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Step 1. Person A makes some piece of software under an open source license. (GPL) Step 2. This piece of software becomes widely used, primarily since it's open

Step 1. Person A makes some piece of software under an open source license. (GPL) Step 2. This piece of software becomes widely used, primarily since it's open source licensed Step 3. (Modern variation) Person A feels cheated for not getting rich and creates some kind of drama. This doesn't make any sense at all, to me.

corndoge 7y ago
That isn't what the article said at all
- groundlogic 7y ago
  "The article", written by a person offended by someone else getting richer from their code; whilst seemingly not breaking any licenses.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    So, it's just an uncharitable pot shot when the article is perfectly relatable when taken at face value. I'd probably even add your mentality, ubiquitous on HN, to his list. People come out of the woodwork to shit on others. It seems even moreso when it's just a hobby project. You're basically taking one last snipe at him while he exits the theater. For what? Is this what you thought the world needed more of?
    - groundlogic 7y ago
      I'm a bit annoyed about people running popular open source projects suddenly creating drama like this. The reason these projects got popular in the first place were often that the author didn't care for fame, glory or money; they just wanted to solve a problem. And well, to be clear: most of us prefer to use an open source library, over a commercial library. What I'm a bit upset over here is the bait and switch here. Using the open source aspect of your library to get widely spread, but also somehow expecting to make money off this, somehow - this doesn't make sense.
      - Zenst 7y ago
        If you find that annoying then maybe, just maybe you have a small idea how annoyed the author is from people literally abusing his work beyond the scope it was offered and causing all sorts of grief and abuse from people demanding support for a product that he never sold and never even scoped as supported. Whilst many are great users, who use as intended, just reading his post in full outlines just some of the instances and issues that have caused what was a passion and a hobby project to become a source of abuse and mental anguish. Nobody should have to endure that, more so when they did nothing wrong.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        If the code was used in an illegal way in terms of licenses; I feel for the author. Otherwise not really. Example: If you license something under e.g. the MIT license, a company ends up using it correctly, and you feel bad about the transaction - sorry, that's on you. I really don't get why this is controversial. You license your code under a license for a reason.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        Produce something of value, for free. Then, when you start getting 10,000+ e-mails shitting on you for not also doing XYZ for free, because how dare you not, I'll take your opinion with a more open mind. The author made it fairly clear that this was not just a money situation.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        ..so, in a hyphothetical case, let's say "you" published some code under the MIT license. You then got 10k emails. What's your point? What do you want to say?
        ziddoap 7y ago
        It's not hypothetical. >I never intended for wiringPi to be statically linked either – and thanks to the incompetence of many people who have done just this, I’ve had over 10,000 emails from people who upgraded their Pi and found that code stopped working because they were reliant on a system (typically some java/javascript/node or home automation or UPS thing) which had statically linked an older version My point is, the author intended the project to be used for X. It was used for Y. Author doesn't want to support Y. Author gets bombarded with e-mails complaining they don't support Y. This isn't "suddenly creating drama like this" or "also somehow expecting to make money off this" as you asserted. Another pertinent part of the article you seem to be skipping is: >Add to that the people who have “bludgeoned” wiringPi to work on other fruit Pi platforms, but left my name as the contact email … You claiming the author is just creating drama solely because of money is a gross misreading of the situation.
    - banana_giraffe 7y ago
