7 ms·

GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)

120 points by behnamoh 3y ago

PoutCo 3y ago
There are some ways Github will pay your rent, did someone explore them? There is Gitopia.com, Tea.xyz, Open-Source-Economy.com, or Polar.sh I am curious about people's experience with those systems, does it really pay your rent? It that not going against the principle of open-Source?
debarshri 3y ago
Only if you are selling github stars, then it can pay your rent.
dandigangi 3y ago
Starting to notice a huge influx of OS projects not being funded and maintainers drop off of something that's valuable and their passionate about. It's unfortunate.
- chrona8490 3y ago
  > Starting to notice a huge influx of OS projects not being funded and maintainers drop off of something that's valuable and their passionate about. It's unfortunate. Why is it unfortunate? Mother nature is not kind. If an open source maintainer can’t pay their bills, maybe they should spend their time on something that does pay the bills.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Yeah maybe those companies using their open source project should donate a little bit?
    - sammyteee 3y ago
      Isn't the typical licensing model for open-source projects designed to differentiate between personal and commercial usage? Or is the real challenge that enforcing such licensing terms is practically unfeasible?
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        We use the Boost license which does not distinguish personal from commercial use. This is on purpose. We have no agenda for anyone's use of D. We are especially happy to hear from users who have made a lot of money from using D.
      - NegativeK 3y ago
        Open source business models differentiate by providing value to commercial entities (support, extended features, whatever.) Traditional open source licenses and definitions of open source demand that the licenses not differentiate between different use types (personal, commercial, governmental, etc.) Newer licenses are coming up that do differentiate. Traditional open source orgs are often saying that they're source available, not open source.
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        No, they are not. And the most popular licenses (Apache-style) these days don't even require commercial entities that fork your project to contribute back their changes. Free software / copyleft licenses like the GPL which do require that are these days shunned by many. "Open source" has become synonymous with "free labour" for a lot of firms, and there's a whole class of SaaS projects which amount to gluing together other people's open source work and then supporting it. I think this was all fine for people during boom time; you built your resume up on GitHub, you got street cred, often your employer paid for you to work on it. But I think it's starting to lose its sheen for some people.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Here at the D Language Foundation, we don't shame people into contributing. We point out how it is worth their while to donate.
      - gumballindie 3y ago
        I’ll use this opportunity to say that D Lang is awesome and that I wish it gains wider adoption. I simply love that language and the community and I thank you for everything you do. On topic, indeed, shaming is never an option. But still I wish companies would donate to projects - in some countries there are even tax incentives to do so, and the benefit is that they essentially externalise development of a valuable tool for them. Also would earn a lot of good will - as steam does (while not sponsoring money directly).
        WalterBright 3y ago
        It's the kind words from people like you that give us rocket fuel!
  - probablynish 3y ago
    Steel manning here, the outcome is unfortunate because presumably these projects have positive externalities (benefits accruing to people other than other than whoever is paying, if anyone) and so the optimal funding for them from a social/aggregate point of view is greater than it currently is. That they are not funded enough is a case of market failure. Of course this doesn't contradict your point, that is fine for the maintainers to respond to these incentives. (Edit: to that end I agree with one of the main points of the article, developer's shouldn't be embarrassed about doing things for money, seeing as it's somewhat necessary for the world we live in).
  - voxl 3y ago
    And maybe they should be funded by society enough to live. It's funny because this kind of social darwinism or capitalist world view is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized. Yet the (fallacious) appeal to "nature" would suggest that arbitrary monetary value is somehow the most important thing to optimize.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized True, if you have a rather low bar of success. Capitalism has produced wealth for average citizens inconceivable only a couple centuries ago. Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        > Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings. That is almost completely due to technological progress, not because of capitalism itself.
