I maintain OS projects and my stance is simple: I'll fix thing, that are broken - mostly because I want things to work. I won't add new features for you, unless I really see the appeal. If you come up with a PR, nice! I'll take the time to review, but even for that there is no guarantee.
The same limits I impose on the community I fully expect to follow when working with any OS project. Period.
Remember, in that "other world", we would have to pay for each and every little proprietary piece of sh* code. The "new world" will not be built by profit-maximizing value-extractors, and if you think it will, then I wish you a happy burnout.
Also remember, that for millions of people the notion of giving away something valuable for free is totally absent. They literally fail to comprehend. They are happy to sell the same thing many times over.
In my book, OS software developers are living in the future, today and a lot of the friction comes from a world, that just works by a totally different set of rules.
I don’t know why paying for someone’s time and effort is a bad thing. If anything, undervalued/unpaid labor seems a little dystopian, especially when some large companies are getting value out of someone’s volunteer work without giving anything back.
I get the value of free software, but lately it feels like OS went from geeks sharing code because we value knowledge, to people who use the software making demands on someone else’s personal time.
>I'll fix things that are broken - mostly because I want things to work. I won't add new features for you, unless I really see the appeal. If you come up with a PR, nice! I'll take the time to review, but even for that there is no guarantee.
To some this may sound like it ruins the spirit of open-sourc but I totally support this. I should make this quote my default readme.
Even PRs often take a long time to review and get to a reasonable point, especially but not only from new contributors. Some are so bad I just have to close them even if I want the feature, and some I waste hours on that I could have spent just writing it myself. Rarely I get PRs that I can merge without non-nitpick reviews.
> Remember, in that "other world", we would have to pay for each and every little proprietary piece of sh* code. The "new world" will not be built by profit-maximizing value-extractors, and if you think it will, then I wish you a happy burnout.
Yeah, I think there are a couple of problems with Open Source as it is done today.
One is that people are making things that are useful to profit-maximizing value-extractors. I don't know how much is because their "itch" is aligned with them, or because that's the way to get a top project on GitHub and make a name for yourself. But seriously: stop making things that are useful to profit-maximizing value extractors. Make software that is useless[1].
The second is that we really have no kind of license to discourage the use of useful software by profit-maximizing value-extractors. In large part, this is, IMO, because FLOSS licenses have prioritized the rights of the user (who may be a profit-maximizing value-extractor) over those of the author or the community. It is also in part because licenses seem to be the wrong kind of tool for controlling how our software is used. CopyFarleft and Ethical Source licenses are trying to tackle this, but not very successfully, I think.
The same limits I impose on the community I fully expect to follow when working with any OS project. Period.
Remember, in that "other world", we would have to pay for each and every little proprietary piece of sh* code. The "new world" will not be built by profit-maximizing value-extractors, and if you think it will, then I wish you a happy burnout.
Also remember, that for millions of people the notion of giving away something valuable for free is totally absent. They literally fail to comprehend. They are happy to sell the same thing many times over.
In my book, OS software developers are living in the future, today and a lot of the friction comes from a world, that just works by a totally different set of rules.