4 ms·

I'm curious on your thoughts about the difference between publishing this post and publishing oss/foss code. To me, it seems like this blog post is something y

I'm curious on your thoughts about the difference between publishing this post and publishing oss/foss code. To me, it seems like this blog post is something you've shared freely with the world, with no expectation of getting direct financial compensation for it. You have an idea you want others to read and think about, so you wrote it down. To me, this act of publishing and sharing your thoughts freely in the hopes others might find them interesting shares similarities to free software. You wrote something that you think others might find interesting or useful, and you want to share it. That statement applies equally well to FOSS and blog posts. What do you see as the major difference? Is it that OSS rejects copyright, so the code can be used for profit, while your post can't freely appear in, say, a published for-profit book of opinions on OSS? Would you be opposed to this post being published by someone else and you not getting money for similar reasons that you blog about here? Is the difference in expectations, that people expect support for software, while people expect nothing of blog posts? That a blog post is finished and may be thrown over the wall, comments ignored, typos uncorrected, and that feels "fine", while software thrown over the wall with issues ignored and no future changes planned feels "weird"? Is there some bigger difference? Is there a way to reduce this difference, to create an environment or structure where you would share code, just as you currently willingly share your thoughts and writings on this blog?

xena 5y ago
I actually do make a very small amount of money for my posts. I make about $120 per month on Patreon (I more accurately make $175-ish per month but I also donate back to the amount of about $55 per month to other projects) and this blog is frequently brought up in interviews, which means that it becomes an impetus for people to hire me. I'm not sure how to quantify that, but either way it offsets the costs of hosting the server, even though I have kind of a ridiculous level of overkill (Ryzen 5 3600, 64 GB of ram) for that server. As for the time to write these posts, yeah I'm making nowhere near my market value for this kind of writing. I've considered adding ads to my blog, but I still feel kind of philosophically uncomfortable with "selling out" like that. My job really does make sure that all my needs are accounted for and I am blessed to be in a state where I have financial excess and can make additional private contributions to other projects. At some level though my blog is really a sink for my anxiety. Just being able to put words out into the void and knowing that someone is gonna read them helps a lot when it comes to making things a lot less scary in the world. I really do just throw them over the wall when I'm done though lol. Sometimes I'll do a typo pass but most of the time I write well enough that my first pass turns out to be the last pass unless some critical problem is found. This doesn't happen often though. I do occasionally make volumes out of my writing and sell them on Itch (https://withinstudios.itch.io/ https://withinstudios.itch.io/), but I have only ever made $250 on there in total; nowhere near enough to fund the creation of the media in question. I also don't advertise my Itch shop very well so that may be partially on me. Mostly though the goal of this post was to make people think about the issue. I have succeeded.

xena 5y ago

I actually do make a very small amount of money for my posts. I make about $120 per month on Patreon (I more accurately make $175-ish per month but I also donate back to the amount of about $55 per month to other projects) and this blog is frequently brought up in interviews, which means that it becomes an impetus for people to hire me. I'm not sure how to quantify that, but either way it offsets the costs of hosting the server, even though I have kind of a ridiculous level of overkill (Ryzen 5 3600, 64 GB of ram) for that server. As for the time to write these posts, yeah I'm making nowhere near my market value for this kind of writing. I've considered adding ads to my blog, but I still feel kind of philosophically uncomfortable with "selling out" like that. My job really does make sure that all my needs are accounted for and I am blessed to be in a state where I have financial excess and can make additional private contributions to other projects. At some level though my blog is really a sink for my anxiety. Just being able to put words out into the void and knowing that someone is gonna read them helps a lot when it comes to making things a lot less scary in the world. I really do just throw them over the wall when I'm done though lol. Sometimes I'll do a typo pass but most of the time I write well enough that my first pass turns out to be the last pass unless some critical problem is found. This doesn't happen often though. I do occasionally make volumes out of my writing and sell them on Itch (https://withinstudios.itch.io/ https://withinstudios.itch.io/), but I have only ever made $250 on there in total; nowhere near enough to fund the creation of the media in question. I also don't advertise my Itch shop very well so that may be partially on me. Mostly though the goal of this post was to make people think about the issue. I have succeeded.