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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

#731

Post by DoreenMichele »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #573
DoreenMichele wrote: post #368

I know a couple of comments have mentioned this already, but this apparently grows out of him being in a pickle financially at the moment and resenting the time he has put into doing free work: https://twitter.com/marak/status/1320465599319990272 I'm sympathetic. I don't have any funds to spare to help him out. I'm chronically broke myself. I've done lots of nice things for people over the years for free. A lot of th…

The 'Automating Inequality' book is 1/3 about homelessness issues, you might be interested : https://virginia-eubanks.com/

Thank you. There's a summary here (I downloaded the linked PDF and read it): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337578410_Virginia_...

I've made a note of your comment someplace I have hope of finding it again.

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

#732

Post by O_H_E »

pontus wrote: post #725
makecheck wrote: post #722

Not limited to software but modern society has a REALLY serious entitlement problem. (To the point where if I see a video on Reddit of someone screaming at a retail employee, it is not even surprising anymore.) I’ve had free and open projects for years, with evidence of thousands of users. Yet I could count on one hand the number of times anyone has bothered to thank me, much less donate. I do occasionally get E-mail…

I think one of the problems is the interface through which we access these tools. I know when I walk into a Walmart that I'm dealing with a huge organization and if I accidentally break something while I'm walking through an aisle, I don't necessarily feel that bad. If instead I was walking around in a mom-and-pop store and broke something, I would apologize profusely and demand that I pay them for their troubles. Wh…

Very interesting take.

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

#733

Post by finnthehuman »

NathanKP wrote: post #701
toast42 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they lost all their possessions in an apartment fire: https://twitter.com/marak/status/1320465599319990272

Additionally the FBI were called and Marak was charged with reckless endangerment for the potentially explosive bomb making materials found on the premise, including potassium nitrate, magnesium powder, sulfur powder, copper powder, aluminum powder, hobby fuse and mixing cups, and books about military explosives, booby traps. ( https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... ) So yeah "seems something…

>Next-door neighbor Debbie Riga said the box was suspicious, and so they decided to open it.

>"Obviously the man is sick," Riga said.

I guess that must be sick in the "pyrotechnics are fun" way, not sick in the neighborhood cat lady prying into other's possessions and then running their mouth about it to the news, sort of way.

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

#734

Post by dopamean »

NathanKP wrote: post #701
toast42 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they lost all their possessions in an apartment fire: https://twitter.com/marak/status/1320465599319990272

Additionally the FBI were called and Marak was charged with reckless endangerment for the potentially explosive bomb making materials found on the premise, including potassium nitrate, magnesium powder, sulfur powder, copper powder, aluminum powder, hobby fuse and mixing cups, and books about military explosives, booby traps. ( https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... ) So yeah "seems something…

I was acquainted with Marak many years ago and he was an awful person then and probably still is. He put out some very well circulated revenge porn of his ex-girlfriend when she broke up with him long before that term was being used. He's a shitty person who seems to still be.

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

#735

Post by laughinghan »

john_moscow wrote: post #675
jgilias wrote: post #163

So you've made something cool and it's time to release it. These seem to be the options at hand: 1. Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and: - Have everyone and their grandma use it. - Die poor 2. Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and: - No company is going to use or contribute to it, unless they can somehow clearly separate it from what they see as their intellectual property. Or just hide it where no…

That's because you need to understand the difference between a project and a product. If you want your product to succeed, it must target decision-makers with a budget to buy your license, and it must make enough difference to them to justify the costs. Most software libraries aren't products. They target other software developers who are not responsible for allocating funds. Furthermore, if there wasn't a library, m…

You are explaining how a person can deal with the world as it is. But if you think of yourself as a builder, then you really ought to know better than to accept the world as it is.

Are there probably choices available to a skilled software developer where they could make more money than just working on something that they love and that provides value to the world? Sure. But why is that an acceptable world to live in?

If a work adds value to the world, shouldn't the worker rightly feel entitled to just compensation? Sure, not everything in the world is as it should be, and as a responsible adult the worker may have to deal with that, they can't just sit around whining about not getting their fair share and expect everyone else to solve their problems for them.

But are YOU someone who sees problems in the world and says "yep, that's how it is, deal with it, not my problem"? Or are you someone who sees problems in the world as something to be fixed?

