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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

#881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a pragmatist that is accustomed to the physical, mathematical and social constraints of the world. One big constraint is the average attention span of your target audience. Do you have time to care whether a guy designing/manufacturing that USB cable on your desk got compensated well? Or the one making your clothes? Or cleaning the corporate toilet? You know, unless you have sewed your shirt yourself, it was pro…

social constraints are only as strong as the amount of people who treat them as constraints. culture is recursively developed.

I would say a lot of the constraints are more based on the incentives given by our economic system, which naturally aren't necessarily fixed either, but pretty hard to change

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

#882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has there been any coverage on the revenge porn incident? It sounds plausible given the circumstances but it's a pretty heavy claim.

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

#883
post #856
post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a pretty basic data structure and kind of table stakes for being a software engineer. It really isn't. You don't need to know what a b-tree is to do most modern software engineering. > Even then, Google gave him a good look with 7 interviews. Just speculating here, but they probably would have given him a chance if he wasn't "often a dick" and "often difficult". I think you're right on this one.

> It really isn't. You don't need to know what a b-tree is to do most modern software engineering. if you're hiring a car driver, then yes, the driver doesn't need to know the innards of how an engine would work. But if you're hiring a car mechanic, surely you expect them to understand the innards of the engine.

This is not a good analogy. Most cars work in roughly the same way. Most software does not.

Software engineering is a diverse enough topic that you can have two "software engineers" who, aside from very broad general concepts like control flow and modularity, have very little overlap in their areas of expertise. Developing microcontroller firmware requires a very different set of skills and knowledge to building an ML model in R.

Most pieces of software require zero knowledge of the inner workings of, different implementations of, or even existence of a b-tree structure in order to be able to successfully create, understand and maintain them. Let's not gatekeep by telling people they're not real software engineers unless they understand and can recite an arbitrary set of mostly useless topics.

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

#884

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…

And let's not forget corporations actively suppressing open source developers by going out of their way to not award them support contract.

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

#885
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird problem with the language. Despite many attempts, with proposals like "xe" and "thon"[0], English never picked up a good gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. [Yeesh, that's a mouthful of adjectives.] As recently as 15 years ago, using "they" to refer to a single individual was derided by many as grammatically incorrect. It was common in colloquial speech, but frowned upon in writing, mostly beca…

> As recently as 15 years ago, using "they" to refer to a single individual was derided by many as grammatically incorrect. > The recent acceptance comes down to two factors Here is a couplet from Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors" (1623): > There's not a man I meet but doth salute me > As if I were their well-acquainted friend And the King James Version (1611) of the Bible has this for Deuteronomy 17:5: > Then shalt…

Singular "they" is very old and was not frowned upon when those were written. But there was a long period from 1800~2000 where it was maligned, particularly in formal writing. This shift was apparently down to grammarians of 18th and 19th century who promoted a "gender-neutral" "he".[0]

[0]: https://www.druide.com/en/reports/singular-they

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

#886
post #396
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird problem with the language. Despite many attempts, with proposals like "xe" and "thon"[0], English never picked up a good gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. [Yeesh, that's a mouthful of adjectives.] As recently as 15 years ago, using "they" to refer to a single individual was derided by many as grammatically incorrect. It was common in colloquial speech, but frowned upon in writing, mostly beca…

"Sally and her friends went to the mall, then they left" is ambiguous with or without they being singular. But, if it was normal in colloquial speech, there is no reason to not have it normal in written speech. That would be weird limitation to enforce. I am mostly surprised it was normal in colloquial speech tho. (In this case, we know that Marak is man, so the whole thread is likely just trolling attempt.)

You're quite right about my example! I was too focused on other things and wrote a poor one. Fortunately the Canadian Department of Justice has a better example, with a legal focus:

>"When an applicant notifies the other residents, they must lodge a section 12 notice within 14 days."

("They" can refer to either the singular "applicant" or the plural "other residents".)

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

#887
post #370
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why it’s all rights reserved. If you want to use it to make money you have to ask me. In the scenario you describe is probably say that’s okay, but like I say it’s up to me and only me, at the end of the day. This of course means it’s not open to the kind of free-form open collaboration that typifies Open Source but if anything this just goes to show how more restrictive licences such as GPL actually promote i…

The GPL is perhaps restrictive than the license you suggested. It's definitely more predictable.

Yes but you are still free to make money off the software, and this is the topic under discussion.

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

#888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5: Don't release the code and sell your product. Taking pride in your work also means valueing it properly. - 95% chance you die poor. 4.999% chance you make a decent living out of it. 0.0001% chance Facebook buys it for enough money that you can buy your own island on Mars.

The problem here is that selling your closed source project requires a significantly distinct skill set from writing good code. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Venn diagram of a good project and being able to sell the project for a decent living is much smaller than 5%.

You're not making code for the sake of writing 'good code', whatever that means. You're writing code to perform some sort of function. Otherwise it's not something to earn money with, but a nerdy art project.

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was seriously thinking of contributing to open source this past week when I started going over all the articles I've read from open source authors about entitled users and wealthy companies that don't donate but make profits off the projects. It's beco0me clear to me that large corporations like Microsoft have jumped into open source whole heartedly in a big part because they get tons of free labor. Not only that,…

It pleases me when corporations use D to make money with, even if they don't contribute. After all, D is licensed to specifically allow this - I have no business complaining about it.

Thanks for the D lang. My younger brother used it for his final year project. He got an A. He has nothing, but praise for it. Fast, small executable size, etc.

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

#890

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…

Another source[0] also confirms.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-new-york-bomb-idUSKBN...

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