        WD40forRust 3y ago
        Capitalism is the nature in which technology got naturally selected.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        This sentence does not make any sense to me. Would you care to elaborate?
        voxl 3y ago
        [citation needed] You know its funny because almost all academic advancement has not been in a capitalist system.
        WalterBright 3y ago
  - readyplayernull 3y ago
    Monopolization is too slow, the goverment should force the fussion of every big tech company into a single entity that is forced to employ everyone in the country with great salaries and 4 hour workday, then people would have resources to do what's good. How would you like that MAANG?!
- foobiekr 3y ago
  It's not unfortunate at all. Every company I've worked for has been an unbelievable freeloader on open source projects. Tens of billions of dollars in revenue, almost nothing to the projects they rely on. I think the open source experiment has failed and that we need to embrace moving toward a compensated-commercial source model. Companies are strongly opposed to this because they can't freeload on volunteer work and other companies anymore, but it should be done.
  - behnamoh 3y ago
    > I think the open source experiment has failed imo it still serves as a way to strengthen resumes of job applicants. Just have a few GH projects with decent "stars" to show you know how to build things. I don't endorse it (because the projects then often get abandoned after employment)—maybe it'd be better to have a "badge" on the GH page showing what the purpose of the project really is.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      thats not the open source experiment, that's just employers getting comfortable with expecting uncompensated labor in the recruiting process
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    Open source has not failed. Attempts to build viable business models around it may have. That's not a weakness of open source but a weakness of software business. When you have a product with very low marginal cost of production, the market price for the product often tends towards $0. If you have a business that sells software licenses and someone develops a viable alternative (for whatever reason) and starts distributing it for free, you may have a hard time competing against them. And if the free alternative gains enough market share, both parties may find it difficult to pay for continued development. That's just how the market works.
    - foobiekr 3y ago
      As a movement. People have to eat.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  It's a long time coming. Getting something for nothing, doesn't last.
- bityard 3y ago
  I'm starting to notice that roughly half of the comments on these threads that even lightly touch on the "ecomonmics" of Free and Open Source software are from who think they or their peers are somehow entitled to money and attention just because they put some code on the Internet. Maybe I'm old-school but I was always under the impression that a paycheck and recognition are things that are earned, not begged-for or guilt-tripped into.
aaronbrethorst 3y ago
Another case in point is OneBusAway for iOS and Android: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/10/17/onebusaway-needs-help/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/10/17/onebusaway-needs-h... (n.b. I am the maintainer of OBA for iOS, and also a board member of its volunteer run parent organization.)
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  The name of your app (within the context of this post) made me think it was was a way to analyze GitHub repos to see what the bus factor is for maintainers.
- fhdjshdj 3y ago
  When I read the name I thought it was an app that does risk analysis on a company's key employees. You're one bus away from bankruptcy! Your app is great tho, all cities should provide something like that.
Liquix 3y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33540293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33540293 (11 months ago, 239 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683735 (4 years ago, 176 comments)
- thekitze 3y ago
  it's been 4 years since I wrote this ??? I feel old
  - PoutCo 3y ago
    Did you know that your article was one of the reasons I quit my paid job to attempt to find a solution for open-source funding? At that time, I was exploring existing solutions like Gitopia, Tea, or even Polar. I believed that these solutions would not meet your needs, so perhaps it would be a good idea to create a solution that would.
  - behnamoh 3y ago
    Interestingly, your last comment was 3 years ago. People who are busy building things don't have time for forum activity.
    - thekitze 3y ago
      lmao if you see the amount of time I spend on reddit and twitter you'd revoke that statement
- dang 3y ago
