5 ms·

Which is more immoral, A or B? A. An unpaid programmer choosing to walk away from their open-source project. B. The world's richest companies running their pr

Which is more immoral, A or B? A. An unpaid programmer choosing to walk away from their open-source project. B. The world's richest companies running their production systems on open-source, but failing to adequately fund development. Here's the best example: OpenSSL and HeartBleed up until 2014 [0]. >Tech giants, chastened by Heartbleed, finally agree to fund OpenSSL > IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and others pledge millions to open source. > >... > >Steve Marquess wrote in a blog post last week that OpenSSL typically receives about $2,000 in donations a year and has just one employee who works full time on the open source code.Given that, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the existence of Heartbleed, a security flaw in OpenSSL that can expose user passwords and the private encryption keys needed to protect websites. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund-openssl/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-...

jacquesm 8y ago
I think there are quite a few more choices available than your 'A' and 'B'.
- delhanty 8y ago
  You introduced B: >if you are going to let other people run their production systems on what you throw into the world But in fact, if we talking about "production systems", it's usually companies, rather than people.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    I introduced 'B', but not as the second arm of a binary choice. Note that lots of the companies that deploy open source also contribute to that open source, in fact, if you removed such paid contributions to the open source world then you likely would not have much to run in the first place. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to fielding a new programming language due to fragmentation, which is the subject of the article.
    - delhanty 8y ago
      >but not as the second arm of a binary choice There very clearly are two parties in a binary situation, and it is implicit in what you wrote: A. The unpaid programmer who created the new language. Apparently, because she/he negligently "let other people run their production systems" on the new language, somehow she/he has a moral obligation to support this commercial use of the new language until her/his dying day. B. The people and companies (in fact mainly companies) using the new programming language in production who are not just "some people playing around". These entities presumably chose to use some hot new language in production, because it might solve some business problem. Apparently, they don't have any moral responsibility whatsoever to have a plan in place for what to do if the apparently critical individual who created the new language walks away - for example contracting or employing either the original programmer, or suitable substitutes perhaps. >if you removed such paid contributions to the open source world then you likely would not have much to run in the first place That's very true, but also completely irrelevant to the case under discussion. We're talking about new programming languages created by an unpaid programmers, and still critically dependent on unpaid programmers. >But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to fielding a new programming language due to fragmentation Sure there is cost - I don't disagree. Though, there is also a loss-of-innovation cost of not creating new programming languages. My objection is that both you and the author of the article are being coercive, invoking morality in an attempt to control unpaid programmers who are not obligated to you, or to society, and certainly not obligated at all to people/companies that chose freely to use their work in production.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        People are somehow obligated by what I perceive as the groups interests but are really my interests is an argument I see regarding linux distributions. Perceptibly insert distro here which I use would be better off if it had more labor. Therefore people should all focus their efforts on fewer distros including the one I use. Therefore people are harming the ecosystem by making yet another Ubuntu derivative with a slightly different graphical environment/default set of packages/settings. Scratch the surface and they are annoyed by things like hardware support or long unfixed bugs/feature requests because the guys making Ubuntu knock offs are totally going to be capable AND willing to learn how to hack on drivers for insert hardware or fix insert project here before they rewrite it again or add features that the underlying project wontfix

jacquesm 8y ago

I think there are quite a few more choices available than your 'A' and 'B'.

delhanty 8y ago
You introduced B: >if you are going to let other people run their production systems on what you throw into the world But in fact, if we talking about "production systems", it's usually companies, rather than people.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  I introduced 'B', but not as the second arm of a binary choice. Note that lots of the companies that deploy open source also contribute to that open source, in fact, if you removed such paid contributions to the open source world then you likely would not have much to run in the first place. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to fielding a new programming language due to fragmentation, which is the subject of the article.
  - delhanty 8y ago
    >but not as the second arm of a binary choice There very clearly are two parties in a binary situation, and it is implicit in what you wrote: A. The unpaid programmer who created the new language. Apparently, because she/he negligently "let other people run their production systems" on the new language, somehow she/he has a moral obligation to support this commercial use of the new language until her/his dying day. B. The people and companies (in fact mainly companies) using the new programming language in production who are not just "some people playing around". These entities presumably chose to use some hot new language in production, because it might solve some business problem. Apparently, they don't have any moral responsibility whatsoever to have a plan in place for what to do if the apparently critical individual who created the new language walks away - for example contracting or employing either the original programmer, or suitable substitutes perhaps. >if you removed such paid contributions to the open source world then you likely would not have much to run in the first place That's very true, but also completely irrelevant to the case under discussion. We're talking about new programming languages created by an unpaid programmers, and still critically dependent on unpaid programmers. >But that doesn't mean that there isn't a cost to fielding a new programming language due to fragmentation Sure there is cost - I don't disagree. Though, there is also a loss-of-innovation cost of not creating new programming languages. My objection is that both you and the author of the article are being coercive, invoking morality in an attempt to control unpaid programmers who are not obligated to you, or to society, and certainly not obligated at all to people/companies that chose freely to use their work in production.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      People are somehow obligated by what I perceive as the groups interests but are really my interests is an argument I see regarding linux distributions. Perceptibly insert distro here which I use would be better off if it had more labor. Therefore people should all focus their efforts on fewer distros including the one I use. Therefore people are harming the ecosystem by making yet another Ubuntu derivative with a slightly different graphical environment/default set of packages/settings. Scratch the surface and they are annoyed by things like hardware support or long unfixed bugs/feature requests because the guys making Ubuntu knock offs are totally going to be capable AND willing to learn how to hack on drivers for insert hardware or fix insert project here before they rewrite it again or add features that the underlying project wontfix