4 ms·

The concept of reputation is harmful to a meritocracy? I don't agree with this at all. Your friend didn't want to open source his project because he was annoyed

by mwfunk 8y ago

The concept of reputation is harmful to a meritocracy? I don't agree with this at all. Your friend didn't want to open source his project because he was annoyed that he wasn't a famous hacker type who can get free publicity, so he didn't think he would get paid to work on it? That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. Nobody gets torn to shreds on HN for showing people their project, people get torn to shreds for trying to use open source and HN as a cynical self-marketing tool, especially when they can't back it up with something cool and interesting. Open source doesn't exist to further the career or finances or reputations of open source authors, it's just a nice little miracle when it does. If someone makes something great, there's a teeny tiny chance it'll catch on to become widely used, and if that happens there's an even teenier, tinier chance that the creator will at some point get paid to work on it, but that's a tiny sliver of the open source world. If that's all your friend cares about, then the meritocracy is real and working. Someone who will only write open source to become rich and famous is clearly deeply confused about how and why any of this stuff exists in the first place, and until they grow up they can't be relied on to do good work for good reasons. However, there's a silver lining. If instead of becoming the next Linus, someone simply wants to steer their career towards working on open source professionally, that's awesome and commendable. There are lots of companies and government agencies and so on that pay people to work on open source projects as their day-to-day job. That doesn't take social capital or name recognition, that just requires getting a job in one of those organizations, which span the gamut from tiny startups, to giant companies like Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc., to government agencies like NASA. Tons of people get paid to work on open source if that's what your friend cares about.

shawn 8y ago
What if you want to work for yourself? What if you want to start a startup? What incentives do you have to open source your software? We all rely on open source tools, but lately they're coming exclusively from large companies that can afford to develop it. And that should worry us. It means we're losing the control we used to have. In a scientific paper, the related work section doesn't present the past work of the authors, unless it's related to the topic at hand. There's a reason Ballard didn't mention himself (beyond signing the page at the bottom).
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
  > We all rely on open source tools, but lately they're coming exclusively from large companies that can afford to develop it. Do you have any evidence to support this? In the age of GitHub and social coding I would have thought that open source is more individuals, and less corporate (percentage-wise) than ever before. P.S. I work for my self and open source a fair bit. I tend to open source libraries rather than products, which is true for most companies. Facebook open source React, not Facebook.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  If you were to take a time machine all the way back to 1984 and live through the birth of "Free software", you would recognise your arguments being echoed over and over and over again. And yet, it's easier to be a free software developer than it ever was. Good grief, there are companies that exist that will pay you a normal programmer's salary to write free software! There are people who write emails that say, "I've been writing X for the last 20 years and I just can't afford to do it any more" and suddenly they have people throwing money at them. Sure it's not everywhere, and sure I'd love it if more free software developers could afford to spend all of their time writing free software. That would be fantastic! But to say that it is worse now than it was previously? I'm afraid you are mistaken. The thing you have to understand is that "control" in free software is different than control with other software. The "eyes" have it. If you are able to coordinate enough development, and you aren't working against the community, and you are producing things that people want, then you will be successful. Yes, a company that offers to pay people to do these activities is at a huge advantage. I'm not sure in what universe that's a bad thing. But the point of free software is freedom. If I don't like what you are doing and I can convince enough people to go in another direction, then I am free to do so. In fact, I don't even need other people... I can just do it myself, although it will take longer. I don't know about you, but I choose to rely on tools that are free software. I'm not forced to do so. Although it is waaaaay easier than it used to be, I go out of my way to pick something that I know I can work on myself if I need to. Yes, I've read the code for both vim and emacs. I've written extensions. I've found bugs. I've fixed bugs in compilers, interpreters, desktop environments, the works. It wasn't that long ago that I was forced to use MS tools in order to receive my salary. I vividly remember phoning up support one day, "I'm having problems with X. I have a reproduction scenario here if you like". "How many seats do you have?" "Seats? We're a platinum partner. I don't know how many seats we use." "Do you have less than 1,000 programmers there?" "Uh... Yeah, a lot less, but like I said, we're a platinum partner. We're supposed to have support" "I can't do anything for you unless you have more than 1,000 seats. But thank you for the bug report." "Just before we go, can I ask if the bug has been reported before? Is it likely to go into the next release?" "I can't answer that question unless you have 1,000 seats and then I can prioritise it for you."... You get the idea. I don't care if free software is being funded by a company. I care that I can do something about it if my software doesn't work, or if I want to make an extension, or if I want to go in a completely different direction altogether. If your friend does not think that they can make a business case for freeing up their code, then that's their decision. They don't owe me anything. It's their project and they can do what they want. If you are complaining that it would be nice that there were more viable business plans for free software, I'll join you on that -- but to be honest, I think most people don't look very hard before they conclude that it is impossible.

