2 ms·

While I'm generally sympathetic to the points made in the article, I think one statement it makes is misguided: "[R]emember and really deeply internalise the f

by pdonis 4y ago

While I'm generally sympathetic to the points made in the article, I think one statement it makes is misguided: "[R]emember and really deeply internalise the fact that you can stop working on any open source project at any time. Open source maintenance is a job and, like a job, when it stops working for you and you have better options, you can go elsewhere. You should not feel bad about this; instead, you should feel good about the fact that every contribution you continue to make or made in the past were good deeds given freely to others. When your life or the project means it no longer feels good to work on it anymore — stop." Actually, the fact that you can just stop working on any open source project at any time, regardless of how many users it has, means that an open source project is not a job. In an actual job, you cannot just walk away whenever you feel like it, because someone is paying you to do the work, and you have some kind of actual agreement with whoever is paying you that you can't just break if you feel like it. If nobody is paying you for your open source software, it's not a job. I emphasize that I am not saying that working on your own open source project in your own free time should be a job where you can't just stop when you feel like it. As long as the situation is made clear to your users, then it's on them to deal with it. But that very fact means that you should not be describing it as a job, because it's not. Your relationship with your users is not the same as it would be if the software were your actual job and you were being paid for it.

phkahler 4y ago
>> an open source project is not a job. In an actual job, you cannot just walk away whenever you feel like it, because someone is paying you to do the work, and you have some kind of actual agreement with whoever is paying you that you can't just break if you feel like it. What country are you in? People quit paying jobs all the time. Most employment in the U.S. is "at will" which is usually used to mean "we can fire you at any time for any reason" but the flip side is "I can walk away at any time" and people do. In some cases enough people quit a company that it can't continue and closes down.
- pdonis 4y ago
  A job doesn't have to be paid "at will" employment working for a company. You might be a founder of the company, and the company might have contracts with paying customers. You might be an independent contractor with contractual agreements with clients. Contractual agreements of that sort that involve open source software are the situations where open source software would be your job. But with Homebrew, none of this is the case; Homebrew does not have paying users, and the organization the project is a part of is a nonprofit that has no contractual agreements with anyone regarding the project, and does not pay employees to work on it--the project maintainers are all unpaid volunteers. Such a situation is typical for open source projects, and in such a situation, the project is not anyone's job because no one has any binding commitments to it. Even in the case of "at will" employment with a company, an employee generally can't quit with zero notice; there is some kind of notification period, even if it's only a week or two. But in any case, in such a situation, the company is highly unlikely to be providing open source software that many other users depend on; and even if it were, the contractual agreements with paying users, if any, would be the company's, not the employees'. So even if the employee might be able to say they can just walk away from a "job", the company can't. The company has binding commitments that it will suffer penalties for breaking; those commitments are the company's job. And if the company doesn't have any such binding commitments, then providing that open source software is not the company's job, any more than providing Homebrew is the Homebrew volunteers' job. It's something they do because they feel like it.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    >> Even in the case of "at will" employment with a company, an employee generally can't quit with zero notice; there is some kind of notification period, even if it's only a week or two. No, actually the whole at-will thing means that is literally not the case. It's polite to give notice, it might be tied to some form of severance to give notice, but in 49 US states you absolutely have the right to get up from your desk, right this second, leave, and never come back. And your employers only legal action will be to pay you for the time right up until you quit.
    - pdonis 4y ago

by pdonis 4y ago

phkahler 4y ago

>> an open source project is not a job. In an actual job, you cannot just walk away whenever you feel like it, because someone is paying you to do the work, and you have some kind of actual agreement with whoever is paying you that you can't just break if you feel like it. What country are you in? People quit paying jobs all the time. Most employment in the U.S. is "at will" which is usually used to mean "we can fire you at any time for any reason" but the flip side is "I can walk away at any time" and people do. In some cases enough people quit a company that it can't continue and closes down.

pdonis 4y ago
A job doesn't have to be paid "at will" employment working for a company. You might be a founder of the company, and the company might have contracts with paying customers. You might be an independent contractor with contractual agreements with clients. Contractual agreements of that sort that involve open source software are the situations where open source software would be your job. But with Homebrew, none of this is the case; Homebrew does not have paying users, and the organization the project is a part of is a nonprofit that has no contractual agreements with anyone regarding the project, and does not pay employees to work on it--the project maintainers are all unpaid volunteers. Such a situation is typical for open source projects, and in such a situation, the project is not anyone's job because no one has any binding commitments to it. Even in the case of "at will" employment with a company, an employee generally can't quit with zero notice; there is some kind of notification period, even if it's only a week or two. But in any case, in such a situation, the company is highly unlikely to be providing open source software that many other users depend on; and even if it were, the contractual agreements with paying users, if any, would be the company's, not the employees'. So even if the employee might be able to say they can just walk away from a "job", the company can't. The company has binding commitments that it will suffer penalties for breaking; those commitments are the company's job. And if the company doesn't have any such binding commitments, then providing that open source software is not the company's job, any more than providing Homebrew is the Homebrew volunteers' job. It's something they do because they feel like it.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  >> Even in the case of "at will" employment with a company, an employee generally can't quit with zero notice; there is some kind of notification period, even if it's only a week or two. No, actually the whole at-will thing means that is literally not the case. It's polite to give notice, it might be tied to some form of severance to give notice, but in 49 US states you absolutely have the right to get up from your desk, right this second, leave, and never come back. And your employers only legal action will be to pay you for the time right up until you quit.
  - pdonis 4y ago