  Yup, since the most recent one was only 11 months ago, the current repost counts as a dupe. Reposts are fine after a year or so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
T3RMINATED 3y ago
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necovek 3y ago
Turnaround has always been high in small team (1-3 people) free software projects. That's exactly normal and expected: people build something while it's useful for them, and then move on. If someone else comes along, great, if not, that's ok too.
- radlad 3y ago
  > That's exactly normal and expected: people build something while it's useful for them, and then move on. That's one explanation, but another is that they build something useful to themselves, grow an audience of users who demand features and bugfixes which are required due to the complexity of the new features, and eventually the burden becomes too much to bear.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    This is the reason I don't work on free software anymore. The entitlement of the users was too great and their demands were too unreasonable. More than once people have threatened to: sue me, dox me, put a bomb in my mailbox, assault me, kill me, kill my family, sexually assault me, sexually assault my family, plant a bomb under my car, get me fired from work, and spread lies about me on the Internet. I'm aware that they're a minority of the users of free software. I get that they're probably mentally ill or going through it. I get that maybe they're just a few terrible people, but they by far were the most common messages in my email box from users - users who liked the software or even found it useful weren't enthusiastic enough about letting me know about that. For every 20 threats I got I'd get maybe one message thanking me for the software. You know what nobody ever did? Offer to pay me a couple of dollars for either consulting support or to implement a feature they needed, but they were more than happy to threaten me with legal action if there was a bug that I had no way to test for.
    - necovek 3y ago
      I did most of my work on Gnome, admittedly when internet was a different place, and only ever got a few minor "you are dumb doing things this or that way". I got plenty of praise and even a job at a well known free software company back in late 2000s.
m463 3y ago
"I'd spend hours to automate a task that takes 3 seconds just so I don't have to repeat the steps ever again. Meanwhile, my sister was swapping the batteries between two remotes 10 times per day for almost a year without buying a second pair of batteries and she was absolutely fine. I guess everyone is different." This here is hilarious and true. I'm pretty sure this kind of thinking creeps back into engineer's personal lives.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- baz00 3y ago
  The girlfriend has a TV that blew up. Occasionally she powers it up to see if it works or not again. This blows the breakers to her apartment. So she leaves it there for a couple of months and tries again. Of course it blows the breakers instantly every time. It blew up initially 6 years ago. I am wondering if she's still going to be doing this in 6 years. She has more than enough money to replace it but that or repairing it is "too much hassle" so she doesn't bother. So it sits there. Then again she has a psych PhD so perhaps it's just an experiment.
  - whywhywouldyou 3y ago
    This is exactly the behavior I would expect from someone with a psych PhD.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      "I'm not crazy. Everybody else is crazy."
      - baz00 3y ago
        That actually kills me a bit because I think you are right.
    - m463 3y ago
      The TV just doesn't want to fix itself yet.
throwaway9274 3y ago
Value capture != value creation. A lesson every engineer learns with their first very successful project.
- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  Bold of you to assume I've had a very successful project.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    The path to a very successful project leads through a mildly successful project.
  - throwaway9274 3y ago
    Everyone’s definition of a successful project varies, but 5k GitHub stars (at time of writing before people started gaming the metric) qualifies to me. Modesty aside, the general principle reminds me of Alex Graveley, the eng lead on GitHub Copilot, saying his compensation for creating Copilot was only a $20k bonus and a title bump. They’re both good illustrations that “make something people want” is a necessary step to turning code into wealth, but not a sufficient step.
GoToRO 3y ago
Could be easily solved by stating that if you used the product and your income is bigger than $x per year, you owe $1000 to the project per year. But the OS gurus convinced the developers that it should be free for everybody. Even companies that have billions in cash. Develooers are really smart but also very gullible.
- probablynish 3y ago
