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So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

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Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#91

Post by yamtaddle »

fragmede wrote: post #49
akudha wrote: post #26

In one of my previous jobs, my CTO asked me who I thought was the most important person in the company was. I wasn’t sure. He pointed to the lady who was responsible for entering and maintaining data, on which the entire business was built upon. She was a quiet person, who did her job exceptionally well. Yet, most people didn’t know her or didn’t realize her importance. I am certain she wasn’t paid that well either.…

What I'm really struggling with is how much this contrasts with the story for the developers of Dwarf Fortress, who don't get that same hate and vitro piled on them, and in fact, people throw money at them because they want the developers to have money. To the tune of like $9 million or something! Whereas this guy, pouring his heart into something useful and not for fun, gets all this hate shoveled his way? I really…

I guarantee they got all kinds of hate and weirdness sent their way, too. Any game with a notable userbase does, including the commercial ones. Like, weird, personal, abusive shit from people who demonstrably (it's pretty clear from their "ideas") have no idea what they're talking about and evidently have unfortunate (for everyone else, anyway) amounts of free time on their hands.

And I don't just mean "you monetized this in a way I dislike" or "boo, DRM" or "you had dozens of game-breaking bugs at launch" or whatever, which, maybe don't be a dick about it, but at least I get why those things upset people and, especially in the last case, why they might get a bit entitled-seeming about it, since they did part with money—no, it's over the tiniest, most trivial stuff, including, often, things that are the way they are for a very good reason and would piss off 100x as many people if the abusive jerk got his (or her, I guess... but realistically, it's just about always a "his") way. But no, this minor thing is wrong so you're incompetent and any idiot could do better and [some names they somehow came up with, sometimes with disturbing accuracy] who worked on that part should be fired immediately. JFC. They'll spam you with this crap, on every channel they can.

And that's if you're not a woman prominent in the project. Then you get the creeper shit, too.

There's no possible way the DF devs haven't seen their fair share of that.

(though, sure, they were ultimately able to monetize it in a way that very few passion projects of that sort ever can, and certainly not utility open source libraries—that part of the story's way different)

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#92

Post by pcthrowaway »

stjo wrote: post #37

I made a donation with bitcoin and then tried to check how much btc does this wallet have. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qlea754... Do I read properly there are ~$1000 now and ~$73000 ever deposited?

Not exactly. 3.4 BTC received. Depending on when the donations were made it could be more or less than $73000.

Though it does look like he held ~1 BTC until Nov 2020 and then transferred it out. So it's possible he's actually received roughly the equivalent of $73000 USD from those donations

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#93

Post by duxup »

phpnode wrote: post #20
maherbeg wrote: post #15

He should 100% try to find regular sustainable work somewhere instead of working on this project. Secondarily, find a lawyer to write up a contract for $80/hr for companies to sign and have him do work on core-js when they need an update or a feature. He can give an estimate on hours, send them a contract, get it signed and have the work done. If the people asking for feature requests and updates don't want to pay, t…

he's in Russia, isn't this sanctioned?

There are some US companies on their sponsors section so maybe it is possible:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/core-js

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#95

Post by StewardMcOy »

fragmede wrote: post #49
akudha wrote: post #26

In one of my previous jobs, my CTO asked me who I thought was the most important person in the company was. I wasn’t sure. He pointed to the lady who was responsible for entering and maintaining data, on which the entire business was built upon. She was a quiet person, who did her job exceptionally well. Yet, most people didn’t know her or didn’t realize her importance. I am certain she wasn’t paid that well either.…

What I'm really struggling with is how much this contrasts with the story for the developers of Dwarf Fortress, who don't get that same hate and vitro piled on them, and in fact, people throw money at them because they want the developers to have money. To the tune of like $9 million or something! Whereas this guy, pouring his heart into something useful and not for fun, gets all this hate shoveled his way? I really…

I think about this a lot.

My personal bias is that open source authors and maintainers don't owe anyone anything. They're making their code available to anyone for free, and it's on you if there's something you don't like about it. You can always fork it if you need to. Heck, you don't even have to use it. Write your own thing if something fundamentally bothers you about it.

