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I guess I'll be contrarian. Being a commercial product is hard. Having customers, supporting them, etc is very hard. Most can't sustain themselves either. Espe

I guess I'll be contrarian. Being a commercial product is hard. Having customers, supporting them, etc is very hard. Most can't sustain themselves either. Especially when competing with open source. Every time I read about "criminal underfunding" of open source, it comes off as people wanting to be able to capture some of the value of being commercial without any of the cost. Being open source means more people use your software. But they owe you nothing at all for that. Enough value to pay themselves to work on it is not a small amount of value, and most commercial software doesn't make it there either. If you want people to pay then be paid software. Otherwise you often just want a contract with terms nobody wants to pay you for. There is nothing abnormal about that, and it's certainly not "criminal underfunding". I'm sorry it's not as easy as people want it to be, but it never was - this isn't new, and it not likely to be anytime soon. The main difference now seems to be how many more people feel their users should have greater responsibility than they require of them. That's one of the things that often makes your product popular though.

altairprime 3y ago
This is the whole point of modern open source: to be able to exploit others for their works, without them having any recourse for compensation or entanglement when you make lots of money derived from their labor. It’s a technologist’s libertarian dream come true. It’s also a primary cause of burnout in open source developers — but that doesn’t matter, because there will always be more open source developers to exploit, so long as they believe in open source strongly enough.
- whateveracct 3y ago
  I think the idea of an open source developer as a career and lifestyle is the issue here.
  - altairprime 3y ago
    I think the idea that creators should not get paid is the issue here. It’s much more generic than open source. Another example of the same issue is how creators receive nothing for exploitation of their works by VC-funded AI companies. In both cases, the same imbalance between creators (who get nothing) and exploiters (who get billions of dollars of revenue) exists.
    - whateveracct 3y ago
      They could just not do it. Spend your time more wisely. If you git commit, you've lost your leverage. Don't go write a labor politics blog post about how you're enslaved for writing C for free.
      - altairprime 3y ago
        Open source is labor politics. Copyleft is shorthand for “I labor to create this work for the commons, and all who modify my work must adhere to my labor politics by sharing their modifications with the commons.” It’s designed specifically to counteract commercial exploitation of labor while denying the commons their modified works. Without labor politics, there would be no GPL, no AGPL, no Sharealike. (Ironically, my single sentence license above would be more likely to win a court challenge than the GPL/AGPL, while also being more resilient to new methodologies and less vulnerable to loopholes; however, it’s incompatible with the “legal contracts should not depend on human judgment calls” viewpoint that’s popular in technical circles.
        seanhunter 3y ago
        We don't have to speculate about whether the GPL would stand a court challenge as it has been tested in court many times in multiple jurisdictions.[1] As an aside, the reason I don't think your statement would work is you don't have the ability to unilaterally bind other people by a statement you make without their agreement (ie you saying something is not a contract, because that is by definition an agreement between parties). For that reason I'm pretty sure your "all who modify my work must ..." subclause would have no legal force. The mechanism that copyleft licenses use is to grant rights to the user provided that the user adheres to the terms. That's something you can do, because it's up to you to grant whatever rights you want to grant and it's in your gift to set conditions on those grants. If users don't accept the terms of the license, they don't get granted the rights and therefore they are prevented from using or distributing the software by normal copyright law. [1] eg check out http://gpl-violations.org/news/ http://gpl-violations.org/news/ or https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/ etc
NovaDudely 3y ago
As a big Free/Libre software guy... yeah, I agree. Wish it wasn't that way but that is just how it can be.
ThenAsNow 3y ago
> If you want people to pay then be paid software. It seems like source available type licenses (e.g., Kyle Mitchell's Big Time license: https://bigtimelicense.com/ https://bigtimelicense.com/ ) are a reasonable middle ground for being paid software without giving up many of the benefits of open source. I'm hoping there's a notable uptick in adoption of licenses like these.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  They're not reasonable at all. They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source while preventing any actual open source projects from incorporating any of their code. I'm hoping there's a notable drop in adoption of licenses like them.
  - ThenAsNow 3y ago
    > They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place? Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place? First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences. > Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source. > The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary. It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
This is a good discussion. In my own case, I write every one of my projects as if it were supported, released, commercial software. I wrote shipping, commercial software for my entire career, and got in the habit. It isn’t that much fun. Lots of boring bits, in writing high-Quality, release-grade, software. That said, thank Cthulhu that I don’t depend on it for a living. I’m pretty much my only customer. I write software that I want, and use it in almost everything I write. I also archive projects and apps that I am no longer actively supporting. I don’t really care whether or not anyone else uses it. In fact, the fewer, the better.
littlestymaar 3y ago
This comment is really lacking some nuance: - of course, building a successful commercial software (company) is a lot of work - but if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success, you'd get very rich, with lots and lots of zeros on your bank account, and a family free from material problems for decades to come. - nobody, including the author, claim that he should be rich. We just think that it's a pity that he's not able to make decent money, despite creating tremendous value to very profitable companies (and making an much easier job to thousands of developers far less skilled than he is, while still making multiple times his paycheck).
- fluoridation 3y ago
  >but if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success, you'd get very rich, with lots and lots of zeros on your bank account, and a family free from material problems for decades to come. This is a non sequitur, given that libjpeg-turbo has reached libjpeg-turbo's success and its author is not several times very rich. It is unfortunately very possible to create a product that's very popular and that takes a lot of effort to work on, but which most people are not willing to spend any money on.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > This is a non sequitur, given that libjpeg-turbo has reached libjpeg-turbo's success and its author is not several times very rich. I'm afraid you must suffer from some reading impairment, as I explicitly said this (now with the emphasis added): > if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success.
danudey 3y ago
I'm not sure I see it the same way. Maintaining open-source software requires time. There is an opportunity cost, and people (unfortunately) need to feed their families, pay their rent, and so on. The problem here is that the developer faces a choice: continue working on a piece of software that makes things better for thousands (or tens of thousands) of companies and individuals, or put that time towards something that benefits him and his family directly and ensures that they can continue to survive and thrive in a capital-based society. If he moved libjpeg-turbo to paid software (not that I expect that's possible) then I'm sure a lot of companies would pay for it, and a lot of open-source projects (or smaller companies) would be forced to stop using it. That's not good for anyone (except the developer). I think the thing to consider is this: if everyone who's ever saved at least two dollars on time, bandwidth, CPU power consumption, cloud compute costs, or any other factor gave him one of those dollars, he'd be set for life. He could make libjpeg-turbo his full-time job indefinitely. He's not asking for a six-figure salary, but it's difficult to look at a project that you're spending time and effort on that's saving other people such huge amounts of money and compare that to the meagre amounts anyone is willing to contribute for it and to consider that a worthwhile tradeoff. In the end, he's making that choice: he's going to spend time doing something else. He doesn't come across as feeling entitled (his argument that open-source software should be more funded/appreciated than it is doesn't seem to be in debate), he's just faced with a choice and he's letting people know ahead of time what choice he made.

