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Imagine someone told you in 1989 when all the internet did was email and ftp, that the internet was going to do a lot of other things but they didn't really kno

Imagine someone told you in 1989 when all the internet did was email and ftp, that the internet was going to do a lot of other things but they didn't really know what yet.

richardwhiuk 4y ago
The difference is that email and FTP on their own were really useful.
Tao3300 4y ago
> all the internet did was email and ftp In retrospect, that would have been a nice stopping point...
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
There was still plenty that could be imagined in 1989 that the Internet could be capable of - there was none of this "it is just too unimaginable to even consider" nonsense. E.g. there were plenty of dialup BBS services and things like Prodigy with GUI, chat, etc. in the 80s. It wasn't that much of a great leap to see how moving those types of things from proprietary networks to the Internet would occur.
- kranke155 4y ago
  DAOs are fantastically interesting and if you look into the ones that work, Vitalik’s ideas for Quadratic Voting, there’s a lot toucan imagine could happen there. DAOs and NFTs are already incredible in my view, they are just in pre-alpha stage and everything is kind of a mess. But people see the pre-alpha and goes “this will never work”. I really disagree. I see for instance how DAOs and blockchain could help developers receive compensation for commits to open source software, creating a possibility for the commercialisation of open source that competes with even large companies. I know people who looked into this. And I hope it happens. It would dramatically change the incentives if you could get as much or even more money from open source software as a developer, and even more so if you could colect royalties for your work wherever it’s used. The entire digital economy would change if you could have open source software that’s fully open, permission less and paid for.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    > I see for instance how DAOs and blockchain could help developers receive compensation for commits to open source software, creating a possibility for the commercialisation of open source that competes with even large companies. I know people who looked into this. And I hope it happens. I was appropriately reprimanded by dang yesterday for starting a comment with an attack, so I'll slow down and just point out the following: 1. GitHub, for example, already makes it extremely easy to contribute to open source developers. It's called GitHub Sponsors. 2. I have actually donated to a developer that writes a library I love using GitHub Sponsors. It was trivial to do, I just entered my credit card, the money came out on a monthly basis, and I cancelled after a year (I told the dev I'd support them for a year). I'll also note that I don't live in the same country as the developer and the developer's country uses a different currency. 3. The thing that gets me about these kinds of examples proposed by crypto fans is that the mechanics of how to, for example, pay open source devs is zero part of the problem. The problem is that a lot of people are willing to work for free, and software users don't like to pay for stuff that they can get for free. Again, I see a lot of "hand-wavy utopianism" from crypto enthusiasts, but I see zero examples of (a) why this would be better than GitHub Sponsors, or (b) why do you think GitHub Sponsors hasn't been more successful (hint, it's not that actually making payment with a GH Sponsorship is difficult).
    - kranke155 4y ago
      I’ve gotten some flak from dang as well ;) happens sometimes I think we are describing fundamentally different economies. GitHub Sponsors is optional. I’m talking about a way to have mandatory payments in open-source, with fully transparent automatic payment mechanisms to all contributors. And before you say well how, MakerDAO is kind of already working like this (I’d have to look into it more but that’s my impression). Imagine you buy a piece of software - and it costs you 20$. It’s open source but when you buy it you get an NFT that lets you run the software. The commit tree and their importance are valued by the community. And when you buy the software everyone who’s contributed gets a piece. If you add or extend to it, you’ll also get a share, or you can sell your modules on the side and make your own money on top. But using the blockchain as a method of developer verification, open source becomes profitable in a way that’s verifiable, decentralised and permission less. Anyone can fork but whatever much of the software youve re used still goes to the original developers. I’m talking about full open source software that would always be paid, where the devs would be IDed on chain, where anyone could write new modules for and get paid on chain for their contributions. All of this is not crypto Utopianism - again some DAOs are already there or close. Im not talking about “hey sponsor this dev”. I’m talking about a way to earn money while keeping software open source and rewarding people for expanding it in a completely novel way. This is already partially true, even if my whole vision at the moment is a bit fuzzy, it would solve a major challenge that I think we have now. I am a bit sleepy so I wonder if my comment will make sense but I hope it does. But fundamentally I believe MakerDAO already does this, it’s just a web app and you pay to use it. Part of that revenue goes to Ethereum miners/stakers, some goes to the protocol, and the protocol decides who to reward. I don’t see why that model wouldn’t work for a lot of other things. Essentially with crypto VMs you can enforce a model that A. Is open source B. Rewards contributors financially. Asking why this is better than GitHub Sponsors is a bit like asking why people didn’t pay for digital art before NFTs. It’s just fundamentally different imo.