  > if you used the product and your income is bigger than $x per year, you owe $1000 to the project per year How would you enforce this?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Don't enforce it. You'll still get a decent pay from those who want to play by the rules.
  - devmor 3y ago
    Ask Unity and Epic, seems to work for them.
  - connicpu 3y ago
    Large corporations are going to play by the rules just because in general it's cheaper than risking going to court eventually over not following them. Sure some small fries who borderline should be paying you may not, but in the grand scheme that won't be losing you a ton of money compared to the big fish who will pay.
    - probablynish 3y ago
      Oh that makes sense. I thought the suggestion was referring to individuals and not corporations - eg "individuals should buy a license if they earn more than $80k/year" or something. That seems tougher to enforce.
  - GoToRO 3y ago
    As others said it enforces itself. Also if a company has wild success with your software there is a good chance you will find out. Also, in my country there is an angency that checks that companies paid for the software they use.
sshine 3y ago
... but they will convince your crypto startup investor that you’re on the hype train so that they’ll sink money into baiting the next round of idiots.
deleted 3y ago
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wg0 3y ago
Here's a serious question. Countless stories of companies turning back from open source to restrictive licenses. Will open source survive? Except maybe the iconic projects that have already a certain status such as Linux, LLVM etc?
- deleted 3y ago
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- hk__2 3y ago
  > Countless stories of companies turning back from open source to restrictive licenses. > Will open source survive? Except maybe the iconic projects that have already a certain status such as Linux, LLVM etc? I’d say that 95% of open-source is made by normal people like you and me, not by companies. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
- bityard 3y ago
  Free and Open Source software did not start with corporate sponsorship, it will not die from lack of it.
paxys 3y ago
Availability (or lack thereof) of source code is not a business model. "Open source" doesn't magically make money, and neither does closed source. I agree that too many people out there think that they can publish something to Github and the cash will start rolling in. Regardless of how useful your product is, you still need to build a business around it.
- nwoli 3y ago
  > I agree that too many people out there think that they can publish something to Github and the cash will start rolling in Does anyone think this? I thought we were just publishing this stuff for nerd status points. I never expected money other than through a salary from possibly getting hired via it would manifest
- deleted 3y ago
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thekitze 3y ago
hey HN! thanks to whoever posted this. An update on this is that Sizzy is still going strong! Lately I've been super busy with building [Benji](https://benji.so https://benji.so) which is a Life OS and organizes your habits, todos, routines, planner, fasting, meal tracking and a billion other features. I got tired of paying subscriptions for 31855 mediocre apps so I built a single master app that combines everything. A lot of people ask me about my philosophy of shipping so I made [Zero To Shipped](https://zerotoshipped.com https://zerotoshipped.com) which teaches the details of my stack along with my mindset about shipping paid products. So far there's 92 videos and 10 hours of content, but the final version will be more than 200 videos. I hope I'm not violating some HN rules when I'm talking about the things that I made... Feel free to AMA and I'd happy to answer your questions!
cracrecry 3y ago
People should devote a little time to learning about money and business as they do with programming or any other ability they have. If you believe that "Money is a dirty word" you should check your social environment and make friends that do not have those limiting beliefs so you could support each other. Creating a support group of people like you(developers) is a great idea.
cpill 3y ago
Don't take VC man! They your dreams are no longer your dreams, they are the VCs dreams, which is to make money. Wrote something about it here http://alexander.whillas.com/the-low-hanging-fruit-business-model.html http://alexander.whillas.com/the-low-hanging-fruit-business-...
- streakfix 3y ago
  It's pretty clear his dream is to make money as well.
EGreg 3y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg
nathants 3y ago
kinda will though. you have to convert those stars into a salaried employment. those stars can be spent, just not at the grocery store.
6510 3y ago
This is the best business plan! Buy a building. Fill it with applicants with the most github stars. (Validate the stars) Don't charge rent. let them do what they want. Find sponsorships. The ROI is to see what happens.