altairprime 3y ago

This is the whole point of modern open source: to be able to exploit others for their works, without them having any recourse for compensation or entanglement when you make lots of money derived from their labor. It’s a technologist’s libertarian dream come true. It’s also a primary cause of burnout in open source developers — but that doesn’t matter, because there will always be more open source developers to exploit, so long as they believe in open source strongly enough.

whateveracct 3y ago
I think the idea of an open source developer as a career and lifestyle is the issue here.
- altairprime 3y ago
  I think the idea that creators should not get paid is the issue here. It’s much more generic than open source. Another example of the same issue is how creators receive nothing for exploitation of their works by VC-funded AI companies. In both cases, the same imbalance between creators (who get nothing) and exploiters (who get billions of dollars of revenue) exists.
  - whateveracct 3y ago
    They could just not do it. Spend your time more wisely. If you git commit, you've lost your leverage. Don't go write a labor politics blog post about how you're enslaved for writing C for free.
    - altairprime 3y ago
      Open source is labor politics. Copyleft is shorthand for “I labor to create this work for the commons, and all who modify my work must adhere to my labor politics by sharing their modifications with the commons.” It’s designed specifically to counteract commercial exploitation of labor while denying the commons their modified works. Without labor politics, there would be no GPL, no AGPL, no Sharealike. (Ironically, my single sentence license above would be more likely to win a court challenge than the GPL/AGPL, while also being more resilient to new methodologies and less vulnerable to loopholes; however, it’s incompatible with the “legal contracts should not depend on human judgment calls” viewpoint that’s popular in technical circles.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        We don't have to speculate about whether the GPL would stand a court challenge as it has been tested in court many times in multiple jurisdictions.[1] As an aside, the reason I don't think your statement would work is you don't have the ability to unilaterally bind other people by a statement you make without their agreement (ie you saying something is not a contract, because that is by definition an agreement between parties). For that reason I'm pretty sure your "all who modify my work must ..." subclause would have no legal force. The mechanism that copyleft licenses use is to grant rights to the user provided that the user adheres to the terms. That's something you can do, because it's up to you to grant whatever rights you want to grant and it's in your gift to set conditions on those grants. If users don't accept the terms of the license, they don't get granted the rights and therefore they are prevented from using or distributing the software by normal copyright law. [1] eg check out http://gpl-violations.org/news/ http://gpl-violations.org/news/ or https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/ etc

