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> tech giants accrued fortunes on the backs of people they’ve never thanked, paid or even met. I have a few open-source libraries, and I figure that... since I

> tech giants accrued fortunes on the backs of people they’ve never thanked, paid or even met. I have a few open-source libraries, and I figure that... since I give them away explicitly for free... there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product.

bodge5000 5y ago
I guess theres the larger point about appreciation, with money being the biggest way of showing that. I've heard horror stories about OSS devs getting hundreds of emails a day ripping into them for not working fast enough to fix an issue or implement a feature. It sounds like murder. When I was much younger, I used to be in awe of how OSS devs can do all this amazing stuff, put it with no expectation of compensation, get a wall of critiscm and demands back, and continue working on it stoically without burnout. As I got older, I learned that the burnout is very real and only getting worse. I'm still extremely impressed by any OSS developers ability to keep going [so you should know that at least someone appreciates you ;) ], but it doesn't seem right to me now.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  It's been long known that having a career as an OSS developer is extremely hard. Most people just work on OSS on-and-off, as part of their day job, or a few hours every other day. I treat it as paying it forward for all the tools I use daily.
- travisathougies 5y ago
  > I've heard horror stories about OSS devs getting hundreds of emails a day ripping into them for not working fast enough to fix an issue or implement a feature. It sounds like murder. So... while I don't get 100s of e-mails a day, I do get a good amount per year demanding I implement a feature. I point out that my personal contact details are there (as well as my corporate entity) and that we can be contacted for custom commercial work. The way I see it... OSS is my past-time. The moment there are deadlines you need to pony up
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Yup. It's been quite a while since I've maintained any OSS used widely enough for this type of thing to happen, but if I get into this sort of situation again in the future, my reply will be: "My consulting rate to implement this feature is $500/hour. I estimate this feature will take N hours, and I require 50% of that to be pre-paid before I start work. If you agree to these terms, I will send you a contract to sign and we can get started." Hopefully that will get them to go away, but if by some miracle they agree to that, at least I'll get a nice chunk of change for doing the work.
riffic 5y ago
Max Howell's page freely exudes this sentiment: https://mxcl.dev/ https://mxcl.dev/ I can't say I blame him either but the attitude seems to raise a flag. edit: lol, dude's got history: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=max+howell https://hn.algolia.com/?q=max+howell as a mac user I certainly appreciate Homebrew, but I can see why he's not the current maintainer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038010).
- ar_lan 5y ago
  > Millions of people from all over the world use the software I’ve created. Statements like this always really irk me. It just feels so pretentious.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    If it's true, is it pretentious?
    - Milner08 5y ago
      He may have created it, but he is by no means the sole reason for its success.
      - azinman2 5y ago
        But he’s trying to build credibility in legitimate way. To push it forward, build that community, and make key usability decisions that massively improved things over Mac Ports, these are not things that are easily done and he absolutely deserves credit for it.
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      Almost all of the value of homebrew comes from the sheer comprehensiveness of the package catalog, which entirely relies on a large community of users contributing recipes. He should credit those people and not act like the appeal has anything to do with the brew cli itself as a tool.
undecisive 5y ago
That's great as a snapshot - but add in a time axis. A year down the line, 20 companies are using your code. Two years down the line, 100 companies are using your code. Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money? If you choose yes, know that typically at least one of those companies will be hounding you for bugfixes or out-of-scope demands. We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work. If your turnaround for a fix on your globally used code is anything more than minutes, you will be hated. At least, until it's fixed, then you'll go back to being ignored. If you choose no, well you have two choices: Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to a scammer who breaks the whole internet. Either way, the internet will vilify you for twice as long for your choice. Many people, especially with programmer brain chemistry, end up going down the high-momentum-low-friction route of burning themselves out for the sake of conflict (and bad reputation) avoidance. Because it's very easy for you to say "sell your product", especially if that's something you're good at (or if you've never done it before and so presume it's something you're good at). So once you see that, and you know that, and you see fellow developers stuck in the same hole and you see that you are well placed to do something - anything - to help change that, wouldn't you? > there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product. Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on.
- travisathougies 5y ago
  > Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money? No. I'm very clear with demands on my time that either companies have to provide resources to implement features (and I'll charge a consulting fee to train devs) or pay me directly to implement them (and I'll name the cost). Actually, several companies have paid me, and my project is significantly smaller than homebrew (niche Haskell library). > We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work I don't really care about being vilified online. Have had my fair share. I'm old enough to not give a second thought to online trolls. > Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else Or... don't change the license. Stop giving updates, and put up a notice that says you are not actively working on project X but for a fee you will be happy to make updates. > Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on. I wish them every success, and I may end up using it myself. However, I don't like the accusations of unfairness being levied against open source users (among which I would also include myself) for using freely available code for free.
kelnos 5y ago
I agree with you, but it also irks me that, especially for the most popular packages, hundreds and thousands of companies derive so much value from them, but the original developer gets nothing. And then we have something like the recent Log4j vulnerability, and all the companies come rushing to the developers, filled with entitlement, demanding immediate fixes, throwing shade on the developers for "causing" this problem in the first place, and all that. Open source developers certainly deserve some amount of compensation for having to deal with that garbage, even if we agree that there's no expectation of being paid for the software itself.