      Ages ago, I wrote and maintained some Windows open source stuff. It wasn't GPL, but it was "here's the source code, and a binary version, have fun!". I had a little niche of a certain type of tool in the Windows world, if you searched for how to do a specific thing, my tools would show up. Most of it included my real name and email address in the executable and DLLs details tab, as well as the source code. I was the top of the little niche, and more than happy to help other developers out there. I'd help users as best as I could, but my tools were mostly geared at developers (though, users never stopped amazing me at clever unintended ways to use things) The emails I got from this could be broken down into two categories: Actual questions about the tools, including bug reports or problems integrating it into some other project. That was about 5% of the emails I saw. The other 95% was "Program <x> stopped working! I can't find any contact anywhere expect in this one DLL, I demand you help me fix it!" It was super disheartening, since my attempt to explain my role as someone that provided a tool or library to whoever wrote their application was responded with either "Your name is in this application, I don't care what your role is, you need to help me fix it!", or "If you didn't want to provide support, why is your email here?" And that's, basically, how I ended up using random combinations of words on sites like this one. Maybe people with a thicker skin can deal with this crap, but I can't anymore.
      - groundlogic 7y ago
        It's super weird for a "developer" to demand assistance from another developer, just because they wrote and published the code, regardless of license.
        banana_giraffe 7y ago
        Sorry if I came of suggesting that. At least in my case the only people demanding support were end-users of applications I didn't write but did use my code. Developers that contacted me were always understanding, with a rare exception, that free stuff got free support.
      - x0x0 7y ago
        This was so so my experience. The people that contacted me were, in the majority, some of the most entitled assholes. I quit reading the email address associated w/ my open source project, and one user tracked down my (then) work email to demand support!
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Are you DanielK?
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. It's not shocking people get burnt out by constant harassment by entitled people who demand the developer "support them" for free.
- groundlogic 7y ago
  > Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. Exactly. This and nothing else. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand.
guggle 7y ago
> This doesn't make any sense at all, to me. Of course it doesn't, because that's not what is explained. Read again maybe. If anything, the author asks for respect.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
That's not at all what this is about. He didn't want money, he just didn't want to be treated like crap.
varjag 7y ago
I see some people can't just wrap their mind around doing something not for profiting off others.
imtringued 7y ago
Not to be a complete ass or anything, but technically posting a comment on HN REQUIRES you to read the article before spreading complete misinformation. Your comment completely contradicts everything written in the article. It doesn't make sense to you because you don't want it to make sense to you. Step 1. The author doesn't use GPL. Step 2. The author clearly intended wiringPi to have a limited audience. He doesn't want it to become widely used. He intentionally limited support to a handful of hardware devices. It was meant to be used by experienced C programmers. Step 3 isn't about the author being cheated. Fame or money were never mentioned. The author is overwhelmed with work, whether it is caused by the open source project, a new job or caring for his family doesn't matter. However there is a special situation happening here that generally only applies to open software projects. The vast majority of the bug reports involve problems that have already been solved in newer versions. This means that even if the author had an infinite amount of time, all of it would be wasted on already solved problems. There is no reason to work on the project anymore since the rate of progress has stalled. The project has entered a zombie stage and then one day the maintainer announces that the project will be shutdown.
itsbruce 7y ago
That is not what the article said. You are being just the kind of asshole the author complains about.

