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On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which se

On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0] Pretty crazy story, all in all! He seems to be in some pretty dire straits, and is reacting to the perceived grievance of others profiting off of his work. All in all, I don't think this is the best way to handle the situation, although building some kind of SaaS API is probably not really possible for something that can be trivially implemented and operated locally. However, many other SaaS APIs have seemed equally trivial in the past and have been extremely successful, so it still might be a useful avenue to explore if he can sort out his legal troubles... [0] https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-suspected-bomb-making-materials-charged/ https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-susp...

dehrmann 6y ago
This looks like a pretty popular project, so I assume he's decently talented. How does he not have a day job? Passion projects are great and all, but they're not known for paying the bills. Especially for solo maintainers, it's almost like playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips. Want to make a career out of it? You need talent, marketability, and be ready to compromise on your vision.
- trevyn 6y ago
  Playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips and not compromising on your vision seems like a solid choice to me.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Until your house burns down.
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    > Making the world a better place by allowing big corporations to generate solid fake test data for their QA flows. --- Random Guy in a random Silicon Valley episode Not compromising your vision? Not to belittle Marak's work here, it's certainly valuable, but it doesn't sound like something that one does to make the world better, but like something that is useful (nearly) only in a corporate context and should be done for a decent salary. But you know, that's just like, my opinion...
    - hazz99 6y ago
      I think regardless of the repository, participation in the FOSS ecosystem strengthens it and encourages more people to join. The very act of doing so makes the world a better place, indirectly. It's not the same as boots-on-ground charity work, no. But it's something.
      - black_puppydog 6y ago
        Yes, I don't want to say I disagree with their work, not at all! And while I thought this is classic corporate-centric coding, some people [1] seem to have a strong relationship with this: > Faker is love. Faker is life. I applaud this move. Someone sponsor this man! I can't edit the GP anymore, but it really seems to be a beloved tool. I guess we love the tools we use, even if they ultimately benefit someone else. :) [1]: https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1046#issuecomment-724013983 https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1046#issuecomment-7...
  - prepend 6y ago
    Definitely, it would be nice. A key to this approach is being able to survive based on tips alone. It will make me really frustrated if I play for tips and then yell about how listeners should pay be $100k.
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      The difference here is that you have thousands of listeners, and some of them are recording your music to sample in their #1 album.
      - prepend 6y ago
        Then it’s pretty easy to stop playing for tips or perhaps stop hanging out a sign that says “feel free to sample without paying me or even referencing me.” If I’m playing for tips, have thousands of listeners, and making an amount of money that doesn’t make me happy then that’s a good sign to stop doing that because people don’t value my music as much as I do. It’s really hard to understand what makes an album #1 as there’s so many factors. I think that’s why it’s so important to set up licenses beforehand. I don’t think it’s reasonable that I’m entitled to any percentage of a #1 album just because they sampled my CC-commercial licensed music.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.
  - andrey_utkin 6y ago
    > This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job. > Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay. > We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage. We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses".
    - pietrovismara 6y ago
      > As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job. We could still have many more if it was viable to do it without being forced to have a day job. Especially when your software is used by many succesfull companies. > "OS project" It stands for open source project. I don't get your quotes here. > Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay. You talk about law, I talk about ethics. > We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses". Using "commerical licenses" hurts every use cases that is not profit based. Having mixed licenses adds a lot of complication for the mantainers on top of the already difficult volontary development.
      - jiofih 6y ago
        I suggest you do some research. It is perfectly fine to have “mixed” licenses. Redis operates like this and has no problem making money, as do many others. “adds a lot of difficulty” is a terribly weak argument - you want to make it your job and get paid for it, of course it will take some effort. Nobody owes you anything.
- jiofih 6y ago
  He was one of the founders of Nodejitsu, acquired by godaddy in 2015. I wonder if he ended up not seeing any of that acquisition money?
  - unreal37 6y ago
    To be honest, any small 3-person company "acquired" and then promptly shut down, probably was just a fancy way to close the business. Each person got a job with a signing bonus. And the investors may have gotten their money back.
- secretcoderz 6y ago
  Maybe because he’s banned from a bunch of open source communities for threatening comments and being an asshole. Oh and also was arrested in September for having bomb making materials. https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-suspected-bomb-making-materials-charged/ https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-susp...
jondumbau 6y ago
Be interested to know which part of it is fake news eh. The culmination of the recent tweets and actions presents this as having more of a personal tone than a grand indictment of big companies relationship with open source.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I dunno, there's websites like placeholder kittens and the like which are "mock data as a service"; faker.js could be offered as a service as well in that regard. I can't see much opportunities for making money, but it's something at least.
