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Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

justin.searls.co

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Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#71

Post by throwawayruby »

runjake wrote: post #47

Context: Justin Searls is a “high profile” person in the Ruby and Rails community. He has a reputation for being a nice person and behaving in good faith. From a personal standpoint, I can easily take his words at face value. I’m also curious about the views of Aaron “tenderlove” Patterson, who has a similar reputation. Now that Justin has spoken out, maybe Aaron will take the opportunity to. Both tend to stay out of…

In open source software, it is what is whispered behind closed doors that often matters most. The whispers in this dispute concern André. His behaviour, many quietly say, is the principal cause of the dispute with RubyCentral. His practical contributions over the past year have been scant, yet other maintainers suggest that if he were removed from the GitHub organisation’s ownership, they would simply reappoint him.

Few dare state as much in public, hence the anonymity. The reason is straightforward: André has previously threatened legal action, and appears to be pursuing it once again. RubyCentral, for its part, has bungled the handling of the matter. But André has managed — with the exception of this one post — to cast himself not as a long-time beneficiary of his open source work, drawing maximum financial gain from it, but rather as an aggrieved victim of institutional mismanagement.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#72

Post by hobs »

afandian wrote: post #69
mystraline wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the USA, if you volunteer professional labor, you cannot take it off on your taxes. So yeah, if I can't get the benefit of taking off of my taxes, I do want paid. Can't afford it otherwise, since my labor is taxed and simultaneously valued as 0 as a volunteer.

Are you saying that if you donate your time without pay you would still be taxed as though you _had_ been paid?

No, that's not how it works in the USA - apparently this person wants a tax deduction for their voluntary contribution as if it was a financial contribution to a non-profit which is tax deductible.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#73

Post by mystraline »

afandian wrote: post #69
mystraline wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the USA, if you volunteer professional labor, you cannot take it off on your taxes. So yeah, if I can't get the benefit of taking off of my taxes, I do want paid. Can't afford it otherwise, since my labor is taxed and simultaneously valued as 0 as a volunteer.

Are you saying that if you donate your time without pay you would still be taxed as though you _had_ been paid?

You know thats not what I'm saying.

I'm making a larger comparison that most of our resource, which is labor, cannot be donated at the mean cost per hour and taken off of taxes.

However rich people, whose primary resource is money, CAN be taken off on taxes.

Rich people have ways they can donate and shed their tax burden. Whereas average working people cannot volunteer professional labor and take off the same equivalent.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#74

Post by afandian »

mystraline wrote: post #73
afandian wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that if you donate your time without pay you would still be taxed as though you _had_ been paid?

You know thats not what I'm saying. I'm making a larger comparison that most of our resource, which is labor, cannot be donated at the mean cost per hour and taken off of taxes. However rich people, whose primary resource is money, CAN be taken off on taxes. Rich people have ways they can donate and shed their tax burden. Whereas average working people cannot volunteer professional labor and take off the same equival…

No I don't! I know next to nothing about the American tax system.

In fact it would surprise me if you _could_ somehow reduce your tax burden by doing vountary work.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#75

Post by ChrisArchitect »

Various related context:

Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390

Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299170

A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45325792

I'm leaving Ruby Central

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352432

Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371061

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#76

Post by cschep »

999900000999 wrote: post #48
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting to get paid for open source work is like expecting that people don't pay you for cookies they take from your store labeled "Free Cookies."

But if you take my cookies, add sprinkles then resell them, I can expect a modest donation to keep the bakery running. Otherwise I'm going to run out of flour and no one gets cookies. This is the original sin of FOSS. Large mega corps end up taking up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth while only contributing when they feel like it. At least with . net core Microsoft ultimately pays the bills. No one knows how ot…

You can’t expect anything that isn’t in the original agreement. If you want to sell software, sell it!

If you don’t want a megacorp using your software, don’t give it away. Or license it such that they can’t do what you don’t want them to do.

This retroactive take backs shit is so, so bad for everyone involved.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#77

Post by qudat »

armchairhacker wrote: post #29
999900000999 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

You left out the rest of the paragraph (emphasis mine): > I remember being extremely sympathetic to this perspective , having also wasted countless hours of my life maintaining open source for free only for others to benefit from it. I also recall a figure like either $200 or $250 per hour being mentioned as the rate he was effectively paying himself. Whatever the rate actually was, I distinctly remember thinking, "h…

For such a critical piece of software/infrastructure that runs in massive companies making hundreds of millions, this is a rounding error. I literally do not see a single issue with that rate, even in 2000s.

Now the arguments for frivolous spending is definitely an issue that should be criticized, but getting paid to support a massive language ecosystem and SaaS at-large, that’s a non issue at any rate

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#79

Post by 4bpp »

renewiltord wrote: post #41

I wonder if there's a term for this kind of thing where people use the word "including". As an example, I might have a non-profit that serves soup at soup kitchens and also pays me to manage it. If someone gives $100k, suppose I pay myself $90k and use $10k to serve soup. When someone threatens to cut the contribution, I say "This will affect the non-profit's mission since the $100k a year goes to critical things lik…

I've been seeing the term "hostage puppies" being used for this for a while now; apparently it is associated with esr, though he himself disclaims credit (https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1891528290676199513).

It may not be a perfect fit since per the tweet, the term does not entail that there is necessarily any deceit or confusion involved - under the hostage model, the soup kitchen may be quite open about pocketing 90% of the money, as long as the implication stands that there will be nobody to distribute the remaining 10% in soup if not for them.

As for the deception/confusion aspect of it, I am not aware of a perfectly-fitting term, but Scott Alexander has been blindly groping other parts of that particular elephant for a while, e.g. in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen... and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-mea.... There is a common thread in that you can effectively mess with people's reasoning by manipulating their category boundaries, and this is not something that we have worked out good defenses against. Is software piracy theft? Is a fund of which 10% go towards charitable causes being used for charity? Is a TV popsci presenter with a BA a scientist?, and so on.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#80

Post by armchairhacker »

pizlonator wrote: post #51
armchairhacker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out the rest of the paragraph (emphasis mine): > I remember being extremely sympathetic to this perspective , having also wasted countless hours of my life maintaining open source for free only for others to benefit from it. I also recall a figure like either $200 or $250 per hour being mentioned as the rate he was effectively paying himself. Whatever the rate actually was, I distinctly remember thinking, "h…

400k/yr is excessive?

What would you buy with $400k/yr?

I define a “great” standard of living as roughly: nutritious food (basic meat, vegetables, spices); a home apartment in an area without excessive crime, noise, or pollution; medical care; a couple weeks of vacation per year; ability to frequently purchase cheap things like video games, movie tickets, takeout; ability to rarely purchase more expensive things like high-end technology, quality furniture, very fancy meals; some choice of more frequent vacations, a better apartment/location, fancier everyday food, more things; and everything we take for granted (water, electricity, clean clothes, etc.).

Listing it out it’s actually quite a lot. But is it $400k? I really doubt it (very likely even $100k is more than enough, though inflation will change that). If you or a family member has health issues you may need this much, but that’s the exception (and a failure of health insurance and altruism…)

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