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

#736

Post by radiator »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #601
tnli wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that those companies that add issues and support requests _ought_ to have the decency to also donate to him. But, I guess, companies don't have any decency to donate unrequested, so maybe he should put up some sort of notice to request payment for any work they request from him. Oh, wait...

There's also probably distance between the arm of the company that donates to open source and the developers who are opening issues when they spot a bug. And that distance probably gets longer for companies with the most money to donate too.

This is not exactly so. Those developers who are opening issues belong to a team, that team has access to a budget. If the company has a lot of money, as you say, they themselves have some say over where this budget gets spent.

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

#737

Post by allenu »

makecheck wrote: post #722

Not limited to software but modern society has a REALLY serious entitlement problem. (To the point where if I see a video on Reddit of someone screaming at a retail employee, it is not even surprising anymore.) I’ve had free and open projects for years, with evidence of thousands of users. Yet I could count on one hand the number of times anyone has bothered to thank me, much less donate. I do occasionally get E-mail…

I just released an app in Apple's app store a week ago and am seeing this attitude as well. I'm charging for it and don't provide a trial since I think it's worth the price for what you get (maybe even priced too low). A few people immediately ask if I'm planning on open sourcing it or else act disappointed that it's not open source/free.

It's frustrating to work on something and have somebody just come along and say, "Hey, that looks nice. Could I get it for free?" I think it's akin to artists who get requests for free art. The people asking generally think that it takes zero effort to create the art and that they should be entitled to a drawing.

It's also kind of amazing that someone will easily spend a few dollars on games (often upwards of $60-70) or food + drinks, but they see software as something that absolutely has to justify its $5 or $10 price tag.

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

#738

Post by runawaybottle »

jlokier wrote: post #720
runawaybottle wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. Of course, we’d have to create a marketplace that has modest price points. The marketplace isn’t supposed to be filled with enterprise grade Jira solutions that cost - I can’t even imagine what it costs. I’m not above paying a few bucks for a…

> It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. +1 insightful. I wonder when we'll see the first company do that. (I must admit, though, I've never worked at a company that offered me free food, beer, budget for gear, books, or anything else. They might as well be silicon valley myths. I…

It’s a tough one for sure. We recently had a whole debate about whether we should buy a solution that charges about $450. This is a company with a lot of revenue. No point in being cheap about this. I attributed it to the friction involved, which will require a mindset change.

Society, in general, is oddly cheap when it really doesn’t have to be. You won’t become millionaires by saving a few thousand bucks (at the company level) by forgoing decent things. No way to live.

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

#739

Post by BlueTemplar »

black_puppydog wrote: post #685
BlueTemplar wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * too obvious a trap, and thus ineffective. No sane capitalist company will go anywhere near AGPL code (and we just had an example on HN of someone trying. it wasn't pretty) Source plz ? > the "F" in FOSS It's free as freedom, not beer. GNU seemingly doesn't want to use 'libre' because Indians might not understand it or something, which IMHO is ridiculous considering how often this confusion is made ! Otherwise, I…

> Source plz ? The dominance of permissive licenses in the industry (compared to GPL) and the relative non-impact of AGPL software. I can't think of many AGPL (or similarly licensed) projects that have similar industry standard status as react or tensorflow have in their respective niches. > It's free as freedom, not beer. I'm sorry I should have made this point more explicit I guess. Of course I am well aware of the…

No, I meant, what happened in that specific example : ?

> we just had an example on HN of someone trying. it wasn't pretty

----

Yeah, sorry, short comments can end up sounding critical/judgemental - that wasn't the goal.

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

#740

Post by nineplay »

treis wrote: post #728
nineplay wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheesh I'd forgotten - he's right, everyone does use that tool. He backed off on a bit but the point still remains, I'm sure he's a better engineer than half of google. I wonder if they asked Pike and Thompson to invert a binary tree. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

I'm not so sure. By his own admission homebrew is not that great a piece of software. There's a lot more that goes into popularity than being good. Being first, marketing and network effects are as or more important than being good.

He

- acknowledges and understands the problems and

- could certainly fix them if paid a Google-sized salary

But he won't dance to the tune of the "Cracking the Coding Interview" juggernaut so to heck with him. Better to spend time memorizing the Floyd Cycle Detection algorithm than produce useful code.

( OK, I may be a bit bitter )

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