the command line") is amply served by Linux, Mac or Windows. The other original motivations are similarly obsolete now. All of which is irrelevant. It remain…

> we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose FreeDOS is used by PC OEMs for tech support, e.g. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_9586495-9586656-16 You can create a DOS-bootable USB flash drive by downloading and saving a FreeDOS operating system image. The bootable USB flash drive can then be used for testing and troubleshooting any component on your PC. FreeDOS helps sell PC hardware without t…

What's the functional difference between FreeDOS and some executables "for testing and troubleshooting any component" versus UEFI binaries for the same?

UEFI is roughly a modernized subset of DOS in firmware, with saner calling conventions.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#72

Post by transpute »

yencabulator wrote: post #71
transpute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't really need it - it serves no practical purpose FreeDOS is used by PC OEMs for tech support, e.g. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_9586495-9586656-16 You can create a DOS-bootable USB flash drive by downloading and saving a FreeDOS operating system image. The bootable USB flash drive can then be used for testing and troubleshooting any component on your PC. FreeDOS helps sell PC hardware without t…

What's the functional difference between FreeDOS and some executables "for testing and troubleshooting any component" versus UEFI binaries for the same? UEFI is roughly a modernized subset of DOS in firmware, with saner calling conventions.

A few decades of maturity, testing and network effects.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#73

Post by MerManMaid »

immibis wrote: post #46
poulpy123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're generally the universal boogeymen. That's the problem actually. It's so strong that it makes it more difficult for the principle to be applied for what is less strong. Also in some place it has also been overused to the point it's not effective because you don't know if the people accused are really nazi or not (in my country even left politicians may be called literal fascists by others at the left)

The percentage of people who are called Nazis who are actually them is probably higher than you realize, because the word "Nazi" makes people think of concentration camps, and we don't see those, even though the Nazis did over a decade of other bad stuff before that. A Nazi accusation isn't saying someone runs a concentration camp - it's saying when there are concentration camps, they probably will.

In short, the problem with using Nazi's as a comparison is the strong emotional reactions people are prone to experience. (Justifiably so to be clear)

When a person invokes the Nazi's while discussing subjects that aren't nearly as heavy (emotionally speaking) the horrors of everything Nazi related, they're leave themselves open to being perceived as hyperbolic. No matter how strongly one might feel about open source, the subject matter is just simply on a different emotional level than all the horror which is Nazi. (and therefore, ought not to used as a comparison)

And again just to be clear, I'm not accusing you of being hyperbolic personally, I just want to elaborate on why some people groan when they see Nazi's beings inserted into topics which they have nothing to do with.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#74

Post by x0x0 »

asoneth wrote: post #63
mike10921 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, Open Source projects thrived on the enthusiasm of creators who didn't view software development as a means to make money. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to build a community and create superior products through collaboration. However, the landscape has shifted. When an Open Source project becomes successful today, creators often transition the original product into a proprietary version with…

> they saw it as an opportunity to build a community Many small open source projects still operate this way and their community consists a small number of people who have fun hacking on a project together after work. But as projects grow some of them acquiesce to end-user expectations and slowly turn into "organizations". They have schedules and regular releases, commit to timely triaging of bug reports, provide foru…

People also just get wildly entitled.

I stay anonymous, but I built some software that people use for scientific analysis. I give it away; I don't put it on my resume; the only thing I've gotten from it is it makes me a bit happy that maybe I've saved someone else hundreds of hours of work. There's also some subtle numerical properties that take real work to get right.

(Not all, but some) people demand support, features, or bugfixes; and on their schedule. Or docs, or a prettier site, or blah blah blah, and every second of this takes away time from my real job, my now elderly dog, hobbies, etc. Recently there was a wave of it from some library weirdness on m-chip macs, which I don't even own. And they're guaranteed to get very pissy when I tell them I don't care at all (and, in several cases, if they want me to care they can start by shipping me a new mac and I'll think about it). I honestly mostly just delete the emails anymore because reading them makes me wonder why I'm wasting time on a computer.