Imagine someone told you in 1989 when all the internet did was email and ftp, that the internet was going to do a lot of other things but they didn't really know what yet.

richardwhiuk 4y ago

The difference is that email and FTP on their own were really useful.

Tao3300 4y ago

> all the internet did was email and ftp In retrospect, that would have been a nice stopping point...

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

There was still plenty that could be imagined in 1989 that the Internet could be capable of - there was none of this "it is just too unimaginable to even consider" nonsense. E.g. there were plenty of dialup BBS services and things like Prodigy with GUI, chat, etc. in the 80s. It wasn't that much of a great leap to see how moving those types of things from proprietary networks to the Internet would occur.

kranke155 4y ago
DAOs are fantastically interesting and if you look into the ones that work, Vitalik’s ideas for Quadratic Voting, there’s a lot toucan imagine could happen there. DAOs and NFTs are already incredible in my view, they are just in pre-alpha stage and everything is kind of a mess. But people see the pre-alpha and goes “this will never work”. I really disagree. I see for instance how DAOs and blockchain could help developers receive compensation for commits to open source software, creating a possibility for the commercialisation of open source that competes with even large companies. I know people who looked into this. And I hope it happens. It would dramatically change the incentives if you could get as much or even more money from open source software as a developer, and even more so if you could colect royalties for your work wherever it’s used. The entire digital economy would change if you could have open source software that’s fully open, permission less and paid for.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > I see for instance how DAOs and blockchain could help developers receive compensation for commits to open source software, creating a possibility for the commercialisation of open source that competes with even large companies. I know people who looked into this. And I hope it happens. I was appropriately reprimanded by dang yesterday for starting a comment with an attack, so I'll slow down and just point out the following: 1. GitHub, for example, already makes it extremely easy to contribute to open source developers. It's called GitHub Sponsors. 2. I have actually donated to a developer that writes a library I love using GitHub Sponsors. It was trivial to do, I just entered my credit card, the money came out on a monthly basis, and I cancelled after a year (I told the dev I'd support them for a year). I'll also note that I don't live in the same country as the developer and the developer's country uses a different currency. 3. The thing that gets me about these kinds of examples proposed by crypto fans is that the mechanics of how to, for example, pay open source devs is zero part of the problem. The problem is that a lot of people are willing to work for free, and software users don't like to pay for stuff that they can get for free. Again, I see a lot of "hand-wavy utopianism" from crypto enthusiasts, but I see zero examples of (a) why this would be better than GitHub Sponsors, or (b) why do you think GitHub Sponsors hasn't been more successful (hint, it's not that actually making payment with a GH Sponsorship is difficult).
  - kranke155 4y ago
    I’ve gotten some flak from dang as well ;) happens sometimes I think we are describing fundamentally different economies. GitHub Sponsors is optional. I’m talking about a way to have mandatory payments in open-source, with fully transparent automatic payment mechanisms to all contributors. And before you say well how, MakerDAO is kind of already working like this (I’d have to look into it more but that’s my impression). Imagine you buy a piece of software - and it costs you 20$. It’s open source but when you buy it you get an NFT that lets you run the software. The commit tree and their importance are valued by the community. And when you buy the software everyone who’s contributed gets a piece. If you add or extend to it, you’ll also get a share, or you can sell your modules on the side and make your own money on top. But using the blockchain as a method of developer verification, open source becomes profitable in a way that’s verifiable, decentralised and permission less. Anyone can fork but whatever much of the software youve re used still goes to the original developers. I’m talking about full open source software that would always be paid, where the devs would be IDed on chain, where anyone could write new modules for and get paid on chain for their contributions. All of this is not crypto Utopianism - again some DAOs are already there or close. Im not talking about “hey sponsor this dev”. I’m talking about a way to earn money while keeping software open source and rewarding people for expanding it in a completely novel way. This is already partially true, even if my whole vision at the moment is a bit fuzzy, it would solve a major challenge that I think we have now. I am a bit sleepy so I wonder if my comment will make sense but I hope it does. But fundamentally I believe MakerDAO already does this, it’s just a web app and you pay to use it. Part of that revenue goes to Ethereum miners/stakers, some goes to the protocol, and the protocol decides who to reward. I don’t see why that model wouldn’t work for a lot of other things. Essentially with crypto VMs you can enforce a model that A. Is open source B. Rewards contributors financially. Asking why this is better than GitHub Sponsors is a bit like asking why people didn’t pay for digital art before NFTs. It’s just fundamentally different imo.