17 ms·

So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)

• glennericksen 4y ago
  A long post, but the final paragraphs sum up both the problem and the ask: "This was the last attempt to keep core-js as a free open-source project with a proper quality and functionality level. It was the last attempt to convey that there are real people on the other side of open-source with families to feed and problems to solve. If you or your company use core-js in one way or another and are interested in the quality of your supply chain, support the project."
• armchairhacker 4y ago
  > Shit happened 3 weeks after the core-js@3 release. One April night, at 3 AM, I was driving home. Two deadly drunk 18-years-old girls in dark clothes decided somehow to crawl across a poorly lit highway - one of them lay down on the road, another sat down and dragged the first, but not from the road - directly under my wheels. That's what the witnesses said. I had no any chance to see them. One more witness said that before the accident they were just jokingly fighting on the road. Nothing unusual, it's Russia. One of them died and another girl went to a hospital. However, even in this case, according to Russian arbitrage practice, if the driver is not a son of a deputy or someone like that, he almost always will be found guilty - he should see and anticipate everything, and a pedestrian owes nothing to anyone. I could end up in prison for a long time, IIRC later the prosecutor requested 7 years. > The only way not to end up in prison was reconciliation with "victims" - a standard practice after such accidents - and a good lawyer. Within a few weeks after the accident, I received financial claims totaling about 80 thousand dollars at the exchange rate at that time from "victims'" relatives. A significant amount of money was also needed for a lawyer. I don't know the full details but this is incredibly sad. It must be a lot to have killed someone and then spent 18 months in prison. And he is still maintaining this library used by over 19 million repos full-time. Even though some of zloirock's actions have been rude and combative, I think he deserves sympathy. This was right before the "author of core-js is looking for a good job :-)" debacle, I think if more people realized the full context they would've been more sympathetic. Or even if it happened today, when more people seem to realize the importance of funding open-source. Fortunately he is out of jail now, I hope he finally gets a decent amount of funding and everyone can move on.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • throwbadubadu 4y ago
    > I don’t wanna say many words about prison and I have no great desire remembering this. It was slave labor at a chemical factory where my health was significantly ruined and where I 24/7 had a great time in a company of drug dealers, thieves, and killers..
• ericls 4y ago
  We should pay this guy to have a vacation before we pay him to write more code.
  • jay-barronville 4y ago
    It really angers me that he, of all folks, struggled to raise even a percentage of $80K while I personally know FAANG engineers who got $50K+ in signing bonuses alone.
• throwawayopen 4y ago
  This is such a depressing post about the sad state of open source. I can't imagine continuing to maintain the package after what happened. I want to encourage zloirock to forget about this and move on. I think it would be best for him to take a good paid job, live with his family and enjoy a vacation.
  • travisgriggs 4y ago
    > This is such a depressing post about the sad state of open source. But it's also a depressing post about the sad state of single source. I work in a portion of the software world that interacts with real world widgets, 5 factory buildings are right next to mine. "Single source" is a cuss word around here. We do everything we can to avoid it. I think it's awesome what this guy has done; terrible that it's just one guy. A whole aspect of open source was that it shouldn't become reliant on a single source like this. It's supposed to leverage the gestalt of cooperation. I agree with you, it really is too bad.
• karaterobot 4y ago
  In my unasked-for opinion, he should absolutely give up on this project, and take a salaried job that'll let him support his family and not have to deal with the entitlement issues and lack of perspective the community evidently has. If half of what's in this post is true, he's shown admirable restraint: I'd have burned it all down the first time someone got pissy about a free thing I gave them.
  • forevergreenyon 4y ago
    [flagged]
  • robflynn 4y ago
    The open source community can be wild sometimes. Back when I was still maintainer and lead dev for Gaim (not Pidgin), I would occasionally get downright hateful people e-mailing me for not implementing whatever feature they thought needed to be implemented, or not getting it implemented quickly enough. One guy managed to get ahold of my cell phone number somehow and called me at 4am to discuss "his ideas" with me for the project. I ended up having to change my number. Thankfully 95% of the people I interacted with in the community were great and were great, but that other 5% was rough.
    • lelandfe 4y ago
      Old coworker of mine was/is(?) secretly the primary contributor to a a major console emulator. He revealed it to me only after working together for about 4 years. He keeps it incognito because the vitriol his alias receives from impassioned members of the community makes him afraid of getting doxxed. He showed me some of them. I don't blame him.
      • kodt 4y ago
        Those are 100% just people who want all their pirated games to work properly and have no technical interest in the emulator.
        • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• stocknoob 4y ago
  Please, if you are capable of doing development at this level, take the high-paying job, save for a decade, and get FI. Then you can work on OSS 120 hours a week if you like.
  • dgreensp 4y ago
    What is FI?
    • warmwaffles 4y ago
      Financial independence.
• imiric 4y ago
  If you're working for a company that relies on OSS, please suggest establishing an OSS fund to specifically support projects like core-js. Have the company pledge some percentage of profits, where employees decide how the funds get appropriated. E.g. by popularity, relevance, love, or whatever other criteria feels right. Think of the Humble Bundle sliders, for example. It's heart breaking to know that the world's largest companies are using software whose author is struggling financially. That xkcd is 100% right, but this situation is far from amusing.
  • scrollaway 4y ago
    > employees decide how the funds get appropriated. E.g. by popularity, relevance, love, or whatever other criteria feels right FWIW this is not the way. Distributing based on these criteria means most of the funding will go to those who already receive most of the funding. It does not solve the XKCD/2347 problem, which is exactly what this guy is encountering: People who maintain unknown software, software you don't even realize you're using, but which is so useful it ends up used everywhere. OpenSSH (via OpenBSD) faced that issue in 2014 (https://www.osnews.com/story/27519/openbsd-will-shut-down-if-we-do-not-have-the-funding/ https://www.osnews.com/story/27519/openbsd-will-shut-down-if...), and got funding because the story got attention. I suspect core-js after this post has also solved his problem for the time being thanks to this post (assuming it gets enough attention; seeing as it's at the top of HN now, I bet it will). But this is not viable. People in open source often do not see money as a resource, but as a corruptor, so they refuse to touch it unless strictly necessary; to a fault. (I should know; I was in that situation as well for years. Out of idealism I also refused to touch money. Now I work in fintech, so clearly I changed my outlook; but old me would probably hate current me.) What a soul-crushingly sad and difficult read this was, though. Jesus.
