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I don't think the dissatisfied tone is justified here. If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools

by eps 5y ago

I don't think the dissatisfied tone is justified here. If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools you use to be paid too. I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. The only iff-ish bit is Travis' legacy committment to serve open source projects for free, but again I suspect that some of the larger ones ultimately abused the offer and that led to the change.

aliswe 5y ago
Yep, very strange leftish attitude.
occz 5y ago
If you evaluate it on the promise given when they adopted the tool (free for open source forever), then the dissatisfaction makes sense, I think. The promise has been broken.
sennight 5y ago
> I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. You don't see the donut hole issue? "Sorry, but if you want to sponsor the project you need to cover 100% of the cost. Don't worry, I'm sure the director of your department will be really receptive to the suggestion and not view you as a potential problem." It would effectively result in corporations buying a select few projects, which wouldn't end well for anyone... imagine patent portfolios but with more drama and a legal framework closer to what you'd find in Bartertown from Mad Max.
- eps 5y ago
  Not sure I follow. How is this a sponsor's headache? It's entirely up to the sponsored devs to allocate received funds as they prefer.
  - sennight 5y ago
    "Among the new requirements on the project was this: Project must not be sponsored by a commercial company or organization (monetary or with employees paid to work on the project)" So what happens when more than one of these "developers of tools you use to be paid" demands the same? You get Mark Zuckerberg shouting "Who run Bartertown?!" at some poor project maintainer. Edit: It just occurred to me that the point of confusion might be my reference to the 90s era US welfare program, and not Master Blaster... basically the donut hole described the gulf between how much somebody on welfare got paid while not working and how much they'd need to get paid in order to cover the loss of access to the program (because having a job, among other things that help to lift one out of poverty, made you ineligible). The really bad part has more to do with the how unlikely it was for somebody in such a situation to ever be able to demand such a rate without first developing a work history and gaining experience - which guaranteed no positive change without first assuming a massive amount of risk. The same phenomenon would occur here, where taking a single dollar or accepting a pull request from an address with a corporate domain would have to be weighed against the cost of all tooling in use by a project suddenly demanding money. It would be a massive disincentive to incremental improvement, where the only rational move is to either abandon all such tooling (which, ironically, very likely depends on other open source projects in a similar situation) or turn down every offer that doesn't fully cover all potential costs.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools you use to be paid too. I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. That might be your opinion, but nothing in your sentence logically follows. Most Open Source programmers are getting paid by somebody, so what you're really saying is that there shouldn't be Open Source credits.
Zababa 5y ago
I don't see any dissatisfied tone apart from the part with "Testing your open source projects will always be free!", which turned out to be false. > If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools you use to be paid too. I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. I don't think Travis was called unreasonable anywhere. The post even ends with "Thank you Travis CI for all those years of excellent service!", which I would describe as thankful, not dissatisfied. Also the "Services come and go. There’s no need to get hung up on that fact but instead keep moving forward with our eyes fixed on the horizon.".

by eps 5y ago

aliswe 5y ago

Yep, very strange leftish attitude.

occz 5y ago

If you evaluate it on the promise given when they adopted the tool (free for open source forever), then the dissatisfaction makes sense, I think. The promise has been broken.

sennight 5y ago

> I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. You don't see the donut hole issue? "Sorry, but if you want to sponsor the project you need to cover 100% of the cost. Don't worry, I'm sure the director of your department will be really receptive to the suggestion and not view you as a potential problem." It would effectively result in corporations buying a select few projects, which wouldn't end well for anyone... imagine patent portfolios but with more drama and a legal framework closer to what you'd find in Bartertown from Mad Max.

eps 5y ago
Not sure I follow. How is this a sponsor's headache? It's entirely up to the sponsored devs to allocate received funds as they prefer.
- sennight 5y ago
  "Among the new requirements on the project was this: Project must not be sponsored by a commercial company or organization (monetary or with employees paid to work on the project)" So what happens when more than one of these "developers of tools you use to be paid" demands the same? You get Mark Zuckerberg shouting "Who run Bartertown?!" at some poor project maintainer. Edit: It just occurred to me that the point of confusion might be my reference to the 90s era US welfare program, and not Master Blaster... basically the donut hole described the gulf between how much somebody on welfare got paid while not working and how much they'd need to get paid in order to cover the loss of access to the program (because having a job, among other things that help to lift one out of poverty, made you ineligible). The really bad part has more to do with the how unlikely it was for somebody in such a situation to ever be able to demand such a rate without first developing a work history and gaining experience - which guaranteed no positive change without first assuming a massive amount of risk. The same phenomenon would occur here, where taking a single dollar or accepting a pull request from an address with a corporate domain would have to be weighed against the cost of all tooling in use by a project suddenly demanding money. It would be a massive disincentive to incremental improvement, where the only rational move is to either abandon all such tooling (which, ironically, very likely depends on other open source projects in a similar situation) or turn down every offer that doesn't fully cover all potential costs.

redis_mlc 5y ago

> If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools you use to be paid too. I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. That might be your opinion, but nothing in your sentence logically follows. Most Open Source programmers are getting paid by somebody, so what you're really saying is that there shouldn't be Open Source credits.

Zababa 5y ago

I don't see any dissatisfied tone apart from the part with "Testing your open source projects will always be free!", which turned out to be false. > If you are being paid to make a free product, it's actually quite reasonable for the developers of tools you use to be paid too. I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. I don't think Travis was called unreasonable anywhere. The post even ends with "Thank you Travis CI for all those years of excellent service!", which I would describe as thankful, not dissatisfied. Also the "Services come and go. There’s no need to get hung up on that fact but instead keep moving forward with our eyes fixed on the horizon.".