NovaDudely 3y ago

As a big Free/Libre software guy... yeah, I agree. Wish it wasn't that way but that is just how it can be.

ThenAsNow 3y ago

> If you want people to pay then be paid software. It seems like source available type licenses (e.g., Kyle Mitchell's Big Time license: https://bigtimelicense.com/ https://bigtimelicense.com/ ) are a reasonable middle ground for being paid software without giving up many of the benefits of open source. I'm hoping there's a notable uptick in adoption of licenses like these.

josephcsible 3y ago
They're not reasonable at all. They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source while preventing any actual open source projects from incorporating any of their code. I'm hoping there's a notable drop in adoption of licenses like them.
- ThenAsNow 3y ago
  > They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place? Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    > How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place? First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences. > Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source. > The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary. It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

This is a good discussion. In my own case, I write every one of my projects as if it were supported, released, commercial software. I wrote shipping, commercial software for my entire career, and got in the habit. It isn’t that much fun. Lots of boring bits, in writing high-Quality, release-grade, software. That said, thank Cthulhu that I don’t depend on it for a living. I’m pretty much my only customer. I write software that I want, and use it in almost everything I write. I also archive projects and apps that I am no longer actively supporting. I don’t really care whether or not anyone else uses it. In fact, the fewer, the better.

littlestymaar 3y ago

This comment is really lacking some nuance: - of course, building a successful commercial software (company) is a lot of work - but if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success, you'd get very rich, with lots and lots of zeros on your bank account, and a family free from material problems for decades to come. - nobody, including the author, claim that he should be rich. We just think that it's a pity that he's not able to make decent money, despite creating tremendous value to very profitable companies (and making an much easier job to thousands of developers far less skilled than he is, while still making multiple times his paycheck).

fluoridation 3y ago
>but if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success, you'd get very rich, with lots and lots of zeros on your bank account, and a family free from material problems for decades to come. This is a non sequitur, given that libjpeg-turbo has reached libjpeg-turbo's success and its author is not several times very rich. It is unfortunately very possible to create a product that's very popular and that takes a lot of effort to work on, but which most people are not willing to spend any money on.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > This is a non sequitur, given that libjpeg-turbo has reached libjpeg-turbo's success and its author is not several times very rich. I'm afraid you must suffer from some reading impairment, as I explicitly said this (now with the emphasis added): > if you manage to create a commercial software that reach even a fraction of libjpeg-turbo's success.

danudey 3y ago

I'm not sure I see it the same way. Maintaining open-source software requires time. There is an opportunity cost, and people (unfortunately) need to feed their families, pay their rent, and so on. The problem here is that the developer faces a choice: continue working on a piece of software that makes things better for thousands (or tens of thousands) of companies and individuals, or put that time towards something that benefits him and his family directly and ensures that they can continue to survive and thrive in a capital-based society. If he moved libjpeg-turbo to paid software (not that I expect that's possible) then I'm sure a lot of companies would pay for it, and a lot of open-source projects (or smaller companies) would be forced to stop using it. That's not good for anyone (except the developer). I think the thing to consider is this: if everyone who's ever saved at least two dollars on time, bandwidth, CPU power consumption, cloud compute costs, or any other factor gave him one of those dollars, he'd be set for life. He could make libjpeg-turbo his full-time job indefinitely. He's not asking for a six-figure salary, but it's difficult to look at a project that you're spending time and effort on that's saving other people such huge amounts of money and compare that to the meagre amounts anyone is willing to contribute for it and to consider that a worthwhile tradeoff. In the end, he's making that choice: he's going to spend time doing something else. He doesn't come across as feeling entitled (his argument that open-source software should be more funded/appreciated than it is doesn't seem to be in debate), he's just faced with a choice and he's letting people know ahead of time what choice he made.