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Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it, but I'm not sure what I'm not supposed to be making

by synu 4y ago

Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it, but I'm not sure what I'm not supposed to be making a mistake about? Can you clarify?

sireat 4y ago
I meant to say that lichess.org is a bit of an outlier for a great service based on FOSS principles and a donation model. There are many chessplayers who think lichess > chess because it is absolutely free. That is not a sufficient condition for greatness. Having a paid model is not a horrible thing. It is not given that a nice FOSS project is sustainable. There are plenty of free projects which went nowhere. Only a handful FOSS projects can support themselves (vue, lichess and very few others). Even worse, there are many formerly great FOSS projects half-abandonded when the original creator decided to get a "real job". That is what worries me with lichess - the bus factor of one. Yes I have lichess repo on my computer but that is not sufficient. As I have grown older I've come to appreciate the value of paying for things well made.
- eloisant 4y ago
  I guess we'll only know for sure when Thibault loses interest in lichess or gets hit by a bus, but I think lichess could continue without him. There are only people working with him, he's not alone in the project. And other people have access to the servers so even if he dies suddenly without having time to do a hand-off the project could still continue.
- synu 4y ago
  Lichess has >300 contributors. Probably not all of them could take over the project, but probably some could if needed. It also accepts donations, so isn't an unpaid model (it's just designed to cover costs, not generate profits). - https://github.com/lichess-org/lila https://github.com/lichess-org/lila - https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron
Aicy 4y ago
Not the same. With opensource tools businesses often do contribute back, via their paid employees. This is because the business wants to use the tool, but wants some new features / bugfix, and the opensource license means they legally have to contribute back to the opensource project if they want to add that feature and keep using the project. With lichess the players are almost entirely just consumers of a free product. > Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it If you want proof this statement is wrong just look at the open source companies that were created by for-profit companies, such as React by Facebook, Visual Studio Code by Microsoft, or Golang by Google. These are some of the biggest opens source projects, developed by very highly paid software engineers. All that said, of course there is many OSS projects out there maintained by some unpaid person doing it out of the kindness of their heart. It goes both ways of course, when a business open sources their project they benefit from the contributions of others.

by synu 4y ago

Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it, but I'm not sure what I'm not supposed to be making a mistake about? Can you clarify?

sireat 4y ago

I meant to say that lichess.org is a bit of an outlier for a great service based on FOSS principles and a donation model. There are many chessplayers who think lichess > chess because it is absolutely free. That is not a sufficient condition for greatness. Having a paid model is not a horrible thing. It is not given that a nice FOSS project is sustainable. There are plenty of free projects which went nowhere. Only a handful FOSS projects can support themselves (vue, lichess and very few others). Even worse, there are many formerly great FOSS projects half-abandonded when the original creator decided to get a "real job". That is what worries me with lichess - the bus factor of one. Yes I have lichess repo on my computer but that is not sufficient. As I have grown older I've come to appreciate the value of paying for things well made.

eloisant 4y ago
I guess we'll only know for sure when Thibault loses interest in lichess or gets hit by a bus, but I think lichess could continue without him. There are only people working with him, he's not alone in the project. And other people have access to the servers so even if he dies suddenly without having time to do a hand-off the project could still continue.
synu 4y ago
Lichess has >300 contributors. Probably not all of them could take over the project, but probably some could if needed. It also accepts donations, so isn't an unpaid model (it's just designed to cover costs, not generate profits). - https://github.com/lichess-org/lila https://github.com/lichess-org/lila - https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron

Aicy 4y ago

Not the same. With opensource tools businesses often do contribute back, via their paid employees. This is because the business wants to use the tool, but wants some new features / bugfix, and the opensource license means they legally have to contribute back to the opensource project if they want to add that feature and keep using the project. With lichess the players are almost entirely just consumers of a free product. > Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it If you want proof this statement is wrong just look at the open source companies that were created by for-profit companies, such as React by Facebook, Visual Studio Code by Microsoft, or Golang by Google. These are some of the biggest opens source projects, developed by very highly paid software engineers. All that said, of course there is many OSS projects out there maintained by some unpaid person doing it out of the kindness of their heart. It goes both ways of course, when a business open sources their project they benefit from the contributions of others.