    • nevernude 4y ago
      At this risk of some self promotion, we developed StackAid (https://stackaid.us https://stackaid.us) to help fund the long tail of open source because of the exact problems you mentioned. People only tend to remember the popular/direct dependencies.
• Karupan 4y ago
  Sounds like it’s time for him to move on. I’m sure it’s incredibly difficult to give up on a passion project which is also very popular, but he doesn’t sound happy and in a good mental space. Besides, I highly doubt that companies will suddenly start supporting open source devs. A break and a paid job might be what he needs to reboot mentally. Hope he gets through this tough time!
• Dalewyn 4y ago
  I wrote this sentiment earlier[1], but I'll repeat it here. If a dev wants money for his work, he should license his work as appropriate and demand payments. If a dev releases his work free-as-in-libre and/or free-as-in-beer, they don't get to complain if the donations are "insufficient". Or to put it another: Of course a company won't pay up if they don't have to. This guy seems to be considering making his work into a commercial product, so at least he has the correct idea. Speaking objectively I hope it works out for him. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34759316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34759316
  • zztop44 4y ago
    And to echo the top reply to your original comment, nope you don’t get to decide to for everyone. I personally think that releasing free software and then complaining that the multibillionaire (trillionaire?) companies that rely on it refuse to fund you even after you’ve expressly asked for it is perfectly justified.
  • green_on_black 4y ago
    Okay, and now half the devs simply decide to not deal with the issue of licensing and just business source everything. Congrats, that's definitely the better world to code in, right?
  • linkdd 4y ago
    > If a dev releases his work free-as-in-libre and/or free-as-in-beer, they don't get to complain if the donations are "insufficient". Of course they get to complain. Complaining and doing nothing to change the situation is what's problematic. Doing work without reward, even if you did not expect any in the first place, can be soul-sucking, and it is totally normal to complain about it. You don't do FOSS for the recognition/glory, but complaining about the hatred, hypocrisy, and complete lack of respect of the industry towards FOSS is normal. The backlash he got after he "dared" ask for help was completely uncalled for. I'd even say this, it's the user who does not get to complain, let's remind everyone of what most FOSS licenses include: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. You get a message during `npm install` from the dev asking for funding and a job? Tough shit, you don't get to complain because you're not paying him.
• zztop44 4y ago
  This is an industry with so much more money than it knows what to do with, and yet critical software rots for the want of a few thousand dollars here and there.
• maherbeg 4y ago
  He should 100% try to find regular sustainable work somewhere instead of working on this project. Secondarily, find a lawyer to write up a contract for $80/hr for companies to sign and have him do work on core-js when they need an update or a feature. He can give an estimate on hours, send them a contract, get it signed and have the work done. If the people asking for feature requests and updates don't want to pay, then that's fine, it doesn't need to get done.
  • phpnode 4y ago
    he's in Russia, isn't this sanctioned?
    • netsharc 4y ago
      AFAIK: technically only a limited amount of companies and people are sanctioned, but the sanction list includes most if not all Russian banks... So I think Patreon, etc, or their banks would be scared about transferring money to his bank account. I wonder if external banking is possible: a Russian goes to a supermarket in Russia, he buys food, he pays by transferring money from his e.g. Swiss bank account to the supermarket owner's Swiss bank account. The supermarket owner wins because s/he basically managed to trade local goods for foreign currency (the Ruble is on shaky ground), the customer wins because he gets to eat. I think I remember paying for a hotel in Russia using PayPal but transferring the money to a German bank account of the hotel owner's cousin or something...
      • postsantum 4y ago
        Visa and MC issued in Russia work just fine, no need for external banking
        • another_kel 4y ago
          They don't work «just fine». They only work within russia. You can't pay for any foreign stuff wit it, you can't even pay in the app store. People who can afford it literally travel to Belarus\Kazakhstan for a weekend just to get a debit card that works worldwide.
• phpnode 4y ago
  It's definitely time for him to let this project go, working on it is a literally thankless task and the level of entitlement shown towards his work has been infuriating to watch. The outrage towards him daring to ask the community for help, something done in an act of desperation, is a real wake up call for open source maintainers - the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free. The psychological burden of carrying such an important but relatively unknown project has trapped him in this state of desperation for years now. It's tunnel vision and sunk loss thinking, time to quit.
  • green_on_black 4y ago
    The guy literally went to prison when he didn't have to. Holy shit.
    • xigency 4y ago
      I definitely feel bad. He’s had a really tragic set of circumstances.
    • __m 4y ago
      At least that's how he frames it
      • 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
        The court documents on that case are publicly available if you're willing to look for them (and can read Russian). I haven't read everything, but I didn't see anything contradicting his side of the story.
        • sgammon 4y ago
          he said he was "driving home at 3am," you know, as one does, and two girls were "crawling on the highway." i am honestly not sure i've ever heard a less believable story
• deleted 4y ago
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• joshxyz 4y ago
  Imo zloirock should work for himself and get rid of the core-js project (or make it least of his priorities). It's a liability to him at this point, just making himself look like a fool desperate for handouts. His freedom is on the line and not one company seems to care. If the open source community turns its back at you, turn your back at them.
• akudha 4y ago
  In one of my previous jobs, my CTO asked me who I thought was the most important person in the company was. I wasn’t sure. He pointed to the lady who was responsible for entering and maintaining data, on which the entire business was built upon. She was a quiet person, who did her job exceptionally well. Yet, most people didn’t know her or didn’t realize her importance. I am certain she wasn’t paid that well either. Point being, nobody is going to reward you, unless you ask for it. I once spent 4 years at a job, I did my job well. Didn’t get a single dollar raise. I didn’t ask, nobody cared either. Most I got was some praise in team meetings once in a while. The most disgusting part of the story is all hate and vitriol thrown at him. By people using his software for free, by people who are likely not even a tenth as good as he is - both as a person and as a programmer. All this in an industry with plenty of money. This is super depressing. I genuinely hope he gets to spend his future happy
  • nevernude 4y ago
    But the thing is he DID ask for help, quite a few times and was only met with the hate and vitriol you mentioned. Depressing indeed.
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      Honestly, after seeing the message in the NPM logs I kind of figured he’d have a job soon.
