Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would totally believe all of these to be real headlines if I saw them on Hacker News.
I know! Tempted to write them…
Please do!
Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
71–80 of 80 posts
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#72It's not exactly the same, but my reasoning for generally not donating money to FLOSS projects is that I kind of see it as a zero-sum game.
I maintain some stuff, I report bugs and contribute to several projects (with a varying degree of activity), you maintain some stuff and in the end we all benefit from it. And yes, of course some people do a lot more, but even more people do a lot less. And if you like donating money to people who like to accept money, sure, go ahead. (I think I received something from an Amazon wish list once, and we ordered some swag for some collective donation money once - which is overall not a lot for over 20 years of occasional open source work. Not complaining here, just for reference - I prefer not to be paid for doing my hobby stuff in my free time.)
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios, Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as…
> Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as a homeowner? What happens when you don't pay the fine? What happens when you resist the armed men at your door? > outright insulting to human dignity to…
> What happens when you don't pay the fine?
Garnish your wages? Freeze your bank account? Put a lien on your house? I don't know, I've never been blessed with the urge to die on this hill. They sure as heck have a million options besides injuring you, and they won't injure you unless you do something other than merely refusing labor or payment. "He didn't pay the fine, let's go beat him up till he does" is not how things work in my part of the world.
Unlike, you know, actual slavery.
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely the value of patching upstream is so you don't have merge conflicts for eternity?
Oh yeah, that's for sure. But my experience has been that most managers are not competent in that regard. If you have a good manager that understands that, then that's great. But it's rare. Most of the time, it works better to bullshit them with the legal consequences of not allowing you to upstream your changes. Again, that's my experience.
i'd tell them, i we don't get the changes upstream then we can't ever upgrade to their new version.
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yeah, that's for sure. But my experience has been that most managers are not competent in that regard. If you have a good manager that understands that, then that's great. But it's rare. Most of the time, it works better to bullshit them with the legal consequences of not allowing you to upstream your changes. Again, that's my experience.
i'd tell them, i we don't get the changes upstream then we can't ever upgrade to their new version.
Which is bullshitting them, right? You can upgrade and re-patch.
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#76I don't know about "required" but I do know that people who depend on any piece of open source software (or would like to) should be encouraged at every turn to contribute somehow — put a tutorial video on youtube, hang out in a user group and answer questions, work on translations, confirm bug reports, do test builds, whatever.
I have written a small open source package that became hugely widely deployed without my knowledge — a really very pleasant surprise — but hadn't done an awful lot more in terms of open source contribution for a long period of time until two or three years back when I began to contribute in various ways to a project that has really changed my life for the better.
I now feel a whole lot more ethical about the amount I get out of it personally, because I am putting in about ten hours a week of my own time.
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
i'd tell them, i we don't get the changes upstream then we can't ever upgrade to their new version.
Which is bullshitting them, right? You can upgrade and re-patch.
no more than claiming that we are legally required to upstream the patch.
the argument is though that repatching is work, and especially it's the kind of work you do not want to be stuck with while you upgrade, because if you forget to do it ahead of time, which is likely to happen, you end up with a potentially large downtime or an unexpected delay in the upgrade process.
in other words: the actual truth is: we can't upgrade unless we reapplied the patch to the new version. basically, it is about making the re-patch process appear as dramatic and disruptive as possible.
the leaders can't deny the possibility, because the code that is patched could change dramatically, to the point that you have to redo all the work from scratch.
i am actually stuck in such a situation with one of my projects. i need to merge two branches that were created some time ago causing a divergence that would have been easy to deal with, had i properly merged the branches at the time. now the merge will take as much effort as the original development.
as developers we all know this of course. the challenge is to explain this to the leadership in ways that they can understand.
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as a homeowner? What happens when you don't pay the fine? What happens when you resist the armed men at your door? > outright insulting to human dignity to…
> What happens when you don't pay the fine? Garnish your wages? Freeze your bank account? Put a lien on your house? I don't know, I've never been blessed with the urge to die on this hill. They sure as heck have a million options besides injuring you, and they won't injure you unless you do something other than merely refusing labor or payment. "He didn't pay the fine, let's go beat him up till he does" is not how th…
Ah yes, our wonderful governments won't beat us up if we don't comply, they'll just take our possessions and money so we don't have food, shelter, transportation, or the capacity to generate income. Totally non-violent.
"political power flows from the barrel of a gun" - Mao
Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#79I think a more viable strategy would be, any software that is paid for with tax money, should be open source.
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Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty
#80Sure, let's make free labor required (not a preference) for everybody