3 ms·

The thing is, if the new project maintainers go against the community, but the community really need to use it, the community will just fork out a new path and

The thing is, if the new project maintainers go against the community, but the community really need to use it, the community will just fork out a new path and move on. If the project is really open source.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I don’t think that really happens, anymore. Twenty years ago, they would have done that, but these days, someone would just write a replacement from scratch (quite possibly, proprietary), or everyone would abandon it, along with their own projects that depend on it. Most open-source (and closed-source) APIs and SDKs are “Swiss Army knife” projects, with many functions that serve many purposes. Most API consumers use only a subset of the interface, so “rolling their own” is not that intimidating. I think with all the security problems that we’re seeing, these days, we may be headed for some agency/consortium that validates dependencies (with all the myriad problems, therein). We may be seeing more “semi-proprietary” stuff, soon. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I think that anyone that makes money on software should probably pay for it.
- antran22 5y ago
  I think we are straying from the point of FOSS once we talk about money. If I start a new open source project, it will be my gift to the world, and I expect to gain nothing from it financially. If Google make a billion bucks from my project then I'm sure some other dudes running a startup is using it too, and if my project helps them then I'm happy. If my help is not appreciated, lotsa luck gentlemen ;) As I have made my point before, if all I want is money I would spend my time working a paying job. But money is not everything isn't it?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    Preaching to the choir, here. Take a gander at my work. But making things that other people depend on is an obligation; not just a vocation. I liken writing an SDK/API/library to having children. Once they are there, they aren't really my "property" anymore, and I am under an obligation to maintain and support them, so I need to keep that in mind, when I publish them. I need to play the long game. I've written a system that is used by thousands, around the world, and is the backbone infrastructure for a particular demographic. It is not hyperbole to say that lives depend on it. I worked on it for ten years, before transferring it. The best thing that I ever did for that system was toss the keys to a new team, and walk away. Nowadays, I'm just the dorky old man that chips in his two cents' worth, from time to time. I'm not particularly interested in getting into religious battles, which is fairly common in the [F]OSS community. I mostly code for the love of the craft. Delivering and supporting open-source projects helps me to have a purpose, but I also take my obligations quite seriously. One of those obligations is to go to great lengths to deliver very high-quality software. I'm quite aware that it is not commercially feasible to write software that meets my personal Quality bar, so I give it away for free,
- antran22 5y ago
  Also to refute your point here, I would say that there's not really that many project maintainers that just totally go rogue and kill the whole project. An event that was most similar to what I describe here is the Freenode boogaloo, and you can see that users started to move to Libera.Chat. If you advertise your product as community oriented and do stuff that your community despises then you basically have just shoot yourself in the foot.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    TBH, I'm not exactly sure how that "refutes my point." I apologize for mentioning money. I think that may have raised some hackles.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Nobody forks anymore. Almost nobody contributes anymore. People have no idea that's it's mainly charity. And even then people demand, get angry, don't read any docs, etc, etc. Bigtech sometimes helps by employing these guys. What is really needed is a service, which does the moderation and filtering. Kind of like oss communication management as a service. For example by github.
- scruffyherder 5y ago
  Something like the patreon thing for sure which also means community outreach and engagement. It also means supporting other people and stepping up. It’s so few and far that’ll pay value for value.
- mook 5y ago
  I think that was always the case — the majority of people don't contribute meaningfully, and was quite demanding. I had an old open source project that got a few users, and eventually too many support requests for me to handle. Somebody stepped up and helped maintain things until I lost interest, but that was a very tiny fraction of the people involved. I was lucky there and (as far as I know) they never went rouge. Outsourced moderation would probably end up something like Stack Overflow — useful things will be closed because non-subject-experts can't tell the difference between invalid questions and valid questions that look like invalid questions.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I don’t think that really happens, anymore. Twenty years ago, they would have done that, but these days, someone would just write a replacement from scratch (quite possibly, proprietary), or everyone would abandon it, along with their own projects that depend on it. Most open-source (and closed-source) APIs and SDKs are “Swiss Army knife” projects, with many functions that serve many purposes. Most API consumers use only a subset of the interface, so “rolling their own” is not that intimidating. I think with all the security problems that we’re seeing, these days, we may be headed for some agency/consortium that validates dependencies (with all the myriad problems, therein). We may be seeing more “semi-proprietary” stuff, soon. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I think that anyone that makes money on software should probably pay for it.

antran22 5y ago
I think we are straying from the point of FOSS once we talk about money. If I start a new open source project, it will be my gift to the world, and I expect to gain nothing from it financially. If Google make a billion bucks from my project then I'm sure some other dudes running a startup is using it too, and if my project helps them then I'm happy. If my help is not appreciated, lotsa luck gentlemen ;) As I have made my point before, if all I want is money I would spend my time working a paying job. But money is not everything isn't it?
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Preaching to the choir, here. Take a gander at my work. But making things that other people depend on is an obligation; not just a vocation. I liken writing an SDK/API/library to having children. Once they are there, they aren't really my "property" anymore, and I am under an obligation to maintain and support them, so I need to keep that in mind, when I publish them. I need to play the long game. I've written a system that is used by thousands, around the world, and is the backbone infrastructure for a particular demographic. It is not hyperbole to say that lives depend on it. I worked on it for ten years, before transferring it. The best thing that I ever did for that system was toss the keys to a new team, and walk away. Nowadays, I'm just the dorky old man that chips in his two cents' worth, from time to time. I'm not particularly interested in getting into religious battles, which is fairly common in the [F]OSS community. I mostly code for the love of the craft. Delivering and supporting open-source projects helps me to have a purpose, but I also take my obligations quite seriously. One of those obligations is to go to great lengths to deliver very high-quality software. I'm quite aware that it is not commercially feasible to write software that meets my personal Quality bar, so I give it away for free,
antran22 5y ago
Also to refute your point here, I would say that there's not really that many project maintainers that just totally go rogue and kill the whole project. An event that was most similar to what I describe here is the Freenode boogaloo, and you can see that users started to move to Libera.Chat. If you advertise your product as community oriented and do stuff that your community despises then you basically have just shoot yourself in the foot.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  TBH, I'm not exactly sure how that "refutes my point." I apologize for mentioning money. I think that may have raised some hackles.

jbverschoor 5y ago

Nobody forks anymore. Almost nobody contributes anymore. People have no idea that's it's mainly charity. And even then people demand, get angry, don't read any docs, etc, etc. Bigtech sometimes helps by employing these guys. What is really needed is a service, which does the moderation and filtering. Kind of like oss communication management as a service. For example by github.

scruffyherder 5y ago
Something like the patreon thing for sure which also means community outreach and engagement. It also means supporting other people and stepping up. It’s so few and far that’ll pay value for value.
mook 5y ago
I think that was always the case — the majority of people don't contribute meaningfully, and was quite demanding. I had an old open source project that got a few users, and eventually too many support requests for me to handle. Somebody stepped up and helped maintain things until I lost interest, but that was a very tiny fraction of the people involved. I was lucky there and (as far as I know) they never went rouge. Outsourced moderation would probably end up something like Stack Overflow — useful things will be closed because non-subject-experts can't tell the difference between invalid questions and valid questions that look like invalid questions.