    • kilburn 4y ago
      You have to ask to the appropriate forum though, and that's what he got completely wrong. Getting npm to scream for help when a developer installs your package is equivalent to asking your peer for a raise. I'd say that over 99.999% of the people who saw that message, created memes about it, etc.. did not have a corporate credit card and the power to use it at their discretion. If you want money from corps, THOSE are the guys you need to find and ask money from.
      • newswasboring 4y ago
        How do you even ask a corporation for money? Cold emailing?
• BadRed 4y ago
  I recognize his challenges, but not sure if I can look past his victim blaming and "both sides bad" war rhetoric.
  • linkdd 4y ago
    In the real world, there are no "good guys vs bad guys", no "white/black", it's all shades of grey, recognizing this is not "victim blaming". But let's avoid flamewars irrelevant to the discussion.
  • mthoms 4y ago
    He only said "I don't want to choose between two kinds of evil. I will not comment on this in more detail, since there are people close to me on both sides of the border who may suffer because of this." I don't think "two kinds of evil" is meant to imply that both sides are equally bad. Just that there are no good options for him. After all, when we say "the lesser of two evils" we don't (usually) mean evil in the literal sense. We mean that we are being forced to pick the least-bad of two bad options.
  • lxe 4y ago
    What would you say if you were in Russia? Would you publicly pour out your complete thoughts, whatever they may be, in a popular blog post with your name signed underneath? With an unfunded OSS project, a family to support and criminal history? Don't forget, you can't just "say stuff" in most corners of the world.
    • glorken 4y ago
      If you don't support the war and afraid to express your opinion, you can just remain silent and don't say that "both sides are equally bad". This kind is rhetoric is exactly what Russian war supporters use.
      • zamalek 4y ago
        His comments were in response to an issue opened in the repo, it's not like he went out of his way to bring the problem up. If you take concern with him speaking with his family's best interests in mind (especially the "indoctrination" he is concerned about for his child), then stop using core-js.
• deleted 4y ago
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• stjo 4y ago
  I made a donation with bitcoin and then tried to check how much btc does this wallet have. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qlea7544qtsmj2rayg0lthvza9fau63ux0fstcz https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qlea754... Do I read properly there are ~$1000 now and ~$73000 ever deposited?
  • livinglist 4y ago
    Are u suggesting it’s too little or too much?
    • stjo 4y ago
      I was trying to check if my transaction went through, but then I started to wonder if I should fact check him on his claim that he didn’t have 80k usd to evade prison sentence. But to answer your question - years of work for such a widely used project should be compensated more in my opinion. An engineer at google with similar skill will make 2-5x, maybe 10x as much.
  • pcthrowaway 4y ago
    Not exactly. 3.4 BTC received. Depending on when the donations were made it could be more or less than $73000. Though it does look like he held ~1 BTC until Nov 2020 and then transferred it out. So it's possible he's actually received roughly the equivalent of $73000 USD from those donations
• nevernude 4y ago
  I see a lot comments here suggesting the he should just pack his bags and get a corporate gig. How many other great open source projects will we miss out on because developers see this advice and not even bother in the first place.
  • cheeze 4y ago
    I always see stuff like this, especially on HN, and get impostor syndrome from it. I do it because it's a job, and I need money. I program to _solve problems_, not because I love programming. Some people just really love programming. I hope they get what they are worth though.
    • nevernude 4y ago
      Sure, but you (maybe not you specifically) _solve problems_ by using a lot of open source. Your ability to do your job and get paid depends on the labor of others. Why not compensate them for it.
• deleted 4y ago
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• hsn915 4y ago
  Here's simple solution: create a product and sell it for money. Seriously. Stop giving stuff away for free. EDIT: let me elaborate. Writing open source is not a business strategy. At best, it's a gimmick, or outsourcing infrastructure maintenance to the public. What you should do is the following: 1) Project authority. This is easy. You are the creator and maintainer of a critical piece of infrastructure. You are THE EXPERT! 2) Project non-neediness None of this "guys I'm struggling here". People should come to you because you have value to provide, not because they pity you. 3) Value proposition Create a compelling value proposition where you get money in exchange for something. That something could be a product, a subscription, a consultation service, or something else. The possibilities are endless. You are a smart person. If you dedicate a week or two you can figure this out. I don't know many people who are successfully making money from open source. I only know of Zig. Here's what Andrew Kelly did: - He projects authority. You can watch him programming live. He has many live streams and talks. - He does not project neediness. He talks frankly about his finances but none of this "omg you guys are so thankless for all my work". It's more like: hey guys, I'm working on this, if you are interested in this and would like it to continue, consider donating. - He did the drudge work of setting up a non-profit foundation to receive the donations - He got help from people: he doesn't run everything, he doesn't code everything. There are several people working in the Zig Foundation. Now, I don't think you can do this with core-js. It's already pretty mature and any donation you get is basically going to come out of pity. You don't want to be in this situation. That's why I think it's better for you to create a consultancy and provide some kind of service where people are compelled to pay you money because you are just so valuable. My man, there are people out there making over $10k/mo from things like "copywriting" a few emails a month for a few high class clients. You can do better.
  • zztop44 4y ago
    That’s simple, but it’s not a solution. Can you imagine writing software in a world without open source (that is also free as in beer)? I can’t.
    • hsn915 4y ago
      I realize my original comment was very short. I wrote it while on the train. I've now elaborated and hopefully it's more useful now.
• FpUser 4y ago
  He should close access to his repo immediately and try to get paying job. Anyone wants access, help, new version - pay money. It is very depressing reading his story. Feel almost like: do no good for humanity as you will get punished for it. BTW: Zloirock is a transliteration, translates as bad karma, evil fate, bad luck etc.
• HALtheWise 4y ago
  https://words.filippo.io/full-time-maintainer/ https://words.filippo.io/full-time-maintainer/ represents an attempt to find a sustainable answer to some parts of this issue. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to attempt that model wholesale in your particular case, but it may be worth reaching out to Filippo for a conversation.
  • jabl 4y ago
    That was an interesting writeup and I hope Mr. Valsorda succeeds in this; certainly funding paths for bottom of the stack open source code is sorely needed. However, I don't really think the coreJS maintainer is in a position to do an experiment like this. He should focus on getting a well paid job so he can support himself and his family, pay off the damages he owes, and GTFO of Russia before he's drafted for cannon fodder in Ukraine. Then build up a comfortable buffer, and only then, if he still feels like it and coreJS is still relevant in the world, does he have the financial security that would allow him to do such an experiment.