by mwfunk 8y ago

shawn 8y ago

What if you want to work for yourself? What if you want to start a startup? What incentives do you have to open source your software? We all rely on open source tools, but lately they're coming exclusively from large companies that can afford to develop it. And that should worry us. It means we're losing the control we used to have. In a scientific paper, the related work section doesn't present the past work of the authors, unless it's related to the topic at hand. There's a reason Ballard didn't mention himself (beyond signing the page at the bottom).

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
> We all rely on open source tools, but lately they're coming exclusively from large companies that can afford to develop it. Do you have any evidence to support this? In the age of GitHub and social coding I would have thought that open source is more individuals, and less corporate (percentage-wise) than ever before. P.S. I work for my self and open source a fair bit. I tend to open source libraries rather than products, which is true for most companies. Facebook open source React, not Facebook.
mikekchar 8y ago
If you were to take a time machine all the way back to 1984 and live through the birth of "Free software", you would recognise your arguments being echoed over and over and over again. And yet, it's easier to be a free software developer than it ever was. Good grief, there are companies that exist that will pay you a normal programmer's salary to write free software! There are people who write emails that say, "I've been writing X for the last 20 years and I just can't afford to do it any more" and suddenly they have people throwing money at them. Sure it's not everywhere, and sure I'd love it if more free software developers could afford to spend all of their time writing free software. That would be fantastic! But to say that it is worse now than it was previously? I'm afraid you are mistaken. The thing you have to understand is that "control" in free software is different than control with other software. The "eyes" have it. If you are able to coordinate enough development, and you aren't working against the community, and you are producing things that people want, then you will be successful. Yes, a company that offers to pay people to do these activities is at a huge advantage. I'm not sure in what universe that's a bad thing. But the point of free software is freedom. If I don't like what you are doing and I can convince enough people to go in another direction, then I am free to do so. In fact, I don't even need other people... I can just do it myself, although it will take longer. I don't know about you, but I choose to rely on tools that are free software. I'm not forced to do so. Although it is waaaaay easier than it used to be, I go out of my way to pick something that I know I can work on myself if I need to. Yes, I've read the code for both vim and emacs. I've written extensions. I've found bugs. I've fixed bugs in compilers, interpreters, desktop environments, the works. It wasn't that long ago that I was forced to use MS tools in order to receive my salary. I vividly remember phoning up support one day, "I'm having problems with X. I have a reproduction scenario here if you like". "How many seats do you have?" "Seats? We're a platinum partner. I don't know how many seats we use." "Do you have less than 1,000 programmers there?" "Uh... Yeah, a lot less, but like I said, we're a platinum partner. We're supposed to have support" "I can't do anything for you unless you have more than 1,000 seats. But thank you for the bug report." "Just before we go, can I ask if the bug has been reported before? Is it likely to go into the next release?" "I can't answer that question unless you have 1,000 seats and then I can prioritise it for you."... You get the idea. I don't care if free software is being funded by a company. I care that I can do something about it if my software doesn't work, or if I want to make an extension, or if I want to go in a completely different direction altogether. If your friend does not think that they can make a business case for freeing up their code, then that's their decision. They don't owe me anything. It's their project and they can do what they want. If you are complaining that it would be nice that there were more viable business plans for free software, I'll join you on that -- but to be honest, I think most people don't look very hard before they conclude that it is impossible.