wjnc 6y ago
If the police would ransack my family home after a fire you could probably write the same article. Charred RPi's and lots of computer parts, enough wiring for a new house, lots of chemicals (cleaners, fertilizers, other chemical agents with regular gardening use cases), ultimate survival guide and related parts ("This guy was prepping for something!"). The naming of suspects is just adding insult to injury. If he's in good faith... Anyone could lose it after a house fire plus being named a 'unabomber' by your neighbours.
- tastroder 6y ago
  Ah well, just saw the house fire tweet and sent him a few bucks. Guess I'm on one more list now. There seem to be a few articles that are at least not half filled with the ramblings of an elderly neighbour: https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-astoria-bomb-suspect/ https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discover-bomb-making-materials-inside-NYC-home.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discov... https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/6425363/ https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... Emotional distress seems pretty normal after your house burns down and there's plenty of people in our community with hobbies that would be considered odd. Naming suspects in these cases seems so weird from a non-US perspective, there's not even been a court case.
  - ratww 6y ago
    This is terrible. All the news are based on speculation, but they plastered his very-Googlable-name everywhere, only making it harder for him to get a job now. I honestly can't see anything positive about those articles existing before there's a proper court case.
    - schmappel 6y ago
      I never understood the need to name suspects - address and all - in this country. In my home country suspects that are (or are about to be) charged and convicted with a crime have their last name abbreviated (e.g. Paul S.), which seems completely reasonable to me. You're innocent until proven guilty, for one. But even if you're guilty and convicted, your punishment should be limited to whatever the judge rules it should be. I don't see the need for public shaming beyond whatever punishment they get in court should they be convicted. When someone is released after a prison sentence they have a right to resume their life. They did their time, after all. Sorry if I sound like I'm rambling a bit, English is not my native language.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
robinduckett 6y ago
I mean if we're sharing stories: "I started a project to learn javascript and node.js through rap," Nodejitsu co- founder and New York expat Marak Squires" I think he is terrible at being frugal, spent all his money, and is now begging for handouts.
- icebraining 6y ago
  Starting a company doesn't make one rich. There's no evidence he had any significant money to spend. In fact, it's likely the founders got nothing after the VCs were paid off.
  - robinduckett 6y ago
    He's reported as being an early bitcoin investor too, so your point might stand ignoring every opportunity this guy had, and every privilege. Ask your average inhabitant of Queens how much their last startup sold for, or how much they made off of Bitcoin. Otherwise not so much.
cblconfederate 6y ago
sure but it still seems this post resonates with many ppl
ampdepolymerase 6y ago
For all those people in this thread praising his work, now's the time to put your money where the mouth is. If you have used his work, push your companies to sponsor/donate. Asking irrelevant questions like whether he has a job does not help the situation. The community's response to events like this is what determines the future of open source. People like to complain about copyleft vs libre licenses. But if you have benefitted much from open source software and are hesitant about contributing back financially, you are part of the problem. This is not just about Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Fortune 500s. If you are a tech startup with revenue or funding and uses his software in your products, consider a 5 to 6 figures contract, or at the very least a significant one time donation.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  I feel for him being in his tough spot, but let's be clear on what faker.js is. I suspect many companies (like mine) use it to create "decent"-looking data for tests. But we could trivially do without it, and basically just used it because it was there. I contrast this with some other open source projects we use that we specifically contribute to (using GitHub donations) because they are central libraries to our code base.
  - offbyone 6y ago
    That's going to be true to some extent of every library your company uses, but for every library someone writes and offers as FOSS, you don't have to spend the cycles designing, developing, and maintaining your own, nor training new hires on using it. You're fundamentally misunderstanding the value of having good quality tools developed by someone else. And I'm not even going to _start_ on what I think of your attitude towards test tooling vs "central libraries" other than to note that if you don't consider test tools central to your development process, I think you have bigger problems.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      You're completely mischaracterizing my post. My point is that if faker were anything slightly above free, we really wouldn't have used it, and our code quality wouldn't suffer from not having it. It was more of a "ooh, that's kinda nice" thing when we used it. > And I'm not even going to _start_ on what I think of your attitude towards test tooling vs "central libraries" other than to note that if you don't consider test tools central to your development process, I think you have bigger problems. That's not my attitude at all and is a bullshit strawman. I actually do donate to libraries that are fundamental to our test framework. Faker is just definitely not one of them.
Nbox9 6y ago
> building some kind of SaaS API is probably not really possible for something that can be trivially implemented and operated locally A SaaS that allows you to deploy APIs and handles Auth/Billing/Customer Support/Usage Metrics etc would be a viable service. There are plenty of 1 man APIs that could be built by an engineer if the heavy business aspects were taken care of.