• komali2 4y ago
  The top 100 companies who depend on this software should be slinging millions at this guy. That's my simple ethics take on it. The value created is that large at least. The amount of money he saved them in dev time. "Then he should license it as xyzsksudhsj, he should have released it as a commercial product, he should have put on a tie and pulled himself up by his bootstraps" no. Highly unlikely the tool would have become as useful as it as, or as widespread and thus a source of truth (and a guiding force in the world of web standards). That's victim blaming. It's time for the top 100 companies to pony up, straight up. They don't "have to..." until the outrage gets high enough, until the internal pressure gets large enough. So we should all do our part and start sending emails up the chain, start the conversation, start being a little annoying.
• politician 4y ago
  If he weren’t Russian and subject to OFAC sanctions, I would gladly wire him $1000 tonight if he would give up this project. The web is utterly broken. This one guy is enabling a multi-billion dollar advertising ecosystem for nothing? Absolutely insane.
  • CaliforniaKarl 4y ago
    > If he weren’t Russian and subject to OFAC sanctions Wrong. OFAC has sanctioned a number of Russian individuals and entities, including many of the country's banks. OFAC has _not_ sanctioned all Russians. Check for yourself at https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov Man up and send him the money. You can figure it out.
    • politician 4y ago
      You are welcome to look up my contribution via OpenCollective. I couldn’t find your contribution though. Where should I look?
  • robocat 4y ago
    Patreon Inc and Open Collective Inc (non-profit) are both US companies. You can let them worry about any potential sanctions. He gave you three options: https://opencollective.com/core-js https://opencollective.com/core-js https://www.patreon.com/zloirock https://www.patreon.com/zloirock or Bitcoin bc1qlea7544qtsmj2rayg0lthvza9fau63ux0fstcz Or are you just posturing?
    • politician 4y ago
      You are welcome to look up my contribution via OpenCollective. It’s dangerous for individuals to take liability on themselves by using Bitcoin to send funds directly. The OFAC sanction search above is for compliance officers at financial institutions. If, as an individual, you take it on yourself to send funds via Bitcoin and you’ve misunderstood the scope of sanctions then you may find yourself in violation. OpenCollective pays out through Stripe which handles the regulatory compliance issues. Now you know.
• jbm 4y ago
  > The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly. I hope he is getting the help he deserves (I dropped a message on twitter after seeing this) The messages he received are so vile, why would someone attach their name to something like that? I personally would immediately avoid employing anyone who posted like that, doubly-so in a semi-professional space like Github.
• deleted 4y ago
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• nishs 4y ago
  fuck every idiot who made those comments or memes without any understanding of the incredible work done by the mantainer.
• robomartin 4y ago
  This sort of thing highlights that FOSS isn't even close to free, ever. If we were to compute the developer hours invested in a project like Linux we would easily determine it likely is the most expensive software project in history. The cost of the time is borne by individual developers, companies and universities, all of whom require some form of financial support in order to do so. Or, at the individual level, starve and not have a life (unless wealthy and the work is a hobby). Denis Pushkarev, CoreJS's developer, abandon this project and move on. The list of large companies benefiting from his work who have not moved a finger to make sure he is able to continue working on this while supporting a family with dignity is massive. Short list of notable companies from the screen grab: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2213682/218452738-859e7420-6376-44ec-addd-e91e4bcdec1d.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2213682/218452738-... baidu.com amazon.com yahoo.com microsoft.com taobao.com openai.com instagram.com twitter.com Elon: Give this man a job! weibo.com reddit.com twitch.tv zoom.us aliexpress.com adobe.com patreon.com pinterest.com etc. Yeah, this is silly. Move on. Immediately. The people who care do not care enough to help or support you. Denis, if you are reading this: DO NOT FEEL BAD ABOUT DISCONNECTING FROM THIS PROJECT! THESE PEOPLE DO NOT VALUE YOUR WORK. MOVE ON. IMMEDIATELY.
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  I understand and expect most of the comments here would be about the state of open source, and I know we of course, by definition, are only getting one side of the story, and I also know that no country is perfect. But holy shit, I had immense sadness and sympathy for his legal woes and the fact that he was imprisoned. Again, obviously the US is no panacea when it comes to incarceration, but holy shit, first thing I was screaming was "GTFO of Russia!" The entire legal system there is now basically one man's corrupt enterprise.
  • postsantum 4y ago
    >The entire legal system there is now basically one man's corrupt enterprise How did you arrive to this conclusion? OP wasn't a political prisoner, he served less than a year for manslaughter
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    He was imprisoned because he hit pedestrians and one died. I don't know about you, but the way I drive I wouldn't hit pedestrians if they were laying in the road, maybe if they ran out in front of me. It doesn't sound like he has any sympathy for killing a woman at all, so the "woe is me I'm not a governor's son so I went to jail when others wouldn't have" is distasteful at best.
    • sambeau 4y ago
      > "at 3 AM, I was driving home. Two deadly drunk 18-years-old girls in dark clothes decided somehow to crawl across a poorly lit highway" There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.
      • flumpcakes 4y ago
        You drive to your conditions, there's no excuse. If you are driving so fast at night that your lights don't illuminate enough ahead to perform a safety stop then you are driving too fast. It's astounding that anyone defends this person for the manslaughter, and blames the women he harmed, and the completely lack of empathy... "deadly drunk", one of them is now, because of the author.
• ricardobeat 4y ago
  I can sympathize with the author's troubles, and wish he finds a well-paid position that still allows him to work on OSS. That said, the idea that companies would pay for a JS library that is patching browser support is wild. Practically nobody pays for JS modules except for very specific niches (e.g. a charting library) or product/technical support. Especially when it's an indirect dependency of tools you use. Maybe Babel could pull off having a paid tier, but that's already a stretch, as there is still a lot more software up the chain. There are many commercial ideas in the JS ecosystem worth pursuing, but this doesn't look like one of them. Projects like Babel, ESLint, Rollup etc get significant funding from corporations, but these are the very top of the food chain, and even then the amounts are still barely enough to pay for full-time dev salaries at market rate. It's just not a model that works. There is also no particular reason these hundreds of polyfills have to be maintained by a single person, and kept in one central package. The maintenance overhead is massive. Any project using this as part of their core offering, like Babel, would certainly be able to keep up with a bunch of smaller modules, and deal with churn. Finally, the reach and numbers are very impressive, but I'm afraid they are an artifact of building a monolithic package, more than a reflection of the value companies might attach to it. If core-js stopped being maintained today, it would hurt momentarily, but there are hundreds if not thousands of people who will step in to fill the void. There is no reason to sacrifice your personal well-being for a project that is not bringing you happiness.
