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> People are unreasonable when they expect free hand-holding support just because the software is free I agree. I don't argue that people should expect support
by mbrodersen 5y ago
> People are unreasonable when they expect free hand-holding support just because the software is free
I agree. I don't argue that people should expect support to be free. What I am arguing is that if you don't put a market value on your work then you are signaling to the world that your skills and hours are worth $0. Even though your work clearly has intrinsic value for companies/people.
> Trollish, because telling open source developers that their software has no worth comes awfully close to the “no personal attacks” rules ycombinator has.
Not at all. The work open source developers do clearly has intrinsic value. It is useful. That's why people use it. However it has $0 market value when maintainers give it away for $0. And that has real world consequences.
> There are a lot of free market fundamentalists out there that think the free market will magically solve all problems.
I am not one of them.
- strenholme 5y agoIf Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett all download and start using my open source project tomorrow, that’s fine and I won’t ask them for a penny until when and if they start sending me emails or bug reports asking for support. Indeed, big companies using my open source looks really great on my resume. Both the GPL and AGPL are restrictive enough that it’s a reasonable business model to say “GPL if you won’t pay, non-GPL if you pay” and make money. The Juce toolkit, for example, is GPL if you don’t pay, but non-GPL if you do pay.
- mbrodersen 5y agoYep that is definitely one business model that might work. So you agree with me that having a proper business model for your OSS work is the way to go instead of complaining that people don't send you $ out of the kindness of their hearts or some moral code that only the OSS maintainer is aware of.