120 points by behnamoh 3y ago

There are some ways Github will pay your rent, did someone explore them? There is Gitopia.com, Tea.xyz, Open-Source-Economy.com, or Polar.sh I am curious about people's experience with those systems, does it really pay your rent? It that not going against the principle of open-Source?

debarshri 3y ago

Only if you are selling github stars, then it can pay your rent.

dandigangi 3y ago

Starting to notice a huge influx of OS projects not being funded and maintainers drop off of something that's valuable and their passionate about. It's unfortunate.

chrona8490 3y ago
> Starting to notice a huge influx of OS projects not being funded and maintainers drop off of something that's valuable and their passionate about. It's unfortunate. Why is it unfortunate? Mother nature is not kind. If an open source maintainer can’t pay their bills, maybe they should spend their time on something that does pay the bills.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Yeah maybe those companies using their open source project should donate a little bit?
  - sammyteee 3y ago
    Isn't the typical licensing model for open-source projects designed to differentiate between personal and commercial usage? Or is the real challenge that enforcing such licensing terms is practically unfeasible?
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      We use the Boost license which does not distinguish personal from commercial use. This is on purpose. We have no agenda for anyone's use of D. We are especially happy to hear from users who have made a lot of money from using D.
    - NegativeK 3y ago
      Open source business models differentiate by providing value to commercial entities (support, extended features, whatever.) Traditional open source licenses and definitions of open source demand that the licenses not differentiate between different use types (personal, commercial, governmental, etc.) Newer licenses are coming up that do differentiate. Traditional open source orgs are often saying that they're source available, not open source.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      No, they are not. And the most popular licenses (Apache-style) these days don't even require commercial entities that fork your project to contribute back their changes. Free software / copyleft licenses like the GPL which do require that are these days shunned by many. "Open source" has become synonymous with "free labour" for a lot of firms, and there's a whole class of SaaS projects which amount to gluing together other people's open source work and then supporting it. I think this was all fine for people during boom time; you built your resume up on GitHub, you got street cred, often your employer paid for you to work on it. But I think it's starting to lose its sheen for some people.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Here at the D Language Foundation, we don't shame people into contributing. We point out how it is worth their while to donate.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      I’ll use this opportunity to say that D Lang is awesome and that I wish it gains wider adoption. I simply love that language and the community and I thank you for everything you do. On topic, indeed, shaming is never an option. But still I wish companies would donate to projects - in some countries there are even tax incentives to do so, and the benefit is that they essentially externalise development of a valuable tool for them. Also would earn a lot of good will - as steam does (while not sponsoring money directly).
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        It's the kind words from people like you that give us rocket fuel!
- probablynish 3y ago
  Steel manning here, the outcome is unfortunate because presumably these projects have positive externalities (benefits accruing to people other than other than whoever is paying, if anyone) and so the optimal funding for them from a social/aggregate point of view is greater than it currently is. That they are not funded enough is a case of market failure. Of course this doesn't contradict your point, that is fine for the maintainers to respond to these incentives. (Edit: to that end I agree with one of the main points of the article, developer's shouldn't be embarrassed about doing things for money, seeing as it's somewhat necessary for the world we live in).
- voxl 3y ago
  And maybe they should be funded by society enough to live. It's funny because this kind of social darwinism or capitalist world view is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized. Yet the (fallacious) appeal to "nature" would suggest that arbitrary monetary value is somehow the most important thing to optimize.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized True, if you have a rather low bar of success. Capitalism has produced wealth for average citizens inconceivable only a couple centuries ago. Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      > Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings. That is almost completely due to technological progress, not because of capitalism itself.
      - WD40forRust 3y ago
        Capitalism is the nature in which technology got naturally selected.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        This sentence does not make any sense to me. Would you care to elaborate?
        voxl 3y ago
        [citation needed] You know its funny because almost all academic advancement has not been in a capitalist system.
        WalterBright 3y ago
- readyplayernull 3y ago
  Monopolization is too slow, the goverment should force the fussion of every big tech company into a single entity that is forced to employ everyone in the country with great salaries and 4 hour workday, then people would have resources to do what's good. How would you like that MAANG?!
foobiekr 3y ago
It's not unfortunate at all. Every company I've worked for has been an unbelievable freeloader on open source projects. Tens of billions of dollars in revenue, almost nothing to the projects they rely on. I think the open source experiment has failed and that we need to embrace moving toward a compensated-commercial source model. Companies are strongly opposed to this because they can't freeload on volunteer work and other companies anymore, but it should be done.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  > I think the open source experiment has failed imo it still serves as a way to strengthen resumes of job applicants. Just have a few GH projects with decent "stars" to show you know how to build things. I don't endorse it (because the projects then often get abandoned after employment)—maybe it'd be better to have a "badge" on the GH page showing what the purpose of the project really is.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    thats not the open source experiment, that's just employers getting comfortable with expecting uncompensated labor in the recruiting process
- jltsiren 3y ago
  Open source has not failed. Attempts to build viable business models around it may have. That's not a weakness of open source but a weakness of software business. When you have a product with very low marginal cost of production, the market price for the product often tends towards $0. If you have a business that sells software licenses and someone develops a viable alternative (for whatever reason) and starts distributing it for free, you may have a hard time competing against them. And if the free alternative gains enough market share, both parties may find it difficult to pay for continued development. That's just how the market works.
  - foobiekr 3y ago
    As a movement. People have to eat.
barrysteve 3y ago
It's a long time coming. Getting something for nothing, doesn't last.
bityard 3y ago
I'm starting to notice that roughly half of the comments on these threads that even lightly touch on the "ecomonmics" of Free and Open Source software are from who think they or their peers are somehow entitled to money and attention just because they put some code on the Internet. Maybe I'm old-school but I was always under the impression that a paycheck and recognition are things that are earned, not begged-for or guilt-tripped into.

aaronbrethorst 3y ago

Another case in point is OneBusAway for iOS and Android: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/10/17/onebusaway-needs-help/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/10/17/onebusaway-needs-h... (n.b. I am the maintainer of OBA for iOS, and also a board member of its volunteer run parent organization.)

candiddevmike 3y ago
The name of your app (within the context of this post) made me think it was was a way to analyze GitHub repos to see what the bus factor is for maintainers.
fhdjshdj 3y ago
When I read the name I thought it was an app that does risk analysis on a company's key employees. You're one bus away from bankruptcy! Your app is great tho, all cities should provide something like that.

