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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

#781

Post by makecheck »

onion2k wrote: post #758
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…

Most people are living either in poverty conditions, or can see themselves living in poverty if anything goes wrong. Consequently people are understandably very reluctant to give up any of their precious limited resources. And yet, despite that, everyone is expected to get things done, to show they're interesting and creative, and to build social capital by being useful members of society. These antagonistic forces e…

When it comes to spending money, I can sympathize and I do not expect people to shell out cash that they don’t have. (Indeed, when working on a free software project I hope that occasionally it finds its way to someone that literally could not get it any other way.)

On the other hand, 2-minute acts of appreciation (that cost practically nothing) are also extremely rare. Why should thank-you E-mails, app ratings, etc. come from a vanishingly small fraction of a user base, instead of almost everyone?

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

#782

Post by jokethrowaway »

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…

The main difference between tensorflow and some small personal project is that the small personal project is likely to work

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

#784

Post by WalterBright »

WalterSear wrote: post #690
AntiImperialist wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OR, - release it under a permissive license - wait until it reaches reaches a significant level of popularity for your purposes (see below) - flex it to get a good job at a good company - abandon the original project altogether or find new maintainers - focus on your new job, build skills and connections - invest most of your income in bonds and experiment with profitable side ventures which don't require much econom…

No interviewer has demonstrated anything but perfunctory interest in my open source work, popular or not. It's a myth, like 'nobody cares where you went to school so long as you can do the work'.

I'm proud of the fact that many volunteer collaborators on the D project have, as a direct result, landed very well-paying jobs.

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

#785

Post by darepublic »

austincheney wrote: post #771
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Open source is a niche. The vast majority of developers don’t participate in open source. If they do, it’s simple bug fixes that they need for their paid jobs. The number of people creating and releasing significant open source projects is vanishingly small relative to the entire pool of developers. I think it was a mistake to tell entry-leve…

If you work with web standard technologies your code is probably inherently open. Even still most developers in that space cannot write any original code to save their lives. They are utterly reliant on mountains of shit that does everything and they string a few build tasks together. As an experiment take NPM, Angular, React, or SpringMVC away and observe the forth coming violence like a zombie apocalypse in a third…

Take away browser plus html? Sure. Take away React? People would get along just fine imo

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

#786

Post by jabl »

carapace wrote: post #659
jabl wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? To nitpick: They are not stealing it, they're using it per the license terms. Don't like that? Well, choose a different license. That being said, I think there's an underlying point here. The "business-friendly" open source movement co-opted the idealistic free software movem…

> The "business-friendly" open source movement co-opted the idealistic free software movement. Yeah, this. To me, as an admitted Free software person, the Open software movement looks like it was designed to undermine the Free movement. I don't think it actually was deliberately designed that way, just that it looks that way in hindsight. I also don't really get the point of Open licenses because you could always alr…

> To me, as an admitted Free software person, the Open software movement looks like it was designed to undermine the Free movement. I don't think it actually was deliberately designed that way, just that it looks that way in hindsight.

Yes. I think the original idea was just to present the hippy free software idea in a more business-friendly form, and thus cause more FOSS to be written.

> > idea of causing social change by coding free software

> FWIW, that also seems to me to be a later gloss. If anything, computers and software are new enough that it's not so much a matter of social change as it is of founding new social norms around these (physical/virtual) machines.

Fair enough. Though I don't think free software was so much about forging norms per se, more like an adaptation of old ideas like "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" to the digital age. As opposed to just letting the modern day robber barons have it their way, which to an extent is what's happening with open source.

> RMS just wanted to edit the software in his printer.

Sure, but it spiraled away from that pretty fast.

> Look at the restrictive B.S. that tractor makers are foisting on farmers to see the relevance. Is the idea of being able to fix your own tractor a "social change"? :)

No, more like defending "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" rather than letting the robber barons get away with whatever they can. That being said, AFAICS free software has had about zero impact on this topic; the successes in this are seem to be due to grassroots political campaigning (right to repair laws etc.) rather that some argument that software should be free (in the FSF sense).

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

#787

Post by watwut »

allenu wrote: post #737
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…

Unless your app target gamers, comparing to how gamers spend is apples to oranges. Gamers brag about how much they spend and buy more then they can play.

But that is specific subculture, majority of people are not behaving that way. Even majority of people who play games don't spend much money on them or have someone gift them.

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

#788

Post by jokethrowaway »

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…

You reached a very stoic conclusion. Love it.

I believe that entitled people simply haven't reached your wisdom, yet.

All the same, people have no fault on their own, they're just the product of this particular society. If we improve our society, the percentage of people who behave nicely will likely increase. And if we don't, well, at least we'll have a model not to follow on the road to bettering ourselves.

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

#789

Post by Touche »

If you want to sell your efforts producing software you are going to be spending most of your time doing sales and a minority of your time writing software. Too many developers have this idea that people should just throw money at them while they have fun crafting some OS library. We could only be so lucky!

In reality only a small minority of open source projects (the type that are near ubiquitous) garner enough from donations to fund the project. So you have a choice: become a salesperson first, or treat your project as a hobby and don't kill yourself working on it.

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

#790

Post by watwut »

makecheck wrote: post #781
onion2k wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are living either in poverty conditions, or can see themselves living in poverty if anything goes wrong. Consequently people are understandably very reluctant to give up any of their precious limited resources. And yet, despite that, everyone is expected to get things done, to show they're interesting and creative, and to build social capital by being useful members of society. These antagonistic forces e…

When it comes to spending money, I can sympathize and I do not expect people to shell out cash that they don’t have. (Indeed, when working on a free software project I hope that occasionally it finds its way to someone that literally could not get it any other way.) On the other hand, 2-minute acts of appreciation (that cost practically nothing) are also extremely rare. Why should thank-you E-mails, app ratings, etc.…

Because majority of people have no idea you want email with thanks and figures that best thing they can do is to not bother you. Like celebrities complain about people recognizing them all the time.

Sending mails to strangers is awkward.

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