DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#71

Post by that_guy_iain » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #15

dweekly wrote: post #6

A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.

Regarding B: This tracks with what I've observed in this regard, namely that sponsoring by companies just doesn't work well as business model even for projects where you would assume that it should. The incentives are just not working out, and it seems impossible to mobilize even a fraction of the sums for OSS-donations than what companies burn for much less critical aspects of their operation than OSS tools/librarie…

Most big open-source projects are a thing because a companies invest in it. When we rely on people doing it in their free time what we see is unmaintained software.

The entire idea that open source is volunteer work is largely a myth when it comes to popular open source. Even the ones where you think it's volunteer work they do so much during their working hours that either they're lying to their employer or it's sponsored by their employer.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#72

Post by infecto » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

autarch wrote: post #7

dweekly wrote: post #6

A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.

Here's some details about the foundation's financials - https://blogs.perl.org/users/makoto_nozaki/2024/10/understan...

I don't know the dynamics of this board but does anyone else find it strange that the secretary is digging through public documents to generate a post outlining finances? Is that not what the treasurer should be helping with? Then the treasurer makes a public comment to the post? Feels very strange to me.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#73

Post by badsectoracula » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

anticorporate wrote: post #55

sneak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything.

Do they owe anything today, in the sense of a legal obligation? No. But we've regulated the tragedy of the commons in all sorts of other instances. There's no reason, for example, that a small percentage of corporate income tax couldn't be allocated to a grant program for free and open source software projects.

That's a good thought in isolation. The problem however is how are you going to ensure the money collected for that purpose go to the projects that actually need it and there wont be any corruption involved?

It isn't hard to notice, for example, that in EU where gamedev companies often receive grants for various nebulous reasons tend to be companies that do not need the money in the first place (and yes, of course there are devs who received money that needed them, somehow people have to excuse the existence things they benefit from).

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#74

Post by mtmail » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

beernet wrote: post #42

miroljub wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the flaw of the open source business model. You develop something for free, make it available to everyone for free, allow them to modify use and misuse as they wish. Every single step is your conscious decision. And then, you beg for donations, and complain that people are not donating? Doesn't make sense. If you don't want to work for free, just charge for it.

[flagged]

Short "Exactly true", "Yes", "I agree" or "+1" comments add little to a discussion and I see those regularly downvoted.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#75

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #39

esaym wrote: post #21

Craigslist used to donate over $100,000 every single year. Not sure when that stopped. That is really what kept perl going between the years of 2010 and 2016 or so. The board was actually paying a couple of people to do maintenance on the core repository and code. I believe they still do that but obviously due to deficits that is going to get difficult. It's sad when so many companies are dependent upon perl, but don…

Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything.

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#76

Post by whiplash451 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

that_guy_iain wrote: post #67

dep_b wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s being phased out quite aggressively there. Turned out they had such a bad reputation for tech debt thru couldn’t hire people despite paying +50% median Amsterdam developer salaries.

I think a lot of companies are kind of realising the tech stack they use has a bigger impact on hiring than salaries. I believe banks are encountering this issue with no one wanting to do C++ anymore.

You'd find a lot of talented C++ engineers for the right mission and culture.

The problem you describe has little to do with C++ and a lot to do with banking.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#77

Post by badsectoracula » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

seam_carver wrote: post #70

jefftk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an open source maintainer (and still am to a smaller degree) and I think sneak is right. I'm happy for people to use things I create and release, and their use doesn't impose costs on me.

Tech support still takes time.

When you release an open source project you are not obligated to provide tech support.

My project might be given to you for free but if you want my time you'll have to pay for it - and i get to decide if i'll sell it to you.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#78

Post by layer8 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #77

seam_carver wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech support still takes time.

When you release an open source project you are not obligated to provide tech support. My project might be given to you for free but if you want my time you'll have to pay for it - and i get to decide if i'll sell it to you.

Just seeing the issue submissions can have a cost in terms of emotional impact. Of course, you can shield yourself from any feedback, but that has its costs as well (e.g. not getting genuine high-quality error reports). One has to live with those trade-offs.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#79

Post by miohtama » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #46

dweekly wrote: post #6

A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.

It is mind boggling how much funding there would be for the Gimp/Krita/Inkscape/Penpot developers if every designer gave them 5% of what they give to Adobe.

This is correct and sad.

Open source would be much better with sustainable funding models. But hard to see how this could happen in SaaS dominated modern world.

Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

#80

Post by mardifoufs » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

nu11ptr wrote: post #68

sneak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything.

100%. This new trend of maintaining or starting an open source project and then getting upset when people don't send you money is seriously weird. If you want compensation, start a company, otherwise consider anything you receive a gift.

Yeah, though I have sympathies for single devs or projects like perl that are obviously non profit. Like, I get the frustrations for actual volunteers and people who survive on building OSS at a small scale.

What really annoys me is when someone decides to build a corporation around an open source project, and then you get the usual blog post around users not paying or OSS not being sustainable. Yes, using OSS as your marketing and adoption strategy is probably not very reliable and can cause users to use your OSS as if it was OSS, that is, without giving anything back. But usually those projects succeed because they are OSS, and would've had basically no users otherwise. Who would've used MongoDB, elastic search, or redis if they were proprietary and required a paid license from the get go?

In a way, that's also true in this case (success came from being OSS) but again, I get why it seems unfair for some when it's a non profit not being able to sustain itself or get contributions for corporate users.