5 ms·

Why you should become an open source sustainer

42 points by jdorfman 10y ago

GoToRO 10y ago
"I realized then that open source isn't free, someone else is just paying for everyone who is not." someone else = contributors everyone who is not = mainly corporations
- watwut 10y ago
  Major projects has corporate sponsors or academic sponsors. A lot of open source is done and paid for by companies. For that matter, even free for open source hosting services have bills that needs to be paid - by companies (github, google). Linux Torwalds and linux maintenners are paid - which is a good thing btwm
- jdorfman 10y ago
  I agree. That said there are many corporations that do contribute money, developer time, infrastructure, legal, etc. But not enough IMO.
  - GoToRO 10y ago
    "not enough" This is my gut feeling too.
kristianc 10y ago
This reads like an attempt to justify not contributing himself. I read the same thing from sales guys all the time trying to draw analogies between sales guys and engineers. If only projects could run on blog posts and lightning talks...
- jdorfman 10y ago
  FWIW I maintain multiple open source projects and a free CDN service for developers that use Bootstrap & Font Awesome. To me, a contribution is not limited to code and never should be. If it makes the FOSS community thrive, then that is a contribution.
- xemdetia 10y ago
  If you've never lived on freenode or one of the other support networks the community that develops open source is often very remote from the people that end up 'supporting' it. People sharing expertise is why databases like MySQL and Postgres win for all sorts of people, and there are many ways to provide this support that has nothing to do with contributing code. A great example is melpa and marmalade for emacs. The difference between having a package manager and not having a package manager has transformed the open source project but all they are doing is mirroring a bunch of elisp. Sometimes just providing the infrastructure to make a project available is the only reason why the project is popular. npm anyone?
- Underqualified 10y ago
  There's a reason most companies have more than just engineers though.
pksadiq 10y ago
I believe that free software advocates are more likely to last long than open source ones (ie, they don't get bored speaking software freedom, and less tolerant to non-free things). Most open source people are okay with using a few (or more) proprietary software (Binary blobs in kernel?). They don't have any strong motive (there are not ethics or moral) to keep everything "open source" as do the free software people.

42 points by jdorfman 10y ago

"I realized then that open source isn't free, someone else is just paying for everyone who is not." someone else = contributors everyone who is not = mainly corporations

watwut 10y ago
Major projects has corporate sponsors or academic sponsors. A lot of open source is done and paid for by companies. For that matter, even free for open source hosting services have bills that needs to be paid - by companies (github, google). Linux Torwalds and linux maintenners are paid - which is a good thing btwm
jdorfman 10y ago
I agree. That said there are many corporations that do contribute money, developer time, infrastructure, legal, etc. But not enough IMO.
- GoToRO 10y ago
  "not enough" This is my gut feeling too.

kristianc 10y ago

This reads like an attempt to justify not contributing himself. I read the same thing from sales guys all the time trying to draw analogies between sales guys and engineers. If only projects could run on blog posts and lightning talks...

jdorfman 10y ago
FWIW I maintain multiple open source projects and a free CDN service for developers that use Bootstrap & Font Awesome. To me, a contribution is not limited to code and never should be. If it makes the FOSS community thrive, then that is a contribution.
xemdetia 10y ago
If you've never lived on freenode or one of the other support networks the community that develops open source is often very remote from the people that end up 'supporting' it. People sharing expertise is why databases like MySQL and Postgres win for all sorts of people, and there are many ways to provide this support that has nothing to do with contributing code. A great example is melpa and marmalade for emacs. The difference between having a package manager and not having a package manager has transformed the open source project but all they are doing is mirroring a bunch of elisp. Sometimes just providing the infrastructure to make a project available is the only reason why the project is popular. npm anyone?
Underqualified 10y ago
There's a reason most companies have more than just engineers though.

pksadiq 10y ago

I believe that free software advocates are more likely to last long than open source ones (ie, they don't get bored speaking software freedom, and less tolerant to non-free things). Most open source people are okay with using a few (or more) proprietary software (Binary blobs in kernel?). They don't have any strong motive (there are not ethics or moral) to keep everything "open source" as do the free software people.