Liquix 3y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33540293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33540293 (11 months ago, 239 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683735 (4 years ago, 176 comments)

thekitze 3y ago
it's been 4 years since I wrote this ??? I feel old
- PoutCo 3y ago
  Did you know that your article was one of the reasons I quit my paid job to attempt to find a solution for open-source funding? At that time, I was exploring existing solutions like Gitopia, Tea, or even Polar. I believed that these solutions would not meet your needs, so perhaps it would be a good idea to create a solution that would.
- behnamoh 3y ago
  Interestingly, your last comment was 3 years ago. People who are busy building things don't have time for forum activity.
  - thekitze 3y ago
    lmao if you see the amount of time I spend on reddit and twitter you'd revoke that statement
dang 3y ago
Yup, since the most recent one was only 11 months ago, the current repost counts as a dupe. Reposts are fine after a year or so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

T3RMINATED 3y ago

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necovek 3y ago

Turnaround has always been high in small team (1-3 people) free software projects. That's exactly normal and expected: people build something while it's useful for them, and then move on. If someone else comes along, great, if not, that's ok too.

radlad 3y ago
> That's exactly normal and expected: people build something while it's useful for them, and then move on. That's one explanation, but another is that they build something useful to themselves, grow an audience of users who demand features and bugfixes which are required due to the complexity of the new features, and eventually the burden becomes too much to bear.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  This is the reason I don't work on free software anymore. The entitlement of the users was too great and their demands were too unreasonable. More than once people have threatened to: sue me, dox me, put a bomb in my mailbox, assault me, kill me, kill my family, sexually assault me, sexually assault my family, plant a bomb under my car, get me fired from work, and spread lies about me on the Internet. I'm aware that they're a minority of the users of free software. I get that they're probably mentally ill or going through it. I get that maybe they're just a few terrible people, but they by far were the most common messages in my email box from users - users who liked the software or even found it useful weren't enthusiastic enough about letting me know about that. For every 20 threats I got I'd get maybe one message thanking me for the software. You know what nobody ever did? Offer to pay me a couple of dollars for either consulting support or to implement a feature they needed, but they were more than happy to threaten me with legal action if there was a bug that I had no way to test for.
  - necovek 3y ago
    I did most of my work on Gnome, admittedly when internet was a different place, and only ever got a few minor "you are dumb doing things this or that way". I got plenty of praise and even a job at a well known free software company back in late 2000s.

m463 3y ago

"I'd spend hours to automate a task that takes 3 seconds just so I don't have to repeat the steps ever again. Meanwhile, my sister was swapping the batteries between two remotes 10 times per day for almost a year without buying a second pair of batteries and she was absolutely fine. I guess everyone is different." This here is hilarious and true. I'm pretty sure this kind of thinking creeps back into engineer's personal lives.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
baz00 3y ago
The girlfriend has a TV that blew up. Occasionally she powers it up to see if it works or not again. This blows the breakers to her apartment. So she leaves it there for a couple of months and tries again. Of course it blows the breakers instantly every time. It blew up initially 6 years ago. I am wondering if she's still going to be doing this in 6 years. She has more than enough money to replace it but that or repairing it is "too much hassle" so she doesn't bother. So it sits there. Then again she has a psych PhD so perhaps it's just an experiment.
- whywhywouldyou 3y ago
  This is exactly the behavior I would expect from someone with a psych PhD.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    "I'm not crazy. Everybody else is crazy."
    - baz00 3y ago
      That actually kills me a bit because I think you are right.
  - m463 3y ago
    The TV just doesn't want to fix itself yet.

throwaway9274 3y ago

Value capture != value creation. A lesson every engineer learns with their first very successful project.

andrewstuart2 3y ago
Bold of you to assume I've had a very successful project.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  The path to a very successful project leads through a mildly successful project.
- throwaway9274 3y ago
  Everyone’s definition of a successful project varies, but 5k GitHub stars (at time of writing before people started gaming the metric) qualifies to me. Modesty aside, the general principle reminds me of Alex Graveley, the eng lead on GitHub Copilot, saying his compensation for creating Copilot was only a $20k bonus and a title bump. They’re both good illustrations that “make something people want” is a necessary step to turning code into wealth, but not a sufficient step.

