3 ms·

I think one of the problems is the interface through which we access these tools. I know when I walk into a Walmart that I'm dealing with a huge organization an

by pontus 6y ago

I think one of the problems is the interface through which we access these tools. I know when I walk into a Walmart that I'm dealing with a huge organization and if I accidentally break something while I'm walking through an aisle, I don't necessarily feel that bad. If instead I was walking around in a mom-and-pop store and broke something, I would apologize profusely and demand that I pay them for their troubles. When accessing open source projects, there's no visual trigger that makes me subconsciously distinguish between downloading tensor flow that's being developed by Google or some small personal project. It all looks the same. The same thing goes for music, graphics (e.g. iconography, fonts, ...), and even things like physical products on Amazon - it all feels the same.

O_H_E 6y ago
Very interesting take.
roflc0ptic 6y ago
I wonder how one rectifies this. I feel like small open source developers have conflicting incentives here. If an open source project was clearly prefaced with "While this is professional and fully featured, it's also the effort of one human working 10 hours a week on the weeks he doesn't have the kids", would you use it? Developers who want their open source projects used have incentive to make their project look serious and long term, and being a one man operation makes the thing have a large point of failure. You could imagine a "smallware" movement, e.g. some centralized body that certified that a particular piece of OSS was written by a single person/team (a.k.a. I set up a website and list anyone that asks), and brand their libraries accordingly - it would be an implicit appeal for funds. But have I just reinvented a bootleg apache software foundation?
- ZWoz 6y ago
  My personal take, maybe not suitable for everyone. Don't use github. Github is that big faceless storefront. Use your own personal site, make it really simple. Now you don't have random "drive-throughs", who really don't care about your project, but are ready to give unsolicited advice. No point to have public issue tracker, when developers are known and small group. I like Drew DeVault projects, like sourcehut - doing things simple and off from big corp infra.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
The main difference between tensorflow and some small personal project is that the small personal project is likely to work

by pontus 6y ago

O_H_E 6y ago

Very interesting take.

roflc0ptic 6y ago

I wonder how one rectifies this. I feel like small open source developers have conflicting incentives here. If an open source project was clearly prefaced with "While this is professional and fully featured, it's also the effort of one human working 10 hours a week on the weeks he doesn't have the kids", would you use it? Developers who want their open source projects used have incentive to make their project look serious and long term, and being a one man operation makes the thing have a large point of failure. You could imagine a "smallware" movement, e.g. some centralized body that certified that a particular piece of OSS was written by a single person/team (a.k.a. I set up a website and list anyone that asks), and brand their libraries accordingly - it would be an implicit appeal for funds. But have I just reinvented a bootleg apache software foundation?

ZWoz 6y ago
My personal take, maybe not suitable for everyone. Don't use github. Github is that big faceless storefront. Use your own personal site, make it really simple. Now you don't have random "drive-throughs", who really don't care about your project, but are ready to give unsolicited advice. No point to have public issue tracker, when developers are known and small group. I like Drew DeVault projects, like sourcehut - doing things simple and off from big corp infra.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

The main difference between tensorflow and some small personal project is that the small personal project is likely to work