corndoge 7y ago

That isn't what the article said at all

groundlogic 7y ago
"The article", written by a person offended by someone else getting richer from their code; whilst seemingly not breaking any licenses.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  So, it's just an uncharitable pot shot when the article is perfectly relatable when taken at face value. I'd probably even add your mentality, ubiquitous on HN, to his list. People come out of the woodwork to shit on others. It seems even moreso when it's just a hobby project. You're basically taking one last snipe at him while he exits the theater. For what? Is this what you thought the world needed more of?
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    I'm a bit annoyed about people running popular open source projects suddenly creating drama like this. The reason these projects got popular in the first place were often that the author didn't care for fame, glory or money; they just wanted to solve a problem. And well, to be clear: most of us prefer to use an open source library, over a commercial library. What I'm a bit upset over here is the bait and switch here. Using the open source aspect of your library to get widely spread, but also somehow expecting to make money off this, somehow - this doesn't make sense.
    - Zenst 7y ago
      If you find that annoying then maybe, just maybe you have a small idea how annoyed the author is from people literally abusing his work beyond the scope it was offered and causing all sorts of grief and abuse from people demanding support for a product that he never sold and never even scoped as supported. Whilst many are great users, who use as intended, just reading his post in full outlines just some of the instances and issues that have caused what was a passion and a hobby project to become a source of abuse and mental anguish. Nobody should have to endure that, more so when they did nothing wrong.
      - groundlogic 7y ago
        If the code was used in an illegal way in terms of licenses; I feel for the author. Otherwise not really. Example: If you license something under e.g. the MIT license, a company ends up using it correctly, and you feel bad about the transaction - sorry, that's on you. I really don't get why this is controversial. You license your code under a license for a reason.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        Produce something of value, for free. Then, when you start getting 10,000+ e-mails shitting on you for not also doing XYZ for free, because how dare you not, I'll take your opinion with a more open mind. The author made it fairly clear that this was not just a money situation.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        ..so, in a hyphothetical case, let's say "you" published some code under the MIT license. You then got 10k emails. What's your point? What do you want to say?
        ziddoap 7y ago
        It's not hypothetical. >I never intended for wiringPi to be statically linked either – and thanks to the incompetence of many people who have done just this, I’ve had over 10,000 emails from people who upgraded their Pi and found that code stopped working because they were reliant on a system (typically some java/javascript/node or home automation or UPS thing) which had statically linked an older version My point is, the author intended the project to be used for X. It was used for Y. Author doesn't want to support Y. Author gets bombarded with e-mails complaining they don't support Y. This isn't "suddenly creating drama like this" or "also somehow expecting to make money off this" as you asserted. Another pertinent part of the article you seem to be skipping is: >Add to that the people who have “bludgeoned” wiringPi to work on other fruit Pi platforms, but left my name as the contact email … You claiming the author is just creating drama solely because of money is a gross misreading of the situation.
  - banana_giraffe 7y ago
    Ages ago, I wrote and maintained some Windows open source stuff. It wasn't GPL, but it was "here's the source code, and a binary version, have fun!". I had a little niche of a certain type of tool in the Windows world, if you searched for how to do a specific thing, my tools would show up. Most of it included my real name and email address in the executable and DLLs details tab, as well as the source code. I was the top of the little niche, and more than happy to help other developers out there. I'd help users as best as I could, but my tools were mostly geared at developers (though, users never stopped amazing me at clever unintended ways to use things) The emails I got from this could be broken down into two categories: Actual questions about the tools, including bug reports or problems integrating it into some other project. That was about 5% of the emails I saw. The other 95% was "Program <x> stopped working! I can't find any contact anywhere expect in this one DLL, I demand you help me fix it!" It was super disheartening, since my attempt to explain my role as someone that provided a tool or library to whoever wrote their application was responded with either "Your name is in this application, I don't care what your role is, you need to help me fix it!", or "If you didn't want to provide support, why is your email here?" And that's, basically, how I ended up using random combinations of words on sites like this one. Maybe people with a thicker skin can deal with this crap, but I can't anymore.
    - groundlogic 7y ago
      It's super weird for a "developer" to demand assistance from another developer, just because they wrote and published the code, regardless of license.
      - banana_giraffe 7y ago
        Sorry if I came of suggesting that. At least in my case the only people demanding support were end-users of applications I didn't write but did use my code. Developers that contacted me were always understanding, with a rare exception, that free stuff got free support.
    - x0x0 7y ago
      This was so so my experience. The people that contacted me were, in the majority, some of the most entitled assholes. I quit reading the email address associated w/ my open source project, and one user tracked down my (then) work email to demand support!
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Are you DanielK?

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. It's not shocking people get burnt out by constant harassment by entitled people who demand the developer "support them" for free.

groundlogic 7y ago
> Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. Exactly. This and nothing else. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand.

guggle 7y ago

> This doesn't make any sense at all, to me. Of course it doesn't, because that's not what is explained. Read again maybe. If anything, the author asks for respect.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

That's not at all what this is about. He didn't want money, he just didn't want to be treated like crap.

varjag 7y ago

I see some people can't just wrap their mind around doing something not for profiting off others.

imtringued 7y ago

Not to be a complete ass or anything, but technically posting a comment on HN REQUIRES you to read the article before spreading complete misinformation. Your comment completely contradicts everything written in the article. It doesn't make sense to you because you don't want it to make sense to you. Step 1. The author doesn't use GPL. Step 2. The author clearly intended wiringPi to have a limited audience. He doesn't want it to become widely used. He intentionally limited support to a handful of hardware devices. It was meant to be used by experienced C programmers. Step 3 isn't about the author being cheated. Fame or money were never mentioned. The author is overwhelmed with work, whether it is caused by the open source project, a new job or caring for his family doesn't matter. However there is a special situation happening here that generally only applies to open software projects. The vast majority of the bug reports involve problems that have already been solved in newer versions. This means that even if the author had an infinite amount of time, all of it would be wasted on already solved problems. There is no reason to work on the project anymore since the rate of progress has stalled. The project has entered a zombie stage and then one day the maintainer announces that the project will be shutdown.

itsbruce 7y ago

That is not what the article said. You are being just the kind of asshole the author complains about.