5 ms·

I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Years ago software was fully build on the backs of a multitude of giants within their

by Fordec 6y ago

I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Years ago software was fully build on the backs of a multitude of giants within their niche domain. But for a while now large companies have been adopting a model of taking from open source contributions and raking in billions. The original social bargain of "pay it on" has been broken by the Bezos of the world raking in billions. And yes, as others have pointed out, nobody owes you anything, this has down the line knock on effects of ingraining having to build widgets inhouse for the thousandth time because all the talent went and put it into their day-job instead of the community. Maybe a partial factor because the industry has expanded and matured so much in the past three decades that name recognition is harder to filter out among the noise by merely doing good work. Whatever the case, developers are starting to believe that voluntary free open source contribution is for smucks. Which will hamper innovation and morph the industry to how, well, every other industry operated before tech came along. Siloed and slow.

unishark 6y ago
you mean the good ole days when Microsoft paid 50k for quickdos before making billions from it?
- sgift 6y ago
  That's 50k more than most open source projects make, also: No one forced the owners of qdos to give Microsoft that license for 50k. Sellers remorse is a thing, but I'm not sure why we should feel sorry for them.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  As a really fun thought experiment, imagine that they took the $50,000 and put it into 30-year US Treasury bonds in 1981 and sold them in 1986 to buy Microsoft at the IPO. It would be worth about $212 million today. And that ignores dividends.
- austincheney 6y ago
  But MS hired Tim Patterson and gave him equity. How is that not fair?
kome 6y ago
"I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately." it's open source vs. free software open source = free labor for private profits.
- avhception 6y ago
  I think the term "free software" is a marketing failure because you'd always have to add "as in free speech, not free beer". In German you can differentiate that, "frei" vs. "gratis".
  - richrichardsson 6y ago
    I'd go as far as saying that the term "free software" is a complete an utter fail. In my mind "free speech" is speech that is entirely unrestricted. Almost all FOSS licenses come with "restrictions", such as you must leave the copyright notice in place, you must add the "PROVIDED AS IS" spiel somewhere the end user can read it, you must release your derivative work's source code under the same license etc., so it is by definition no longer "free". WTFPL is probably the only real "free" license.
    - orangeshark 6y ago
      the freedom part is not for the software developer, it is for the end user running the software.
      - richrichardsson 6y ago
        I've obviously missed something here, what are the freedoms the end user is afforded?
        7786655 6y ago
        0. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. 1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. 3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
mathnmusic 6y ago
It's because we could never get users to care about open-source software. Users continue to lap up closed-source software and that's what leads to billions for these companies.
pjmlp 6y ago
I already realized that during the first .com wave, it is naive to think otherwise, rainbows and happy songs can only last so long. It is easy to be idealistic when the source of income is not selling software.
falcolas 6y ago
The only reason this ‘bargain’ existed at all in the first place was because of the GPL and other more restrictive licenses which encoded this ‘bargain’ into their verbage. The current version of the ‘bargain’ - use MIT or BSD and expect more participation as a result - has never been the norm. The norm is corporate programmers taking whatever code they can and using it. The norm is a cleanroom implementation of open source software written because companies would rather pay for that implementation rather than muck around in open source licensed code (I watched Oracle do this with several MySQL feature/bug fix patches). And so here we are. Yet Another MIT License Regret.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
> But for a while now large companies have been adopting a model of taking from open source contributions and raking in billions. I've been working at a large corporation for about five years now. I've been on more than a few projects where we wanted to use an open source product/tool to help build an application and it was roundly rejected by the security team. After two back-to-back requests were rejected, we were told corporate policy was 100% against using any open source tools or products in anything we did. The ironic part is this monolithic, hulking corporation is losing chunks of market to smaller, more nimble companies who can get their product to market in three months. Whereas, it takes us 18 teams and 100 people and two years to get the same product to market. Their solution? Just buy the technology instead. We've had dozens of acquisitions over the past year or so. Which now creates another new set of problems I'm sure you can already see. . .
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Open source is a niche. The vast majority of developers don’t participate in open source. If they do, it’s simple bug fixes that they need for their paid jobs. The number of people creating and releasing significant open source projects is vanishingly small relative to the entire pool of developers. I think it was a mistake to tell entry-level devs everywhere that open source was some sort of secret cheat code to boost one’s career. On the hiring and recruiting side of things, seeing open source contributions is helpful, but it’s almost never the deciding factor in hiring someone. Meanwhile, Internet forums for juniors are full of anxiety about creating side projects and GitHub profiles because young developers think it will get them to the head of the hiring line. It’s a recipe for a lot of disappointment in open source.
- xemdetia 6y ago
  Out of the hundred or so resumes I have worked with at this point the handful that have had their github up that I had time to look at were net-zero or net-negative as an addendum of their resume. There's a difference between an engineer with a history of open source and one that 'did something and pushed to github', and most entry-level engineers haven't had such a strong history of open source that what you see of them would be meaningful anyway. I do try to preach this to what developers I come across but there's only so much that can be done.
- watwut 6y ago
  Significant part of open source development is paid for by companies. I don't know why the myth of its being done mostly for free persists, but maybe we should stop pretending it.
  - fierarul 6y ago
    Depends on how you define "part". Maybe the visible part like MySQL or the Linux kernel or Android. But I'd say open source has a long tail mostly unpaid. From where I'm staying there is also a myth that companies pay for all the open source I use.
na85 6y ago
>Whatever the case, developers are starting to believe that voluntary free open source contribution is for smucks. In today's environment, it kind of is for shmucks. How many times have I seen the same tired FreeBSD copypasta about how FreeBSD powers netflix and playstation, and won't I please donate because netflix and sony are parasites who won't pony up the dough to keep FreeBSD solvent. Why on earth would anyone directly subsidize these CEOs when they could get paid to do it instead?

