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> As if FOSS tooling was a crowded space!! These projects are desperate for volunteers, and lack of developer time and resources is one of the biggest handicaps

> As if FOSS tooling was a crowded space!! These projects are desperate for volunteers, and lack of developer time and resources is one of the biggest handicaps that these projects often face thinking about eg the recent xz vuln, isn't this somewhat indicative of a licensing failure on the part of FOSS licenses? the point of licensing is to ensure the author is properly compensated for his work, and if the work is used by billion dollar companies while authors scrape by and beg for donations, it seems to me that the license isn't doing its job. the license should capture some value and give it to the author. it's completely absurd that professional tooling is begging for volunteers. you don't see that in any other field.

dEnigma 3y ago
The point of FOSS licenses is keeping code free and open-source, not compensating anyone.
danShumway 3y ago
That could be a longer conversation, but I think there's a subset of community-run projects that would be desperate for volunteers even if they were proprietary. In general most non-exploitative volunteer spaces are clamoring for volunteers even outside of software. Your local library is probably clamoring for volunteers (depending on the location). If you're in a rural area your school is probably clamoring for substitute teachers. And on and on. I have opinions about the movement away from FOSS to source available licenses, but I think independent of all of that, smaller projects that fulfill important niches but that are not easily monetizable generally need help, and I don't think that would change if software licenses changed. Some projects could probably get better funding, but many would be in the same position. I think in general there is more productive stuff to do in the world than there are people available to do it -- and I don't just mean in software, I mean everywhere. The world is held together by duck tape because a surprising small proportion of people volunteer to duck tape it together, and any effort that anyone expands towards helping them and making the world better instead of exclusively chasing whatever the next sexy high-visibility project is -- I think that's important, impactful work.

dEnigma 3y ago

The point of FOSS licenses is keeping code free and open-source, not compensating anyone.

danShumway 3y ago

That could be a longer conversation, but I think there's a subset of community-run projects that would be desperate for volunteers even if they were proprietary. In general most non-exploitative volunteer spaces are clamoring for volunteers even outside of software. Your local library is probably clamoring for volunteers (depending on the location). If you're in a rural area your school is probably clamoring for substitute teachers. And on and on. I have opinions about the movement away from FOSS to source available licenses, but I think independent of all of that, smaller projects that fulfill important niches but that are not easily monetizable generally need help, and I don't think that would change if software licenses changed. Some projects could probably get better funding, but many would be in the same position. I think in general there is more productive stuff to do in the world than there are people available to do it -- and I don't just mean in software, I mean everywhere. The world is held together by duck tape because a surprising small proportion of people volunteer to duck tape it together, and any effort that anyone expands towards helping them and making the world better instead of exclusively chasing whatever the next sexy high-visibility project is -- I think that's important, impactful work.