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Jesus npm is a cancerous dumpster fire. Guy must have been a saint to continue maintaining the project in spite of all of entitled "developers" using his packa

Jesus npm is a cancerous dumpster fire. Guy must have been a saint to continue maintaining the project in spite of all of entitled "developers" using his package and scolding him for DARING TO ASK FOR A DIME.

ankka 7y ago
And nobody wants to take responsibility and maintain it either, not even now.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  I'm not surprised at all. I bet there are plenty of multi-billion dollars companies using that project who never contributed a cent to its author yet sent their developers on GitHub to complain about the state of the project. It happened to a few maintainers I know. These companies save millions in development cost on the back of a few developers in developed countries. This is open source, I get it, but this isn't fair either. Look at that comment: > ....yikes. Sounds like a fork needs to happen. And github should really look to provide a 'risk' rating to projects from a maintenance PoV... a project depended on by 4.5m users with 1 maintainer should visualise as a high-risk dependency. It's not up to GitHub to do that, it's up to the individual or the company to audit a project and its dependencies and be prepared to be able to maintain it themselves. Or pay the only developer to do exactly that. Another comment (quoted by another guy): > Babel maintainer here We are probably not going to fork core-js because we don't have enough resources to maintain it. And people expect a single developer to have the resources to do exactly that? look at babel and the list of sponsors, yet they don't have the resources: https://github.com/babel/babel https://github.com/babel/babel
  - SaxonRobber 7y ago
    That's what happens when the Free is removed from FOSS.
    - throw_m239339 7y ago
      Absolutely, free means free to take and use, but free also means freedom of the developers from owing anybody anything or any responsibility. FOSS became entitlement for big companies to demand free work from third world country developers while making millions...
      - Frost1x 7y ago
        Another part of the loop is that many hiring groups also expect to see some public code out there. Maybe it's some library or widely popular project that helps your hiring chances or maybe it's just a toy project. None the less, you better have something sitting out there active for free. Then, once you're hired and they're paying you, they certainly don't want you wasting their resources (paid time, IP) contributing free software. The entire tech industry is morphing more and more into a dumpster fire itself.
kbumsik 7y ago
Yeah. There even seems to be trolls blaming him in the issue page.
cycomanic 7y ago
Actually, while I think npm is the worst example, I am of the opinion that this is the largest issue facing OSS today. Companies using lots of OSS packages without ever giving back a dime. The argument is always that this helps developers get a job, but often enough the jobs don't allow the developers to work full time on those packages, but they are still somehow expected to continue the work in their past-time. The guy posted the results of his call for funding, he got to $50 a month on patreon! For maintaining a package that likely 100s or 1000s of companies depend on for the work.
- syshum 7y ago
  Which is the direct result of abandoning CopyLeft licensing moving towards the BSD / MIT license model that creates the climate your speaking of. I firmly believe that Linux had not used GPL it would not be anywhere as big as it is today
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  On the other side, GitHub minted 3 billionaires in the acquisition by Microsoft! Chris Wanstrath walked away with 1.8B and probably would have been best positioned to defend the community which enabled the exit. Funny how the open source ecosystem mirrors the world at large
- camgunz 7y ago
  A big part of this problem is "BSD license everything". Make your work Affero GPL, and charge for commercial use. Stop giving away your labor and expertise for free. Solidarity.
Chris2048 7y ago
It's funny you say "entitled". Show me where anyone said they where entitled to his labour. It was him who felt entitled to advertise. He can ask for all the dimes he wants, He just can't add such adverts to the codebase.
- iakov 7y ago
  >He just can't add such adverts to the codebase. I'm curios why do you think that. If the codebase is a fruit of his efforts, why shouldn't he do as he wants with it? I would understand that in cases where a maintainer adds malicious code - but that's not the case here. Author asks for donations, the only negative effect of it is NPM logs getting longer. I think he's well within his moral rights here.
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    Why can't he add malicious code then? It's his code, right? Who decides who can, and cannot advertise? There are many ways to solicit donations - the problem here is he chose to go against convention and put those ads in a common space. Does every other contributor of JS packages not have this right to advertise? Perhaps NPM requires specific rules against advertisement, but the moral aspect wrt is "this is why we can't have nice things", or in this case, why we need explicit rules.
    - SaxonRobber 7y ago
      Then fork it and remove the message yourself. Sitting on your hands and moaning about the size of your logs being “immoral” is peak entitlement. He doesn’t owe you or npm shit.
      - Chris2048 7y ago
        It's not "the size of your logs", it's adverts, specifically. Misrepresenting the argument, and name-calling, also don't help. There is also the fact that not including ads would require less labour than including them, even if removing them requires further labour. being "entitled" to correct behaviour isn't unreasonable. IS it OK for me to spam you, because I don't owe you shit either. morality is a society/community-level contract. It doesn't matter what is owed at a labour level, quid-pro-quo is you don't put adds in npm, we all don't put ads in npm. Breaking a social convention should require community consensus.