  • aloisdg 4y ago
    https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2213682/154870832-36318fdd-c5a0-45ce-aaed-2d50371a2976.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2213682/154870832-...
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • cyral 4y ago
    > - The idea that companies would pay for a JS library that is patching browser support is wild. Companies make more money by having their websites work in older browsers. If it wasn't for core-js, they would be paying developer time to write polyfills or compile and maintain them from various other single polyfill packages. Surely if they are willing to pay developers to do this in return for increased profits they would also be willing to pay someone else to do it, just as businesses outsource all kinds of tasks.
• btown 4y ago
  From this article, Denis Pushkarev seems to be a remarkably principled developer in a horrible situation, and I admire his commitment to this project. Setting that aside, though, is anyone else alarmed that such a widely used project has exactly one maintainer who is able to push arbitrary changes without review? Especially one already in legal trouble and significant debt, unable to travel, for a project embedded in Fortune 500 e-commerce and (likely) intranet/administrative sites, with an extremely large surface area of used APIs where malicious minified code might easily go unnoticed and is highly difficult to audit? I absolutely feel for his situation. Right now, the degree to which he could be threatened into allowing a malicious group to push changes in his name should not be taken lightly. Hopefully this article reaches the attention of some of the CISOs at companies who rely on the project, and a path towards a situation where multiple parties have visibility into release management can be explored. And honestly, such a solution might be the best thing to make Denis and his family less of a target. (In the meantime, pin your core-js dependency, and track https://security.snyk.io/vuln/npm?search=core-js https://security.snyk.io/vuln/npm?search=core-js as well as npm audit. Arguably there should be an advisory category for known vulnerable maintenance situation - I'm not sure if such a registry exists. One might say that every open source project is vulnerable in some way, but there's nuance and splash radius to consider here, and core-js does not have much defense-in-depth at the moment.)
  • johnywalks 4y ago
    Isn't that the issue though? Nobody cares until it's too late.
  • cyral 4y ago
    Your first paragraph reminded me of this article: https://david-gilbertson.medium.com/im-harvesting-credit-card-numbers-and-passwords-from-your-site-here-s-how-9a8cb347c5b5 https://david-gilbertson.medium.com/im-harvesting-credit-car... Imagine this scenario taking place with this package if someone got ahold of his NPM account.
    • ufmace 4y ago
      Oooh thanks, I had been looking to find that article again for a while and couldn't track it down for anything. In a completely unrelated matter, Google search results quality has really declined in the last few years...
• SergeAx 4y ago
  I do understand that not a lot of people here really understand the sheer direness of his situation. He stuck in Russia because of unsettled problems regarding his conviction. He almost certainly cannot immigrate into most of the countries because of said conviction - to have a work permit one have to provide a certificate of good conduct. He is cut off most options to receive money from abroad and several means to receive support at all. He has a family to provide. The economy of Russia is increasingly deteriorating, the quality of life is following suit. His son will soon feel a taste of state fascist indoctrination, it starts in kindergarten now in Russia. While most commenters here feel sad, I feel an utter horror.
  • EugeneOZ 4y ago
    HN is a little bit more “filtered” place: on Reddit and Twitter there are enough people who hate him just for the sake of hatred. He is Russian - they call him “fascist”. He has a road accident - they are intentionally omitting a little detail that a victim was crawling the road at night. I didn't know about the memes and Twitter jokes. Even after that post, people still try to blame him. I’m pretty sure this situation will convince some developers to instantly stop maintaining their OSS projects - and the world deserves it. I would understand some criticism or not politely worded bug reports (especially from young users), but hatred... All of this filth... Today I’ve been disappointed in developers a lot. I really wish Denis to stop maintaining core-js and find a real job. Haters will get what they were fighting for, his family will get the money.
    • webknjaz 4y ago
      It's a misconception that people hate him for being rssian. It's more like people dislike finding a consistent genocide apologist who has been publicly supporting the mass murderers for many years. This is a systemic position of his. In his late post he suggests that the murdered Ukrainians are somehow the same as the ruscist rapists who killed them. In the past he was shifting the blame for the rssian fascist ethnical cleansing to Ukraine as well: https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1625276917363646465 https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1625276917363646465. This does correlate with the color of his passport but it's just that — a correlation. His actions speak louder than words. Encouraging people to send him money equals indirectly funding the genocidal maniacs. Don't fund the terrorists, it's as simple as that.
• gardenhedge 4y ago
  Fascinating story. I've never heard of CoreJS. Checked a website created for work.. yep, it uses it.
• jackblemming 4y ago
  He has made multiple posts like this and it always reeks of entitlement and disdain for his user base. Charge money if you want money. Don't give something for free and then complain. The real reason he doesn't charge is nobody would pay or someone would immediately fork the project and do it for free. The point of large open source projects like this is to parlay it into career opportunities, not expect every installer to give you a dollar.
  • goodoldneon 4y ago
    > ... someone would immediately fork the project and do it for free He said he's tried to find others to maintain the project and no one will help. Dunno why it'd be any different if there was a fork. > ... not expect every installer to give you a dollar. He isn't asking for every installer to pay. He's asking for enough financial support to work on core-js full-time, which seems reasonable given how depended-on the library is.
  • zymhan 4y ago
    > The point of large open source projects like this is to parlay it into career opportunities Yeah, you are in the minority with that belief.