And yet there's a large group of people who think they're somehow doing you a favor by using your open-source code, as opposed to the other way around. I've tried to talk to some of them, to try to get some idea of it. It typically boils down to either

1. I used and advocated for the project, making it more popular, and therefore they owe me.

2. Using an open-source library is an investment. I'm making a compromise by not writing it myself exactly how I want it. I'm attempting to do things their way, which in some ways is mentally harder than writing it to begin with, so when it changes radically or goes away, or they ask me for support, they have done me dirty. I deserve better.

3. #2, except they recognize that the author/maintainer doesn't owe them anything and hasn't acted maliciously, but they're still bummed that they either have to change things or fork the project and maintain it themselves. It's emotional rather than logical.

Of the three, I can kinda understand the last one, but I'll never agree with it.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#96

Post by dools »

Dalewyn wrote: post #13

I wrote this sentiment earlier[1], but I'll repeat it here. If a dev wants money for his work, he should license his work as appropriate and demand payments. If a dev releases his work free-as-in-libre and/or free-as-in-beer, they don't get to complain if the donations are "insufficient". Or to put it another: Of course a company won't pay up if they don't have to. This guy seems to be considering making his work int…

The problem is that as soon as he turns this into a billable enterprise solution it will artificially inflate the price. He’s giving all the people who depend on this project a chance to get it at a discount.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#97

Post by karlshea »

ricardobeat wrote: post #77
jay-barronville wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty easy to say when you’re not the guy stressing out about paying bills while six-figure earners whose jobs are made significantly easier because of you trash you. I generally agree with the idea that nobody owes anyone else anything, but in this case, I think he should’ve been let it all burn to the ground — maybe then the ingrates would be able to understand how critical his library is.

Babel has four paid developers, an almost $200k/year budget and hundreds of contributors. I'm sure that's enough to maintain the polyfills, if someone else wasn't already doing it for free - not to throw shade on them, but that's reality (not one I particularly like). I do agree with that second statement. It is unfortunate that he got into this situation, but there is absolutely no reason to continue if it's not wor…

If you would have read the article, you would have seen the image from a Babel maintainer saying they won't fork because they don't have the resources to maintain it.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#98

Post by fragmede »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #87
fragmede wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm really struggling with is how much this contrasts with the story for the developers of Dwarf Fortress, who don't get that same hate and vitro piled on them, and in fact, people throw money at them because they want the developers to have money. To the tune of like $9 million or something! Whereas this guy, pouring his heart into something useful and not for fun, gets all this hate shoveled his way? I really…

If you look at the xkcd image again, he's near the bottom of the house of cards, whereas Dwarf fortress are at the surface

https://xkcd.com/2347/ for any readers that didn't get the reference

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#99

Post by dralley »

InTheArena wrote: post #94

Anyone else get major hans reiser vibes from this guy? Maybe it’s just the “on the war” section … I.e, Ukraine section and not the vehicular manslaughter or accident.

Not really, no. As an ex-convict with massive fines he can't pay who is unable to leave the country and a newborn child, I cannot really blame him for not sticking his neck out publicly in an increasingly totalitarian state, nor for being angry about the sanctions obliterating his already bad financial situation and freezing a portion of the already small amount of money that had already been given to him.

Imagine how you would feel if you worked for minimum wage at McDonalds and the police froze up your savings accounts for more than a year because a distant uncle you've never seen was discovered to be a hitman for the mafia.

Re: So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

#100

Post by stjo »

livinglist wrote: post #60
stjo wrote: post #37

I made a donation with bitcoin and then tried to check how much btc does this wallet have. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qlea754... Do I read properly there are ~$1000 now and ~$73000 ever deposited?

Are u suggesting it’s too little or too much?

I was trying to check if my transaction went through, but then I started to wonder if I should fact check him on his claim that he didn’t have 80k usd to evade prison sentence.

But to answer your question - years of work for such a widely used project should be compensated more in my opinion. An engineer at google with similar skill will make 2-5x, maybe 10x as much.

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