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The rationale from the author of the package who adding advertising is enlightening and definitely worth reading. https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/

The rationale from the author of the package who adding advertising is enlightening and definitely worth reading. https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/ https://feross.org/funding-experiment-recap/

prepend 7y ago
I don’t agree with his problem statement that OSS developers need payment. I think that paying people for valuable work is a good thing. But I don’t think there is a problem with this as evidenced by 50 years of great OSS software written by professional and amateur developers. Saying I spent 4000 hours on a project without pay is not enough info to be useful to determine that I need payment. I volunteer time to lots of charities, I don’t then say I need payment for this time. I also spent countless hours on hobbies, this doesn’t entitle me to payment. If I put an annoying ad into people’s consciousness because I spend 3000/year organizing my magic cards, that’s not really relevant to most people.
- cj 7y ago
  That reasoning makes sense at first. Until you consider the fact that critical infrastructure depends on underfunded open source projects that sometimes have trouble staying afloat. NTP is the classic example of the problem. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-out-for-ntp.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-ou... http://www.ntp.org/ http://www.ntp.org/
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I'd love to know what the story behind "Google was unable to sponsor us this year" is.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    If they depend upon it then there are two obvious solutions - provide it doing the work themselves or fund it.
    - Avamander 7y ago
      Unfortunately people pick the third option that is dissing the developer who has made that piece of code for trying to get funding for the work.
      - Nasrudith 7y ago
        That is just a ruder version of the null option "doing nothing, leaving it unreliable and suffering the consequences".
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Until you consider the fact that critical infrastructure depends on underfunded open source projects that sometimes have trouble staying afloat This is not principally an issue of a funding problem for the maitnainers, but an issue of a risk management problem for the relying parties. Unfortunately, it's probably going to take a massive costly, critical failure before it gets addressed, but once that happens it will be addressed quickly, and critical infrastructure will rapidly not be relying on underfunded open source projects. (Whether that is through those products—whether the existing core project or a new fork—getting better support from well-heeled downstream parties, as many widely-critical open source projects (e.g., SQLite) already have, or whether it means those products get replaced may not be consistent from product to product. If they do get funding, though, it's not going to be without the funding parties taking a keen interest in governance, as the risk doesn't go away with unaccountable funding alone.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  Charity? People make money off libraries. It's such a ridiculous attitude to read on a news site hosted by a Venture Capitalist firm.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Well the whole point is to /not/ be "permission culture" shutting things down because someone doesn't get their cut in something which never existed before.
jodrellblank 7y ago
That is worth reading, and he makes some great points, but there’s a jarring shift in it. At the start he talks about it in terms of: I would love to find a way to help maintainers capture at least a bit of the value we create so that we can happily continue to write new features, fix bugs, answer user questions, improve documentation, and release innovative new software. But after it was received badly, he switches to: Folks who contribute nothing don’t get a seat at the table. Rich Hickey said it best in Open Source is Not About You: Which seems contrary. Rich Hickey’s post is that open source is built for oneself (one person or one company) and then released to the world in whatever state it was used internally. Other people aren't paying, so they don't get a say. The opening position is that open source is created and maintained for the benefit of others. It can be either, neither, or both for different projects, sure, but to suggest that people take up maintaining unseen infrastructure code so that they can answer user questions and write documentation and code new features to help people and also don’t no have to listen to anything those people say because it’s done for one’s self and not about those people at all.. which is it? People who tidy the commons for the council are employees, and do what they're told. People who tidy the commons of their on volunteer effort get to choose what to do but don't get to stick a price tag on it. If you do it for yourself on your terms, you don’t get anyone’s money. If you do it for others and want their money, it’s a job but you have to be controlled by what they want because it’s a job. If you do it for guilt and charity, who gets to thrive off charity work in other fields? If you went to a local park and found someone had picked some poison ivy, and left an advert there instead, would you approve?
MattyRad 7y ago
This is highly unrelated, sorry, but does anyone know the zsh theme used in that post (https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png)? I didn't see anything like it in the list of zsh themes (https://zshthem.es/all/ https://zshthem.es/all/). The colored arrows look very appealing if they're contextual, like if they denote the status of git files (deleted/edited/added).
- guitarsteve 7y ago
  My ZSH looks like that, though the arrows are less bold. I don't remember configuring it much, if at all. I think it might be close to the default theme. In my case, the arrows are purely stylistic. They never change color or ordering.
  - guitarsteve 7y ago
    Ah, I found it. It's the default(?) theme called "sorin" from zprezto: https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto
thsowers 7y ago
I think another thing the author misses is that Standard is _just_ a formatting library. It doesn't need/deserve as much resources as libraries that do more and deliver more value for the developer/company such as Vue, webpack etc.
- qes 7y ago
  > Standard is _just_ a formatting library It's just a configuration file for a formatting library that someone else(s) wrote.
move-on-by 7y ago
Popularity does not equate to value. Perhaps the market simply does not see his thin eslint wrapper as a valuable tool.
miguelmota 7y ago
> Open source maintainers need income to fund their work. lol if you need to make income from your work, don't give it away for free. Should everyone demand getting paid now for working on hobby projects?
- slang800 7y ago
  Well, obviously selling paid software is a well known way to make money. However, it would be really cool if we could give away software for free and make money off it at the same time.
  - pixelbath 7y ago
    Red Hat, Canonical, Docker, Suse, and many others give software away for free, and make money from that same software.
    - slang800 7y ago
      They do that by selling support, or additional non-free features bundled into an "enterprise edition" (at least in the case of Docker). I don't think that's something Feross or other open source maintainers are interested in doing.
      - pixelbath 7y ago
        Fair point, but it's inaccurate to say we can't make money off software we give away for free.
        slang800 7y ago
        I'm not saying that we are literally unable to make money off of free software. We can and donations / advertising / GPL license exemptions / crowd-funding all work to some degree. My point was that even though the "don't give it away for free" model works, we should still try to improve the profitability of funding models where we can give software away for free.
sequoia 7y ago
> If even I – with my fortunate position – can’t make a comfortable living working on open source, then how is anyone else supposed to make it work? If living comfortably is Feross's goal, why not get a job? This is a high profile programmer in one of the highest demand, highest-programmer-wage places in the world. What am I missing?
- whyrusleeping 7y ago
  Feross could easily get a job, but the point is that he wants open source to work. So much of everything you do every day depends on open source code, and every open source dev I know says its an utter shit show. The alternative is Feross gets a job, and everyone invents their own stuff in-house, and we end up with 'open source' that is just what profitable companies want to have as open source. The set of things companies decide to open source is not a good overlap with the set of software that should exist.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Working for someone else is a last resort for some of us once all of our other ambitions have failed.