GoToRO 3y ago

Could be easily solved by stating that if you used the product and your income is bigger than $x per year, you owe $1000 to the project per year. But the OS gurus convinced the developers that it should be free for everybody. Even companies that have billions in cash. Develooers are really smart but also very gullible.

probablynish 3y ago
> if you used the product and your income is bigger than $x per year, you owe $1000 to the project per year How would you enforce this?
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Don't enforce it. You'll still get a decent pay from those who want to play by the rules.
- devmor 3y ago
  Ask Unity and Epic, seems to work for them.
- connicpu 3y ago
  Large corporations are going to play by the rules just because in general it's cheaper than risking going to court eventually over not following them. Sure some small fries who borderline should be paying you may not, but in the grand scheme that won't be losing you a ton of money compared to the big fish who will pay.
  - probablynish 3y ago
    Oh that makes sense. I thought the suggestion was referring to individuals and not corporations - eg "individuals should buy a license if they earn more than $80k/year" or something. That seems tougher to enforce.
- GoToRO 3y ago
  As others said it enforces itself. Also if a company has wild success with your software there is a good chance you will find out. Also, in my country there is an angency that checks that companies paid for the software they use.

sshine 3y ago

... but they will convince your crypto startup investor that you’re on the hype train so that they’ll sink money into baiting the next round of idiots.

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wg0 3y ago

Here's a serious question. Countless stories of companies turning back from open source to restrictive licenses. Will open source survive? Except maybe the iconic projects that have already a certain status such as Linux, LLVM etc?

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hk__2 3y ago
> Countless stories of companies turning back from open source to restrictive licenses. > Will open source survive? Except maybe the iconic projects that have already a certain status such as Linux, LLVM etc? I’d say that 95% of open-source is made by normal people like you and me, not by companies. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
bityard 3y ago
Free and Open Source software did not start with corporate sponsorship, it will not die from lack of it.

paxys 3y ago

Availability (or lack thereof) of source code is not a business model. "Open source" doesn't magically make money, and neither does closed source. I agree that too many people out there think that they can publish something to Github and the cash will start rolling in. Regardless of how useful your product is, you still need to build a business around it.

nwoli 3y ago
> I agree that too many people out there think that they can publish something to Github and the cash will start rolling in Does anyone think this? I thought we were just publishing this stuff for nerd status points. I never expected money other than through a salary from possibly getting hired via it would manifest
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thekitze 3y ago

hey HN! thanks to whoever posted this. An update on this is that Sizzy is still going strong! Lately I've been super busy with building [Benji](https://benji.so https://benji.so) which is a Life OS and organizes your habits, todos, routines, planner, fasting, meal tracking and a billion other features. I got tired of paying subscriptions for 31855 mediocre apps so I built a single master app that combines everything. A lot of people ask me about my philosophy of shipping so I made [Zero To Shipped](https://zerotoshipped.com https://zerotoshipped.com) which teaches the details of my stack along with my mindset about shipping paid products. So far there's 92 videos and 10 hours of content, but the final version will be more than 200 videos. I hope I'm not violating some HN rules when I'm talking about the things that I made... Feel free to AMA and I'd happy to answer your questions!

cracrecry 3y ago

People should devote a little time to learning about money and business as they do with programming or any other ability they have. If you believe that "Money is a dirty word" you should check your social environment and make friends that do not have those limiting beliefs so you could support each other. Creating a support group of people like you(developers) is a great idea.

cpill 3y ago

Don't take VC man! They your dreams are no longer your dreams, they are the VCs dreams, which is to make money. Wrote something about it here http://alexander.whillas.com/the-low-hanging-fruit-business-model.html http://alexander.whillas.com/the-low-hanging-fruit-business-...

streakfix 3y ago
It's pretty clear his dream is to make money as well.

EGreg 3y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg

nathants 3y ago

kinda will though. you have to convert those stars into a salaried employment. those stars can be spent, just not at the grocery store.

6510 3y ago

This is the best business plan! Buy a building. Fill it with applicants with the most github stars. (Validate the stars) Don't charge rent. let them do what they want. Find sponsorships. The ROI is to see what happens.