    • briantakita 4y ago
      >> The point of large open source projects like this is to parlay it into career opportunities > Yeah, you are in the minority with that belief. The OP does have a platform, thanks to his work. If he did not diligently pour his creative talent into core-js & without it's widespread usage, he would probably not have the audience & we wouldn't be having a discussion about him or his situation. He does have a platform which he most likely could monetize. He does have a platform which he most likely could monetize. It's like a Youtuber who gains a large audience. Youtube does not pay much & many subjects are demonitized, yet many Youtubers are creative in monetization. Of course a big advantage of having one's face on the screen talking to a large audience is attention, making it easier to get the message out & to create a market. I do plenty of open source work & my partner was a prominent early Youtuber. It's not easy & takes a mostly different skillset than just creating code or content, but the opportunity is there. Some are quite talented at creating code/content & monetizing code/content. I'm not so talented at the monetization aspect, but I see the opportunity is there. I for one, use open source as a way to share code between my projects...making it easier, via IP licensing, to reuse code. I would personally love to see more people sharing on how they use their creative talents, hard work, & audiences to earn a living. I think there is a better way than relying on donations. For example, the creator/audience relationship on platforms like Patreon or Rumble seem like a way to earn money in a dignified manner.
• InTheArena 4y ago
  Anyone else get major hans reiser vibes from this guy? Maybe it’s just the “on the war” section … I.e, Ukraine section and not the vehicular manslaughter or accident.
  • dralley 4y ago
    Not really, no. As an ex-convict with massive fines he can't pay who is unable to leave the country and a newborn child, I cannot really blame him for not sticking his neck out publicly in an increasingly totalitarian state, nor for being angry about the sanctions obliterating his already bad financial situation and freezing a portion of the already small amount of money that had already been given to him. Imagine how you would feel if you worked for minimum wage at McDonalds and the police froze up your savings accounts for more than a year because a distant uncle you've never seen was discovered to be a hitman for the mafia.
• Barrin92 4y ago
  This story is one of the reasons why I don't understand why people are so enamored with FOSS. The entire ecosystem is a gigantic free-rider problem. If you cannot exlude people from using your software despite the fact that they don't pay, you're not capturing the value you provide. The result is, in line with econ 101, undersupply and lack of investment. It's not just the author but this is how many free software projects look. People living on 1800 bucks a month providing millions in value to billion dollar companies. Completely bizarre status quo.
• yanokwa 4y ago
  I wonder if the sports/talent agent model could work here.
• kypro 4y ago
  I always heard people talk about how "open source is broken", but I'm honestly in shock after reading this. Is this normal? That one guy can contribute code that is used on thousands of the top websites worldwide and not one of the numerous multi-billion dollar companies that use his code are even willing to donate an amount equivalent to an average developer's salary? I mean, how is this that possible? It's not like when a company the size of Spotify uses core-js they just add it to their project without thinking. No, they know how important the project is. They know the effort involved in building and maintain a project like core-js. Yet they can't even throw the dude a few thousand dollars a year to say thanks? Am I missing something here? Is the fact that he's Russian having an impact on the companies willing to offer him support? It honestly seems insane to me that so many people are able to reach out with messages of hate for adding a donation message to free software, but only a handful of people / business would offer support.
  • jeswin 4y ago
    > I mean, how is this that possible? The Node.JS library ecosystem (for better or worse) is modeled as small libraries which do only one thing, and often have dozens of dependencies. And those in turn, have their own dependencies. So when you import a library, you're bringing in a lot of other libraries as well. Some large companies have stringent audits (for licenses etc), but most care (or are aware) only about the library they imported. core-js is probably a dependency for many others, and especially transpiler toolchains which are common in JS.
    • kypro 4y ago
      I completely understand this reasoning for smaller companies, but a company like Spotify will care deeply about the dependencies in their project. Just because core-js is a dependency of a dependency simply doesn't matter and if anything, makes it even more essential. Unless they're extremely incompetent, any 3rd party code that's to be deployed to their entire user base is presumably being reviewed in detail. And I guess I'm not even sure I buy the argument that most developers don't know about core-js. I know I'd be extremely concerned if I was hiring an experienced frontend dev who didn't know what core-js was. Anyone who's thought about browser capability before should have had to think about polyfills, and naturally their use of core-js. It also comes up a lot when trying to optimise bundle size given the size of core-js.
• psnehanshu 4y ago
  This wide usage of core-js comes from being used by some very widely used libraries. Most developers don't install core-js directly. It always comes as an indirect dependency through other projects like babel, so if he wants to work full-time on OSS and earn good money, he should maybe look at becoming a member of Babel or a similar funded OSS project.
• faebi 4y ago
  He has nothing to lose, so I would pivot the product like docker did. It‘s painful, and might break it but so it should be.
• theGeatZhopa 4y ago
  Keep their heads ringing.. "if you can't earn money with it, screw it" my grandpa said, and I should learn later how much truth it beholds.
• szastamasta 4y ago
  I’m very sorry for the guy. He really should focus on his family well being. Open source is not feeding of the poor nor helping victims of crime. People give it too much emotional weight and think that it’s important for the whole human kind. But it’s not. It’s just some nice to have utility. And, to be honest, it’s not the OS as it used to be. Now it’s mostly big corps wanting some internet fame or free labor or companies wanting to use your software for free. If you do it for fame or better job, sure, try your luck. But don’t base your income on it. It has almost never worked. I wish you all the best Denis. Hope it all ends good for you. Please don’t feel sorry if you abandon the project. You gave people something good and don’t owe them anything. And don’t be worried, no one will suffer if you do it. It might sound harsh, bit it’s also relieving. You are not responsible for internet people inconvenience.
• rnmkr 4y ago
  [dead]
• yawboakye 4y ago
  the problem, in my opinion, introduced by the so-called full-time open source developers (making money via contributions) is the distortion in how free & open source software should be organized. no one should have a full-time job maintaining an open source software, on their own. they should be doing in through a user-company. see the ruby and rails core team/structure for example. they all work full-time at companies with significant investment/commitment to the framework. they’re paid by these companies not randos paying money into some opencollective, patreon, &c. the javascript ecosystem sets and perpetuates a bad example here. it has sometimes even lead to accusations of leeching (see babel) where a ‘full-time’ maintainer who has honed the evil art of extortion refuses to kickback to the original creator-inventor or share proportionally with all contributors. or so the story goes. it’s imperative that we save open source from these evils. github sponsor, patreon, opencollective, tidelift, npm fund hurt, rather than help, the cause. they’re the sort of simple & straightforward ideas that make sense to simple-minded people, but eventually break under the messy rules and expectations of reality. if rails has succeeded without begging for money (even without starting a foundation) then, of course, their approach to free & open source software should be promoted.
  • schwartzworld 4y ago
    What open source needs is to be completely owned by private companies?
