4 ms·
I'm reminded of the recent incident where the developer of the NPM "colors" and "faker" libraries put show-stopping bugs in those libraries in order to cry out
by domador 5y ago
I'm reminded of the recent incident where the developer of the NPM "colors" and "faker" libraries put show-stopping bugs in those libraries in order to cry out for people to give him money. Both incidents reinforce my opinion that it's very hard to make a living making free software. Maybe a takeaway for free software developers is the need to have clear, realistic plan of how they're going to earn money and if it's going to be through their free software, to be very upfront about that with users. These two developers' attempts to get money may have been born out of frustration, yet their methods were underhanded and abused users' trust in them and their products.
- 1_player 5y agoSorry for being unable to sympathise with these developers but: if you want to make money out of it, make your users pay for it. How is this rocket science? It's not even incompatible with the principle of open source. One thing is adding a paid plan after you decide you want to monetise your software, it's unpopular but understandable, another is bundling malware or adding malicious logic to get some money or "protest" because companies aren't paying you. They knew this is how open source worked, and being a twat because they don't like those terms anymore just ruins their reputation and all the goodwill they've built.