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> When I released Ardour under the GPL, my vision was that by virtue of it being an open source project (technically orthogonal to its status as "free/libre sof

> When I released Ardour under the GPL, my vision was that by virtue of it being an open source project (technically orthogonal to its status as "free/libre software"), it would be possible, even encouraged, for other developers to participate and get involved in extending its capabilities. I think a lot of people starting with open source kinda expect that dedicated contributors will start to swarm around the project. In reality, a large majority of projects, even many quite prominent ones, are driven by a very small core, often just the project founder. I kinda understand why the author thinks this is the value of OSS, but from the POV of a user, I'm not as much interested in extending the long list of open source projects I'm using. I prefer open source, because it gives me some mental safety - if I invest into using this software (time spent learning, importing my data into project's data structure etc.), I like the fact that the project is not automatically going to be a dead end if the project founder stops developing it (for whatever reason) or will start pulling something shady, because there is a latent possibility of forking it, in case something happens and there's a need for it. I'd compare it to democracy (although it is an imperfect analogy of course). You might think that the freedom to participate in the political scene will motivate many people to do exactly that. But only a small majority of citizens will participate in it. Yet even the non-participating citizens are glad that the leaders won't be able to pull off something crazy without citizens having any say in that.

EdwardDiego 3y ago
There's a fair few FOSS projects that have a bus factor of 1 or 2, it's one of the things I check these days before considering adoption. That said, having multiple core contributors isn't always a guarantee either if they're from the same company, that's another bus factor of 1, especially if the company's core business isn't selling software to others, they'll usually end up neglected or abandoned. Great examples are Robinhood's Faust library, and Shopify's stewardship (or lack thereof) of Sarama. Not their core business, so eventually, the devs get moved on to stuff that makes money directly.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  Maybe I phrased it the wrong way. What attracts me to open source isn't a higher number of contributors / bus factor, but the fact that if the project dies for whatever reason, I, and perhaps some other desperate users, can fork it, port it to newer platforms, fix the gravest bugs etc. If worse comes to worst, I'm not completely locked out. Meanwhile with closed source software, I'm completely realint on the software producer.
calvinmorrison 3y ago
For me the value isn't the maintainer but the ability to not get locked out. At my work we deal with older files a LOT. We have a bunch of vms running scary old versions of stuff because they're out of date and insecure. At least with open source we could patch or maintain them.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> I think a lot of people starting with open source kinda expect that dedicated contributors will start to swarm around the project. In reality, a large majority of projects, even many quite prominent ones, are driven by a very small core, often just the project founder. https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/gtk2_ardour/about.cc#L132 https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/gtk2_ardour/abo...
- justaj 3y ago
  https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/graphs/contributors

EdwardDiego 3y ago

There's a fair few FOSS projects that have a bus factor of 1 or 2, it's one of the things I check these days before considering adoption. That said, having multiple core contributors isn't always a guarantee either if they're from the same company, that's another bus factor of 1, especially if the company's core business isn't selling software to others, they'll usually end up neglected or abandoned. Great examples are Robinhood's Faust library, and Shopify's stewardship (or lack thereof) of Sarama. Not their core business, so eventually, the devs get moved on to stuff that makes money directly.

The_Colonel 3y ago
Maybe I phrased it the wrong way. What attracts me to open source isn't a higher number of contributors / bus factor, but the fact that if the project dies for whatever reason, I, and perhaps some other desperate users, can fork it, port it to newer platforms, fix the gravest bugs etc. If worse comes to worst, I'm not completely locked out. Meanwhile with closed source software, I'm completely realint on the software producer.

calvinmorrison 3y ago

For me the value isn't the maintainer but the ability to not get locked out. At my work we deal with older files a LOT. We have a bunch of vms running scary old versions of stuff because they're out of date and insecure. At least with open source we could patch or maintain them.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> I think a lot of people starting with open source kinda expect that dedicated contributors will start to swarm around the project. In reality, a large majority of projects, even many quite prominent ones, are driven by a very small core, often just the project founder. https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/gtk2_ardour/about.cc#L132 https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/gtk2_ardour/abo...

justaj 3y ago
https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/graphs/contributors