prepend 7y ago

I don’t agree with his problem statement that OSS developers need payment. I think that paying people for valuable work is a good thing. But I don’t think there is a problem with this as evidenced by 50 years of great OSS software written by professional and amateur developers. Saying I spent 4000 hours on a project without pay is not enough info to be useful to determine that I need payment. I volunteer time to lots of charities, I don’t then say I need payment for this time. I also spent countless hours on hobbies, this doesn’t entitle me to payment. If I put an annoying ad into people’s consciousness because I spend 3000/year organizing my magic cards, that’s not really relevant to most people.

cj 7y ago
That reasoning makes sense at first. Until you consider the fact that critical infrastructure depends on underfunded open source projects that sometimes have trouble staying afloat. NTP is the classic example of the problem. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-out-for-ntp.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-ou... http://www.ntp.org/ http://www.ntp.org/
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I'd love to know what the story behind "Google was unable to sponsor us this year" is.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  If they depend upon it then there are two obvious solutions - provide it doing the work themselves or fund it.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    Unfortunately people pick the third option that is dissing the developer who has made that piece of code for trying to get funding for the work.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      That is just a ruder version of the null option "doing nothing, leaving it unreliable and suffering the consequences".
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Until you consider the fact that critical infrastructure depends on underfunded open source projects that sometimes have trouble staying afloat This is not principally an issue of a funding problem for the maitnainers, but an issue of a risk management problem for the relying parties. Unfortunately, it's probably going to take a massive costly, critical failure before it gets addressed, but once that happens it will be addressed quickly, and critical infrastructure will rapidly not be relying on underfunded open source projects. (Whether that is through those products—whether the existing core project or a new fork—getting better support from well-heeled downstream parties, as many widely-critical open source projects (e.g., SQLite) already have, or whether it means those products get replaced may not be consistent from product to product. If they do get funding, though, it's not going to be without the funding parties taking a keen interest in governance, as the risk doesn't go away with unaccountable funding alone.
Jonnax 7y ago
Charity? People make money off libraries. It's such a ridiculous attitude to read on a news site hosted by a Venture Capitalist firm.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Well the whole point is to /not/ be "permission culture" shutting things down because someone doesn't get their cut in something which never existed before.