bodge5000 5y ago

I guess theres the larger point about appreciation, with money being the biggest way of showing that. I've heard horror stories about OSS devs getting hundreds of emails a day ripping into them for not working fast enough to fix an issue or implement a feature. It sounds like murder. When I was much younger, I used to be in awe of how OSS devs can do all this amazing stuff, put it with no expectation of compensation, get a wall of critiscm and demands back, and continue working on it stoically without burnout. As I got older, I learned that the burnout is very real and only getting worse. I'm still extremely impressed by any OSS developers ability to keep going [so you should know that at least someone appreciates you ;) ], but it doesn't seem right to me now.

ricardobeat 5y ago
It's been long known that having a career as an OSS developer is extremely hard. Most people just work on OSS on-and-off, as part of their day job, or a few hours every other day. I treat it as paying it forward for all the tools I use daily.
travisathougies 5y ago
> I've heard horror stories about OSS devs getting hundreds of emails a day ripping into them for not working fast enough to fix an issue or implement a feature. It sounds like murder. So... while I don't get 100s of e-mails a day, I do get a good amount per year demanding I implement a feature. I point out that my personal contact details are there (as well as my corporate entity) and that we can be contacted for custom commercial work. The way I see it... OSS is my past-time. The moment there are deadlines you need to pony up
- kelnos 5y ago
  Yup. It's been quite a while since I've maintained any OSS used widely enough for this type of thing to happen, but if I get into this sort of situation again in the future, my reply will be: "My consulting rate to implement this feature is $500/hour. I estimate this feature will take N hours, and I require 50% of that to be pre-paid before I start work. If you agree to these terms, I will send you a contract to sign and we can get started." Hopefully that will get them to go away, but if by some miracle they agree to that, at least I'll get a nice chunk of change for doing the work.

riffic 5y ago

Max Howell's page freely exudes this sentiment: https://mxcl.dev/ https://mxcl.dev/ I can't say I blame him either but the attitude seems to raise a flag. edit: lol, dude's got history: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=max+howell https://hn.algolia.com/?q=max+howell as a mac user I certainly appreciate Homebrew, but I can see why he's not the current maintainer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038010).

ar_lan 5y ago
> Millions of people from all over the world use the software I’ve created. Statements like this always really irk me. It just feels so pretentious.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  If it's true, is it pretentious?
  - Milner08 5y ago
    He may have created it, but he is by no means the sole reason for its success.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      But he’s trying to build credibility in legitimate way. To push it forward, build that community, and make key usability decisions that massively improved things over Mac Ports, these are not things that are easily done and he absolutely deserves credit for it.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    Almost all of the value of homebrew comes from the sheer comprehensiveness of the package catalog, which entirely relies on a large community of users contributing recipes. He should credit those people and not act like the appeal has anything to do with the brew cli itself as a tool.

undecisive 5y ago

That's great as a snapshot - but add in a time axis. A year down the line, 20 companies are using your code. Two years down the line, 100 companies are using your code. Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money? If you choose yes, know that typically at least one of those companies will be hounding you for bugfixes or out-of-scope demands. We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work. If your turnaround for a fix on your globally used code is anything more than minutes, you will be hated. At least, until it's fixed, then you'll go back to being ignored. If you choose no, well you have two choices: Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to a scammer who breaks the whole internet. Either way, the internet will vilify you for twice as long for your choice. Many people, especially with programmer brain chemistry, end up going down the high-momentum-low-friction route of burning themselves out for the sake of conflict (and bad reputation) avoidance. Because it's very easy for you to say "sell your product", especially if that's something you're good at (or if you've never done it before and so presume it's something you're good at). So once you see that, and you know that, and you see fellow developers stuck in the same hole and you see that you are well placed to do something - anything - to help change that, wouldn't you? > there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product. Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on.

travisathougies 5y ago
> Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money? No. I'm very clear with demands on my time that either companies have to provide resources to implement features (and I'll charge a consulting fee to train devs) or pay me directly to implement them (and I'll name the cost). Actually, several companies have paid me, and my project is significantly smaller than homebrew (niche Haskell library). > We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work I don't really care about being vilified online. Have had my fair share. I'm old enough to not give a second thought to online trolls. > Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else Or... don't change the license. Stop giving updates, and put up a notice that says you are not actively working on project X but for a fee you will be happy to make updates. > Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on. I wish them every success, and I may end up using it myself. However, I don't like the accusations of unfairness being levied against open source users (among which I would also include myself) for using freely available code for free.

kelnos 5y ago

I agree with you, but it also irks me that, especially for the most popular packages, hundreds and thousands of companies derive so much value from them, but the original developer gets nothing. And then we have something like the recent Log4j vulnerability, and all the companies come rushing to the developers, filled with entitlement, demanding immediate fixes, throwing shade on the developers for "causing" this problem in the first place, and all that. Open source developers certainly deserve some amount of compensation for having to deal with that garbage, even if we agree that there's no expectation of being paid for the software itself.