ankka 7y ago

And nobody wants to take responsibility and maintain it either, not even now.

throw_m239339 7y ago
I'm not surprised at all. I bet there are plenty of multi-billion dollars companies using that project who never contributed a cent to its author yet sent their developers on GitHub to complain about the state of the project. It happened to a few maintainers I know. These companies save millions in development cost on the back of a few developers in developed countries. This is open source, I get it, but this isn't fair either. Look at that comment: > ....yikes. Sounds like a fork needs to happen. And github should really look to provide a 'risk' rating to projects from a maintenance PoV... a project depended on by 4.5m users with 1 maintainer should visualise as a high-risk dependency. It's not up to GitHub to do that, it's up to the individual or the company to audit a project and its dependencies and be prepared to be able to maintain it themselves. Or pay the only developer to do exactly that. Another comment (quoted by another guy): > Babel maintainer here We are probably not going to fork core-js because we don't have enough resources to maintain it. And people expect a single developer to have the resources to do exactly that? look at babel and the list of sponsors, yet they don't have the resources: https://github.com/babel/babel https://github.com/babel/babel
- SaxonRobber 7y ago
  That's what happens when the Free is removed from FOSS.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    Absolutely, free means free to take and use, but free also means freedom of the developers from owing anybody anything or any responsibility. FOSS became entitlement for big companies to demand free work from third world country developers while making millions...
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      Another part of the loop is that many hiring groups also expect to see some public code out there. Maybe it's some library or widely popular project that helps your hiring chances or maybe it's just a toy project. None the less, you better have something sitting out there active for free. Then, once you're hired and they're paying you, they certainly don't want you wasting their resources (paid time, IP) contributing free software. The entire tech industry is morphing more and more into a dumpster fire itself.

kbumsik 7y ago

Yeah. There even seems to be trolls blaming him in the issue page.

cycomanic 7y ago

Actually, while I think npm is the worst example, I am of the opinion that this is the largest issue facing OSS today. Companies using lots of OSS packages without ever giving back a dime. The argument is always that this helps developers get a job, but often enough the jobs don't allow the developers to work full time on those packages, but they are still somehow expected to continue the work in their past-time. The guy posted the results of his call for funding, he got to $50 a month on patreon! For maintaining a package that likely 100s or 1000s of companies depend on for the work.

syshum 7y ago
Which is the direct result of abandoning CopyLeft licensing moving towards the BSD / MIT license model that creates the climate your speaking of. I firmly believe that Linux had not used GPL it would not be anywhere as big as it is today
TAForObvReasons 7y ago
On the other side, GitHub minted 3 billionaires in the acquisition by Microsoft! Chris Wanstrath walked away with 1.8B and probably would have been best positioned to defend the community which enabled the exit. Funny how the open source ecosystem mirrors the world at large
camgunz 7y ago
A big part of this problem is "BSD license everything". Make your work Affero GPL, and charge for commercial use. Stop giving away your labor and expertise for free. Solidarity.

Chris2048 7y ago

It's funny you say "entitled". Show me where anyone said they where entitled to his labour. It was him who felt entitled to advertise. He can ask for all the dimes he wants, He just can't add such adverts to the codebase.

iakov 7y ago
>He just can't add such adverts to the codebase. I'm curios why do you think that. If the codebase is a fruit of his efforts, why shouldn't he do as he wants with it? I would understand that in cases where a maintainer adds malicious code - but that's not the case here. Author asks for donations, the only negative effect of it is NPM logs getting longer. I think he's well within his moral rights here.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  Why can't he add malicious code then? It's his code, right? Who decides who can, and cannot advertise? There are many ways to solicit donations - the problem here is he chose to go against convention and put those ads in a common space. Does every other contributor of JS packages not have this right to advertise? Perhaps NPM requires specific rules against advertisement, but the moral aspect wrt is "this is why we can't have nice things", or in this case, why we need explicit rules.
  - SaxonRobber 7y ago
    Then fork it and remove the message yourself. Sitting on your hands and moaning about the size of your logs being “immoral” is peak entitlement. He doesn’t owe you or npm shit.
    - Chris2048 7y ago
      It's not "the size of your logs", it's adverts, specifically. Misrepresenting the argument, and name-calling, also don't help. There is also the fact that not including ads would require less labour than including them, even if removing them requires further labour. being "entitled" to correct behaviour isn't unreasonable. IS it OK for me to spam you, because I don't owe you shit either. morality is a society/community-level contract. It doesn't matter what is owed at a labour level, quid-pro-quo is you don't put adds in npm, we all don't put ads in npm. Breaking a social convention should require community consensus.