dehrmann 6y ago

This looks like a pretty popular project, so I assume he's decently talented. How does he not have a day job? Passion projects are great and all, but they're not known for paying the bills. Especially for solo maintainers, it's almost like playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips. Want to make a career out of it? You need talent, marketability, and be ready to compromise on your vision.

trevyn 6y ago
Playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips and not compromising on your vision seems like a solid choice to me.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Until your house burns down.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  > Making the world a better place by allowing big corporations to generate solid fake test data for their QA flows. --- Random Guy in a random Silicon Valley episode Not compromising your vision? Not to belittle Marak's work here, it's certainly valuable, but it doesn't sound like something that one does to make the world better, but like something that is useful (nearly) only in a corporate context and should be done for a decent salary. But you know, that's just like, my opinion...
  - hazz99 6y ago
    I think regardless of the repository, participation in the FOSS ecosystem strengthens it and encourages more people to join. The very act of doing so makes the world a better place, indirectly. It's not the same as boots-on-ground charity work, no. But it's something.
    - black_puppydog 6y ago
      Yes, I don't want to say I disagree with their work, not at all! And while I thought this is classic corporate-centric coding, some people [1] seem to have a strong relationship with this: > Faker is love. Faker is life. I applaud this move. Someone sponsor this man! I can't edit the GP anymore, but it really seems to be a beloved tool. I guess we love the tools we use, even if they ultimately benefit someone else. :) [1]: https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1046#issuecomment-724013983 https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/issues/1046#issuecomment-7...
- prepend 6y ago
  Definitely, it would be nice. A key to this approach is being able to survive based on tips alone. It will make me really frustrated if I play for tips and then yell about how listeners should pay be $100k.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    The difference here is that you have thousands of listeners, and some of them are recording your music to sample in their #1 album.
    - prepend 6y ago
      Then it’s pretty easy to stop playing for tips or perhaps stop hanging out a sign that says “feel free to sample without paying me or even referencing me.” If I’m playing for tips, have thousands of listeners, and making an amount of money that doesn’t make me happy then that’s a good sign to stop doing that because people don’t value my music as much as I do. It’s really hard to understand what makes an album #1 as there’s so many factors. I think that’s why it’s so important to set up licenses beforehand. I don’t think it’s reasonable that I’m entitled to any percentage of a #1 album just because they sampled my CC-commercial licensed music.
pietrovismara 6y ago
This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.
- andrey_utkin 6y ago
  > This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job. > Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay. > We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage. We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses".
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    > As everybody knows, every OSS maintainer doesn't have a day job. We could still have many more if it was viable to do it without being forced to have a day job. Especially when your software is used by many succesfull companies. > "OS project" It stands for open source project. I don't get your quotes here. > Impossible to accomplish, because "OS project" is not a legal entity to whom one could pay. You talk about law, I talk about ethics. > We have such licenses, but they don't have anything to do with Free Software or Open Source Software. Such licenses are called "commerical licenses". Using "commerical licenses" hurts every use cases that is not profit based. Having mixed licenses adds a lot of complication for the mantainers on top of the already difficult volontary development.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      I suggest you do some research. It is perfectly fine to have “mixed” licenses. Redis operates like this and has no problem making money, as do many others. “adds a lot of difficulty” is a terribly weak argument - you want to make it your job and get paid for it, of course it will take some effort. Nobody owes you anything.
jiofih 6y ago
He was one of the founders of Nodejitsu, acquired by godaddy in 2015. I wonder if he ended up not seeing any of that acquisition money?
- unreal37 6y ago
  To be honest, any small 3-person company "acquired" and then promptly shut down, probably was just a fancy way to close the business. Each person got a job with a signing bonus. And the investors may have gotten their money back.
secretcoderz 6y ago
Maybe because he’s banned from a bunch of open source communities for threatening comments and being an asshole. Oh and also was arrested in September for having bomb making materials. https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-suspected-bomb-making-materials-charged/ https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-susp...

jondumbau 6y ago

Be interested to know which part of it is fake news eh. The culmination of the recent tweets and actions presents this as having more of a personal tone than a grand indictment of big companies relationship with open source.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

I dunno, there's websites like placeholder kittens and the like which are "mock data as a service"; faker.js could be offered as a service as well in that regard. I can't see much opportunities for making money, but it's something at least.