    • yawboakye 4y ago
      i'm not sure i understand what you mean. how's rails 'completely owned by private companies' for example? i'm not sure you wish to imply that private companies hiring and paying people to work full-time on open source equates to 'owning' such software. there's open source software started by and owned by private companies (the go programming language, apple's swift, meta's react, among other). regardless, they have big adopters. even so, i won't put rails or python or postgresql or rust in the same category.
      • schwartzworld 4y ago
• chimen 4y ago
  Sorry but no. This is poor planning of life in general. I know you should be earning more but why bet your life and your family's life on an open source project? To "make the web a better place"? Go for the best paid position you can go and do open source work in your spare time if you can't help yourself. Don't risk the comfort of your family for this stuff. It's not the first time I hear people complain about OSS; why don't we learn? Esp since we have kids, problems with the law, ilnesses or whatnot.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gremlinsinc 4y ago
  This guy should make a pro version, you want the absolute latest pollyfills, you have to be a paid supporter of the project. Otherwise your polyfills lag a year behind.
  • nailer 4y ago
    I think Ghostscript did that successfully. A year old version is automatically Open Source, anything else you pay for.
• Whiteshadow12 4y ago
  Daily reminder that humans are not good to each other (this doesn't mean we don't have the ability to be good to each other, but we generally are not)
  • aembleton 4y ago
    How does Wikipedia or Open Street Map work if in general we are not good to each other?
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      The motivation to correct someone else who is (IYO) incorrect or to express your point of view is stronger in many people than the motivation to transfer money from your pocket to someone else’s without a direct quid pro quo. More people will spend 30 minutes looking after an infant that might be abandoned in the cold than would give $1 to a beggar in the same weather, even though that 30 minutes is far more valuable. I will often shovel my neighbor’s sidewalk and steps while I’m already out there doing mine. I’d never pay someone $20 to shovel their walk. You can look at those differences and decide if humans are good to each other or not depending on which part you focus on.
    • toyg 4y ago
      For many companies, throwing a bit of cash at Open Street Map is incredibly cheaper than going with commercial alternatives. Wikipedia, I honestly don't know. I suspect they live on charitable grants by institutional actors.
    • Whiteshadow12 4y ago
      Such a good question, the short answer is I don't know why we have Wikipedia or OSM, I could think of reasons for the specific examples but the heart of the question would still not be answered. Another example you could have added is pro bono or volunteer work, one answer I could come up with is they wanted too. Maybe my response was a bit dramatic since we do have examples of humans being good to each other. I'm willing to accept that I could be wrong. What do you think?
• sgammon 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • petesergeant 4y ago
    why?
    • sgammon 4y ago
      because the last 3 times the community paid him, he did exactly this
• sgammon 4y ago
  could somebody smarter than me explain why core JS is so prevalent? Isn't modern ESM shippable in Chrome and on Edge now?
  • doytch 4y ago
    “Modern ESM” is a moving target. There’s always some new functionality that’s being added to the APIs that devs inevitably want to use. From his article, ‘structuredClone’ is a good example of something that everyone’s lusting over but isn’t quiiite there yet. There are also still browser quirks etc for some of the newer stuff, and Safari tends to be a laggard, which cuts you off from iOS traffic.
• juliangmp 4y ago
  The patience and resilience this man must have. I would have left Foss development way earlier if I was in his place. He has every right to just deprecate or remove the package from npm and give everyone the middle finger.
  • jgerrish 4y ago
    But he didn't. He posted that classic XKCD comic about critical infrastructure. So while thousands of principal engineers at companies around the world hold meetings today on what to do about this critical bus factor issue, I'm going to do something else. I'm going to go outside, drop off some library books (i don 't always finish them, that's ok), and wonder what critical infrastructure component exists in my life that I'm responsible for. Is it a person? A pet? A future idea? Or who's supporting me? The parents and all the rest. I'm not naive about what happens in OSS projects. And I wouldn't want to be this critical in a project, but this can be a message of future hope even if the world is dark right now. I dont know the immediate solution. Maybe the engineers scrambling today can slowly remove this stress bomb over the next couple months.
    • juliangmp 4y ago
      Yeah, I have to respect how hard he sticked to his conviction. I truly hope that companies, especially bigger ones, show more willingness to donate some money to FOSS projects that they use. Iw ould would still be cheaper than to buy some expensive enterprise solution, and idk maybe they can write it off as donations on their taxes and get some good PR.
• slooonz 4y ago
  Important (IMO) reminder that StackAid exists and has been made just to solve this kind of problems. (I’m not affiliated with them)
• petesergeant 4y ago
  Irritates me that some FAANG isn't just paying this, but they are not. He wants $80 an hour, so I've set up a monthly contribution for that much. If you can afford it, I'd strongly encourage you to do the same.
  • aws_ls 4y ago
    Wow! Very decent gesture from you. Nice to see.
• toyg 4y ago
  Live by MIT license, starve by MIT license. This is not the type of FOSS ecosystem that Stallman wanted to achieve; it's the ecosystem that big business wants: people work for free and profits multiply and accumulate at the top. That is what MIT licensing fosters. If you want a different world, use a different license model. Unfortunately, the JS world is effectively built on freeloading, so any licensing restriction is seen as a capital sin against "the community" of temporarily-embarrassed-FAANGs. Meanwhile, actual FAANGs laugh all the way to the tax-haven-based bank, and the lone guy in Nebraska/Russia continues to starve.
  • kalleboo 4y ago
    > temporarily-embarrassed-FAANGs This is fantastic, and it applies in so many other situations - I'm stealing this phrase (it's openly licensed, right?)
  • matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Completely agree. I think I'm going to start using the AGPLv3 for everything from now on. It's not like I'm making anything so critical as this core-js library but still. This old post's made a huge impression on me but it never really sank in until today: https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.c... > “Hey your software is awesome! Can I get it for free so I can use it at work and make money or please my boss? That’d rock! (for me).” > I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made. > Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.
• Tade0 4y ago
  Half of the problem here is that, despite extensive funding, the Babel team threw in the towel regarding polyfills and just integrated core-js. Also TC39 appears to have some housecleaning to do. > core-js will become a commercial project if it will not have appropriate support from users I suppose this is the most likely outcome. Alternatively Vercel might scoop it up considering it's already funding a few other high-profile projects.
• schwartzworld 4y ago
  I'm halfway through the comments and haven't seen anybody mention faker.js. Companies need to figure out a way to support these creators that they profit off of. How many more times do we have to see the same story play out?