jodrellblank 7y ago

That is worth reading, and he makes some great points, but there’s a jarring shift in it. At the start he talks about it in terms of: I would love to find a way to help maintainers capture at least a bit of the value we create so that we can happily continue to write new features, fix bugs, answer user questions, improve documentation, and release innovative new software. But after it was received badly, he switches to: Folks who contribute nothing don’t get a seat at the table. Rich Hickey said it best in Open Source is Not About You: Which seems contrary. Rich Hickey’s post is that open source is built for oneself (one person or one company) and then released to the world in whatever state it was used internally. Other people aren't paying, so they don't get a say. The opening position is that open source is created and maintained for the benefit of others. It can be either, neither, or both for different projects, sure, but to suggest that people take up maintaining unseen infrastructure code so that they can answer user questions and write documentation and code new features to help people and also don’t no have to listen to anything those people say because it’s done for one’s self and not about those people at all.. which is it? People who tidy the commons for the council are employees, and do what they're told. People who tidy the commons of their on volunteer effort get to choose what to do but don't get to stick a price tag on it. If you do it for yourself on your terms, you don’t get anyone’s money. If you do it for others and want their money, it’s a job but you have to be controlled by what they want because it’s a job. If you do it for guilt and charity, who gets to thrive off charity work in other fields? If you went to a local park and found someone had picked some poison ivy, and left an advert there instead, would you approve?

MattyRad 7y ago

This is highly unrelated, sorry, but does anyone know the zsh theme used in that post (https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png https://feross.org/images/funding-screenshot.png)? I didn't see anything like it in the list of zsh themes (https://zshthem.es/all/ https://zshthem.es/all/). The colored arrows look very appealing if they're contextual, like if they denote the status of git files (deleted/edited/added).

guitarsteve 7y ago
My ZSH looks like that, though the arrows are less bold. I don't remember configuring it much, if at all. I think it might be close to the default theme. In my case, the arrows are purely stylistic. They never change color or ordering.
- guitarsteve 7y ago
  Ah, I found it. It's the default(?) theme called "sorin" from zprezto: https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto

thsowers 7y ago

I think another thing the author misses is that Standard is _just_ a formatting library. It doesn't need/deserve as much resources as libraries that do more and deliver more value for the developer/company such as Vue, webpack etc.

qes 7y ago
> Standard is _just_ a formatting library It's just a configuration file for a formatting library that someone else(s) wrote.

move-on-by 7y ago

Popularity does not equate to value. Perhaps the market simply does not see his thin eslint wrapper as a valuable tool.

miguelmota 7y ago

> Open source maintainers need income to fund their work. lol if you need to make income from your work, don't give it away for free. Should everyone demand getting paid now for working on hobby projects?

slang800 7y ago
Well, obviously selling paid software is a well known way to make money. However, it would be really cool if we could give away software for free and make money off it at the same time.
- pixelbath 7y ago
  Red Hat, Canonical, Docker, Suse, and many others give software away for free, and make money from that same software.
  - slang800 7y ago
    They do that by selling support, or additional non-free features bundled into an "enterprise edition" (at least in the case of Docker). I don't think that's something Feross or other open source maintainers are interested in doing.
    - pixelbath 7y ago
      Fair point, but it's inaccurate to say we can't make money off software we give away for free.
      - slang800 7y ago
        I'm not saying that we are literally unable to make money off of free software. We can and donations / advertising / GPL license exemptions / crowd-funding all work to some degree. My point was that even though the "don't give it away for free" model works, we should still try to improve the profitability of funding models where we can give software away for free.

sequoia 7y ago

> If even I – with my fortunate position – can’t make a comfortable living working on open source, then how is anyone else supposed to make it work? If living comfortably is Feross's goal, why not get a job? This is a high profile programmer in one of the highest demand, highest-programmer-wage places in the world. What am I missing?

whyrusleeping 7y ago
Feross could easily get a job, but the point is that he wants open source to work. So much of everything you do every day depends on open source code, and every open source dev I know says its an utter shit show. The alternative is Feross gets a job, and everyone invents their own stuff in-house, and we end up with 'open source' that is just what profitable companies want to have as open source. The set of things companies decide to open source is not a good overlap with the set of software that should exist.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Working for someone else is a last resort for some of us once all of our other ambitions have failed.