wjnc 6y ago

If the police would ransack my family home after a fire you could probably write the same article. Charred RPi's and lots of computer parts, enough wiring for a new house, lots of chemicals (cleaners, fertilizers, other chemical agents with regular gardening use cases), ultimate survival guide and related parts ("This guy was prepping for something!"). The naming of suspects is just adding insult to injury. If he's in good faith... Anyone could lose it after a house fire plus being named a 'unabomber' by your neighbours.

tastroder 6y ago
Ah well, just saw the house fire tweet and sent him a few bucks. Guess I'm on one more list now. There seem to be a few articles that are at least not half filled with the ramblings of an elderly neighbour: https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-astoria-bomb-suspect/ https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discover-bomb-making-materials-inside-NYC-home.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8737513/NYPD-discov... https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/6425363/ https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64... Emotional distress seems pretty normal after your house burns down and there's plenty of people in our community with hobbies that would be considered odd. Naming suspects in these cases seems so weird from a non-US perspective, there's not even been a court case.
- ratww 6y ago
  This is terrible. All the news are based on speculation, but they plastered his very-Googlable-name everywhere, only making it harder for him to get a job now. I honestly can't see anything positive about those articles existing before there's a proper court case.
  - schmappel 6y ago
    I never understood the need to name suspects - address and all - in this country. In my home country suspects that are (or are about to be) charged and convicted with a crime have their last name abbreviated (e.g. Paul S.), which seems completely reasonable to me. You're innocent until proven guilty, for one. But even if you're guilty and convicted, your punishment should be limited to whatever the judge rules it should be. I don't see the need for public shaming beyond whatever punishment they get in court should they be convicted. When someone is released after a prison sentence they have a right to resume their life. They did their time, after all. Sorry if I sound like I'm rambling a bit, English is not my native language.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

robinduckett 6y ago

I mean if we're sharing stories: "I started a project to learn javascript and node.js through rap," Nodejitsu co- founder and New York expat Marak Squires" I think he is terrible at being frugal, spent all his money, and is now begging for handouts.

icebraining 6y ago
Starting a company doesn't make one rich. There's no evidence he had any significant money to spend. In fact, it's likely the founders got nothing after the VCs were paid off.
- robinduckett 6y ago
  He's reported as being an early bitcoin investor too, so your point might stand ignoring every opportunity this guy had, and every privilege. Ask your average inhabitant of Queens how much their last startup sold for, or how much they made off of Bitcoin. Otherwise not so much.

cblconfederate 6y ago

sure but it still seems this post resonates with many ppl

ampdepolymerase 6y ago

For all those people in this thread praising his work, now's the time to put your money where the mouth is. If you have used his work, push your companies to sponsor/donate. Asking irrelevant questions like whether he has a job does not help the situation. The community's response to events like this is what determines the future of open source. People like to complain about copyleft vs libre licenses. But if you have benefitted much from open source software and are hesitant about contributing back financially, you are part of the problem. This is not just about Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Fortune 500s. If you are a tech startup with revenue or funding and uses his software in your products, consider a 5 to 6 figures contract, or at the very least a significant one time donation.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I feel for him being in his tough spot, but let's be clear on what faker.js is. I suspect many companies (like mine) use it to create "decent"-looking data for tests. But we could trivially do without it, and basically just used it because it was there. I contrast this with some other open source projects we use that we specifically contribute to (using GitHub donations) because they are central libraries to our code base.
- offbyone 6y ago
  That's going to be true to some extent of every library your company uses, but for every library someone writes and offers as FOSS, you don't have to spend the cycles designing, developing, and maintaining your own, nor training new hires on using it. You're fundamentally misunderstanding the value of having good quality tools developed by someone else. And I'm not even going to _start_ on what I think of your attitude towards test tooling vs "central libraries" other than to note that if you don't consider test tools central to your development process, I think you have bigger problems.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    You're completely mischaracterizing my post. My point is that if faker were anything slightly above free, we really wouldn't have used it, and our code quality wouldn't suffer from not having it. It was more of a "ooh, that's kinda nice" thing when we used it. > And I'm not even going to _start_ on what I think of your attitude towards test tooling vs "central libraries" other than to note that if you don't consider test tools central to your development process, I think you have bigger problems. That's not my attitude at all and is a bullshit strawman. I actually do donate to libraries that are fundamental to our test framework. Faker is just definitely not one of them.

Nbox9 6y ago

> building some kind of SaaS API is probably not really possible for something that can be trivially implemented and operated locally A SaaS that allows you to deploy APIs and handles Auth/Billing/Customer Support/Usage Metrics etc would be a viable service. There are plenty of 1 man APIs that could be built by an engineer if the heavy business aspects were taken care of.