• danjac 4y ago
  I contribute what amounts to a few euros a month to a few open source projects. I do these because these projects have significantly helped my career and added to my personal enjoyment. Perhaps not much in the grand scheme of things, but I feel I owe at least that much, especially if I'm not able to help in other ways (PRs for example). However, when I've asked employers to do the same - just throw what to them is would be tax-deductible chump change at some projects that have helped them make fortunes - there's lot of muttering and foot-dragging. More trouble than it's worth to do the paperwork, apparently. So we end up in a ludicrous situation where essential software, used by companies with revenues in the billions, depend on a single, relatively impoverished and stressed out developer toiling in obscurity. Google or Facebook or Microsoft could, for what amounts to a rounding error, have just put him on an annual salary or grant.
  • conradfr 4y ago
    Maybe in a parallel universe there's a culture of companies sponsoring x amount every year to the open source projects they use.
• smashah 4y ago
  We should call people who moan about license choices and donation messages in postinstall scripts what they are: leeches. If you take time out of your day to complain about an OSS project and spread negativity you're literally a detriment to the wider ecosystem. That includes purity testing. I hope zloirock does what is good for him going forward.
• tekkk 4y ago
  Well, this just proves unless you are willing to actually walk away you pretty much have zero leverage. I think he should have quit on the project long time ago to either have forced the big Co's to fund him or let someone else to take over. It's just what it is. The Github project in itself should provide him though with good prospects to get a good software engineer job. I myself have as well restrained from working on / releasing certain projects because I know it would just bring me more hassle than benefit even if people did use them. World doesn't work on charity, sadly. But if you need the thing you build yourself as well, it shouldn't be that bad as long as you know to set your boundaries for what you're willing to do.
• mikl 4y ago
  I understand it must be frustrating to have massive companies using your code without paying, while you struggle to make ends meet. But that is the reality of open source. The very reason that all those BigCo’s are using your code is _because_ you offered it to them for free. If you actually want payment for your code, but you’re not being up-front about it, then people are going to be annoyed with you when you show up asking for money, because they feel you’re pulling a “bait and switch” on them – because you kinda are. The reality is that every one of us are relying on thousands of open source projects on a daily basis. Everything from glibc to our web browser itself are mostly if not completely open source. The number of open source projects involved in me writing this comment likely number in the thousands. I can’t practically support all of them directly. Hard as it may be to hear, your open source project is not special. It’s just another among hundreds or thousands like it in the dependency stack. Only a tiny minority of the people who use it will even know it’s there, much less care that it exists. If you can’t accept that, you should probably get out of the open source business.
• mromanuk 4y ago
  This guy should approach the OpenJS Foundation [0] (previously it was the JQuery Foundation). It's sponsored by the big guys. There are a few more Open Source Foundation he can approach. Could be that successfully funded OS projects are being maintained/leaded by charismatic guys? Those that can do marketing and get the project known and eventually get fundings. e.g.: tailwind, jquery, vue, sveltekit 0: https://openjsf.org https://openjsf.org
• webknjaz 4y ago
  Urgh.. It's so unsettling how easy people fall for the "innocent act" of the person who routinely supports genocide. And it's a known systemic consistent behavior in the public statements — he's been supporting the mass murderers for many years. In his late post he suggests that the murdered Ukrainians are somehow the same as the ruscist rapists who killed them. In the past he was shifting the blame for the rssian fascist ethnical cleansing to Ukraine as well: https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1625276917363646465 https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1625276917363646465. He'd probably also blame black people for being enslaved, and rape victims too. This does correlate with the color of his passport but it's just that — a correlation. His actions* speak louder than words. Encouraging people to send him money equals indirectly funding the genocidal maniacs. Don't fund the terrorists, it's as simple as that.
  • ilaksh 4y ago
    People in Russia receive a constant stream of propaganda about their opponents. And it is not safe to make public statements that oppose the war.
• pancrufty 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure a bunch of people on HN were complaining about this exact postinstall notice when it was set up. People saying "it's his right" were the downvoted minority.
• helloanoop 4y ago
  This was depressing. I read through most of the post. I would never recommend sacrificing your personal life and well being for the sake of opensource. Use opensource as an outlet of your creativity and urge to create something, but don't let it destroy you.
• ilaksh 4y ago
  I doubt this is really practical but I wonder what would happen if it just became a commercial project in a few weeks. He has given fair warning many times in the past and again today. So out of all of those large companies, if he sets the license at say $5000-10000 per year, would they all really just pin the old version or something and leave him hanging? Honestly this is the type of thing that makes me want to roote for the AIs in the future. They can't possibly be worse than humans.
  • TheFlyingFish 4y ago
    Seems unlikely to work given (if I understood correctly) the main direct consumer is Babel, another OSS project that is known to have had trouble with funding in the past. If he starts asking for license fees, Babel eill just be forced to make do with the latest OSS version, fork it or whatever, and the rest of the world will never know.
• aabedraba 4y ago
  He could sell that story as a screenplay and make bank from Netflix or Amazon productions.
• silw002 4y ago
  oh, I almost cried reading this drama story. Until I googled what happened that night when he killed and injured another girl. And what a surprise, they were crawling on zebra and it was his responsibility to let them finish their maneuver. and... the guy, who supports russian invasion doesn't deserve anything.
• lvca 4y ago
  What a story! It's hard to make OSS sustainable without millions of $ and VCs trying to turn that OSS tech in a huge business. With OrientDB we got lucky, not it's the past... Now I'm experimenting with a different approach of redistributing GitHub Sponsorships to the developers that actively work to the project: https://blog.arcadedb.com/welcome-to-arcadedb#whats-next https://blog.arcadedb.com/welcome-to-arcadedb#whats-next After almost 18 months it's still far from being sustainable. Pure OSS is one of the hardest field to make some money because of the average developer: they just take without giving anything back in terms of work (contributing) or money.
• criminowrong 4y ago
  The actual details of the killings he committed are different to what he claims. The girls were on a pedestrian crossing and he ploughed through them anyway. I have no sympathy for this guy and I hope he gets what is coming to him. Reminds me of that other guy who flashed his penis at children multiple times over many years and then expected us all to feel sorry for him and give him advice. Both of these abusive criminal scum can fuck off, I hope they rope themselves.