by Fordec 6y ago

unishark 6y ago

you mean the good ole days when Microsoft paid 50k for quickdos before making billions from it?

sgift 6y ago
That's 50k more than most open source projects make, also: No one forced the owners of qdos to give Microsoft that license for 50k. Sellers remorse is a thing, but I'm not sure why we should feel sorry for them.
OldHand2018 6y ago
As a really fun thought experiment, imagine that they took the $50,000 and put it into 30-year US Treasury bonds in 1981 and sold them in 1986 to buy Microsoft at the IPO. It would be worth about $212 million today. And that ignores dividends.
austincheney 6y ago
But MS hired Tim Patterson and gave him equity. How is that not fair?

kome 6y ago

"I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately." it's open source vs. free software open source = free labor for private profits.

avhception 6y ago
I think the term "free software" is a marketing failure because you'd always have to add "as in free speech, not free beer". In German you can differentiate that, "frei" vs. "gratis".
- richrichardsson 6y ago
  I'd go as far as saying that the term "free software" is a complete an utter fail. In my mind "free speech" is speech that is entirely unrestricted. Almost all FOSS licenses come with "restrictions", such as you must leave the copyright notice in place, you must add the "PROVIDED AS IS" spiel somewhere the end user can read it, you must release your derivative work's source code under the same license etc., so it is by definition no longer "free". WTFPL is probably the only real "free" license.
  - orangeshark 6y ago
    the freedom part is not for the software developer, it is for the end user running the software.
    - richrichardsson 6y ago
      I've obviously missed something here, what are the freedoms the end user is afforded?
      - 7786655 6y ago
        0. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. 1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. 3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

mathnmusic 6y ago

It's because we could never get users to care about open-source software. Users continue to lap up closed-source software and that's what leads to billions for these companies.

pjmlp 6y ago

I already realized that during the first .com wave, it is naive to think otherwise, rainbows and happy songs can only last so long. It is easy to be idealistic when the source of income is not selling software.

falcolas 6y ago

The only reason this ‘bargain’ existed at all in the first place was because of the GPL and other more restrictive licenses which encoded this ‘bargain’ into their verbage. The current version of the ‘bargain’ - use MIT or BSD and expect more participation as a result - has never been the norm. The norm is corporate programmers taking whatever code they can and using it. The norm is a cleanroom implementation of open source software written because companies would rather pay for that implementation rather than muck around in open source licensed code (I watched Oracle do this with several MySQL feature/bug fix patches). And so here we are. Yet Another MIT License Regret.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

> But for a while now large companies have been adopting a model of taking from open source contributions and raking in billions. I've been working at a large corporation for about five years now. I've been on more than a few projects where we wanted to use an open source product/tool to help build an application and it was roundly rejected by the security team. After two back-to-back requests were rejected, we were told corporate policy was 100% against using any open source tools or products in anything we did. The ironic part is this monolithic, hulking corporation is losing chunks of market to smaller, more nimble companies who can get their product to market in three months. Whereas, it takes us 18 teams and 100 people and two years to get the same product to market. Their solution? Just buy the technology instead. We've had dozens of acquisitions over the past year or so. Which now creates another new set of problems I'm sure you can already see. . .

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately. Open source is a niche. The vast majority of developers don’t participate in open source. If they do, it’s simple bug fixes that they need for their paid jobs. The number of people creating and releasing significant open source projects is vanishingly small relative to the entire pool of developers. I think it was a mistake to tell entry-level devs everywhere that open source was some sort of secret cheat code to boost one’s career. On the hiring and recruiting side of things, seeing open source contributions is helpful, but it’s almost never the deciding factor in hiring someone. Meanwhile, Internet forums for juniors are full of anxiety about creating side projects and GitHub profiles because young developers think it will get them to the head of the hiring line. It’s a recipe for a lot of disappointment in open source.

xemdetia 6y ago
Out of the hundred or so resumes I have worked with at this point the handful that have had their github up that I had time to look at were net-zero or net-negative as an addendum of their resume. There's a difference between an engineer with a history of open source and one that 'did something and pushed to github', and most entry-level engineers haven't had such a strong history of open source that what you see of them would be meaningful anyway. I do try to preach this to what developers I come across but there's only so much that can be done.
watwut 6y ago
Significant part of open source development is paid for by companies. I don't know why the myth of its being done mostly for free persists, but maybe we should stop pretending it.
- fierarul 6y ago
  Depends on how you define "part". Maybe the visible part like MySQL or the Linux kernel or Android. But I'd say open source has a long tail mostly unpaid. From where I'm staying there is also a myth that companies pay for all the open source I use.

na85 6y ago

>Whatever the case, developers are starting to believe that voluntary free open source contribution is for smucks. In today's environment, it kind of is for shmucks. How many times have I seen the same tired FreeBSD copypasta about how FreeBSD powers netflix and playstation, and won't I please donate because netflix and sony are parasites who won't pony up the dough to keep FreeBSD solvent. Why on earth would anyone directly subsidize these CEOs when they could get paid to do it instead?