As I mentioned, sharing makes me happy and feel like I gave a bit back, but all the shit that comes after that is ugh.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#76

Post by nottorp »

chuckadams wrote: post #54
Gormo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Discourse and Discord seem entirely inappropriate for FOSS projects -- they are both proprietary walled-garden SaaS applications that aren't themselves consistent with FOSS principles, and they are both exclusively web-based with close coupling between the UI and the underlying functionality, which makes it difficult or impossible for users to access, log, and archive messages with tools most optimal for their o…

Discord is definitely inappropriate, but Discourse is open source and has an API for anyone's custom use, including stuff like RSS feeds. I've been dealing with email since the 80's, and I'm quite familiar with the power of email clients, but for any given project I'd much rather use Discourse. While email clients have message organization down pat, the UI for content itself is retrograde, and email deliverability is…

Does Discourse have searchable history?

Discord is out not because it's proprietary, but because it doesn't have usable history. They could be GPL and they'd still be bad.

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#77

Post by plowjockey »

Gormo wrote: post #49
kryptiskt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One prominent example, Rust started off with mailing lists but shut them off a decade ago or so. Many other projects I participate in or follow have moved their communication to other means, Discord and Discourse are popular, sometimes the mailing lists remain but are silent, sometimes they are removed.

Both Discourse and Discord seem entirely inappropriate for FOSS projects -- they are both proprietary walled-garden SaaS applications that aren't themselves consistent with FOSS principles, and they are both exclusively web-based with close coupling between the UI and the underlying functionality, which makes it difficult or impossible for users to access, log, and archive messages with tools most optimal for their o…

Several projects I'm interested in have gone to Discourse. I don't mind the Web interface but the infantile notifications I receive and the nonsense the application sticks into a thread are annoying at best and add nothing to the usefulness of the forum. It otherwise detracts from what should be technical discussions.

Another annoyance are projects that choose to autolock threads in Discourse. On a technical forum such actions are unwarranted as there are times when an investigation can take months and remembering to add a nonsense post to keep a thread from autolocking doesn't always happen. So, a collection of disjoined threads result and even with links to the prior thread(s) the flow of investigation is greatly disrupted. SMH

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#78

Post by xigoi »

kryptiskt wrote: post #35
elric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FreeDOS still uses email mailing lists I'm a bit surprised by this statement. Does this imply that there are now a bunch of FOSS projects that don't use mailing lists? Mailing lists are by far my preferred method of communicating with projects. Please don't tell me people are moving to github issues or some such?

One prominent example, Rust started off with mailing lists but shut them off a decade ago or so. Many other projects I participate in or follow have moved their communication to other means, Discord and Discourse are popular, sometimes the mailing lists remain but are silent, sometimes they are removed.

I think we should establish a term for “FOSS and contributing to the project or getting support does not require using proprietary software”. Strongly FOSS?

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#79

Post by xigoi »

codazoda wrote: post #14

Off topic, but I notice FreeDOS still uses email mailing lists. What email mailing list software / platforms are people using these days? Can you get mail delivered if you install an OSS mailing list and stand up your own server (vps or whatever)?

SourceHut has built-in support for mailing lists.

https://lists.sr.ht/

Re: What I've learned about open source community over 30 years

#80

Post by chuckadams »

nottorp wrote: post #76
chuckadams wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is definitely inappropriate, but Discourse is open source and has an API for anyone's custom use, including stuff like RSS feeds. I've been dealing with email since the 80's, and I'm quite familiar with the power of email clients, but for any given project I'd much rather use Discourse. While email clients have message organization down pat, the UI for content itself is retrograde, and email deliverability is…

Does Discourse have searchable history? Discord is out not because it's proprietary, but because it doesn't have usable history. They could be GPL and they'd still be bad.

Of course Discourse is searchable, it wouldn't be much of a discussion board if it wasn't. Many Discourse-based fora I've been on even do a live search as you type the subject of a post, something that turns out really handy for community support boards.

Discord's lack of searchability is certainly a biggie, but having all history locked away and unexportable in any way is the worst part of it.

And damn the two similar names are confusing, I find myself typing one when I meant the other...

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