4 ms·

Nailed it. Particularly the fact that as valid as OP's situation is, it isn't necessarily indicative of FOSS as a whole. They basically say it in their articl

Nailed it. Particularly the fact that as valid as OP's situation is, it isn't necessarily indicative of FOSS as a whole. They basically say it in their article: They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) of how awesome Linux and BSD are, and the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical, to be avoided, and so on. It seems the harsh reality of "Not everyone can be sustained by a nonprofit foundation" has arrived.

MBCook 3y ago
That’s victim blaming. “They were unrealistic and should have known they’d be personally attacked, it’s their own fault for being weak”. Really? How about no one should be treated like shit for proving free software to you?
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Haha! I just got done chastising someone for exactly what you accuse me of. No, I'm not blaming the person for quitting because of the jerks. There are two narratives in the article: one is the dilemma of how to put food on the table as a developer, and one is about the abuse and criticism from people who pay nothing and expect everything. So no, I don't "blame" the OP at all. No one should treat others rudely online, and OP had to deal with some awful stuff. My comment was about the dream of an all-FOSS world and how that clashes with buying groceries for a lot of people.
- PhilipRoman 3y ago
  I agree with you, but in general any theory in the form of "the world should/shouldn't do XYZ" quickly falls apart when it meets reality. If you maintain any public communication channel, you are bound to get a bit of garbage coming in. You cannot fix it by saying how things should be.
Eji1700 3y ago
I've always found the diehard linux/FOSS crowd naive and abrasive simply because it seems to totally ignore reality. If you're good at coding, and you enjoy coding, you probably want to do it for a living. Not as a second job, not as a side project, and certainly not as a charity case that just flat out will not sustain you. There are precious few things that have the adoption and support linux has, and a lot of that is very much a "right place, right time" thing. The fact that I've seen plenty straight up vilify a coder for daring to want to, you know, make enough to support a library full time has always struck me as self destructive. I'm sure many great coders have given up and moved on to paid projects doing boiler plate because inventing new stuff gets you chewed up and spit out by the community if you monetize.
- talldayo 3y ago
  It's turtles all the way down. Selling your library sounds like a great deal if your B2B sales don't dry up and the investors buy into your story. But then you reach a pit of disillusionment where you realize that you relied on free software more than your own work, and probably ran up quite the karmic deficit selling whatever product you made. Maybe you decide that you don't care, but you have to reason with it somehow. I think a lot of people lash out at the entrepreneurial spirit because a business venture inherently necessitates risk. Your audience is not going to reward high-risk plays, and if your business proposition threatens their use-case enough then they'll probably protest. That train of logic isn't "diehard linux/FOSS" in my mind but more just holding someone to their own standards. Making a living out of coding is one thing, but turning your passion project into a business is another. If simple abrasive comments are what made them quit Open Source, I can't imagine how long they'd last trying to sell people a Javascript library.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > Selling your library sounds like a great deal if your B2B sales don't dry up and the investors buy into your story. What "investors"?!? As a single developer, you need a computer and an Internet connection. Where do the six-(or seven-, or eight-)figure amounts of Venture Capital investment come in? > But then you reach a pit of disillusionment where you realize that you relied on free software more than your own work, and probably ran up quite the karmic deficit selling whatever product you made. That's what the LGPL is for: Even if you release your actual product only under a commercial license, you can help improve the tools you use, to pay back your karma to the community that enables you to do the whole thing in the first place. (Disclaimer: This is the only way I can see being able to both make a living as a one-man software development company and participate in / contribute to FOSS... But I haven't taken the leap of faith, put my living where my mouth is. (Yet.) So this could all be hot air.)
- fsckboy 3y ago
  none of the "fathers of opensource" had a problem with people coding for money, and it was always presented as a choice to donate code to the commonweal. And they knew how to handle and put constraints on people who were rude and asked too much, LART them or send a clue by four. But it's "you", the people who demand snowflake "codes of conduct", who don't know how to handle the negative energy and then you wind up exhausted and depressed and flailing. I'm not criticizing anybody or the way you/they want things to be, I just think you are mischaracterizing the past because you don't understand the social contract.
fsckboy 3y ago
>They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) you grew up thinking you were drinking koolaid, but you weren't, it was indeed fine wine. > of how awesome Linux and BSD are it's hard to think of two things more awesome than those two things. There's no koolaid, they are monumental achievements and are amazing. >the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical Stallman is/was a socialist, so yes, he had a Marxist take, "from those who have the ability, to those who have the need" and "there should be a limit to concentration of wealth regardless of the value of what you provide": much like so many people here. So yes, that's koolaid, but given that a majority of young people/people here believe it, you can't really pin that koolaid on GNU or open source, that's koolaid that was brought from home. But the rest of Stallman's idea and motivation, that if you find an annoying bug while using your printer, you and everybody else benefits if you have the source to the printer driver to fix it: that's not koolaid, that's the same type of can-do idea that drove "American ingenuity" on the frontier. It's nice to be able to fix a printer just like the blacksmith could fix your plough, and once in awhile we get together for a barn-raisin'. I just think you're oversimplifying and mixing separate concepts.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  This seems to be tone deaf fluffy theory in the face of "well, I can't afford to eat but at least some guy online says it's fine wine" Printer driver is a nice motivating story but in practice its a lotta work for no benefit
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    the entire web grew up on and still runs on open source, and everything lamented today as "wrong" with the web is proprietary. there is no fluffy theory, i have no idea what you are talking about. you're just not grateful for what you have, you're (analogy) like a teenager who assumes you're entitled to everything your parents provide... wait till you have kids of your own and you realize your parents had no fluffy illusions
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > Printer driver is a nice motivating story but in practice its a lotta work for no benefit Printer driver is what the Free Software movement, and therefore its bastard son the Open Source movement, comes from. But, sure, you want to call that "no benefit", you do you, man...

MBCook 3y ago

That’s victim blaming. “They were unrealistic and should have known they’d be personally attacked, it’s their own fault for being weak”. Really? How about no one should be treated like shit for proving free software to you?

unethical_ban 3y ago
Haha! I just got done chastising someone for exactly what you accuse me of. No, I'm not blaming the person for quitting because of the jerks. There are two narratives in the article: one is the dilemma of how to put food on the table as a developer, and one is about the abuse and criticism from people who pay nothing and expect everything. So no, I don't "blame" the OP at all. No one should treat others rudely online, and OP had to deal with some awful stuff. My comment was about the dream of an all-FOSS world and how that clashes with buying groceries for a lot of people.
PhilipRoman 3y ago
I agree with you, but in general any theory in the form of "the world should/shouldn't do XYZ" quickly falls apart when it meets reality. If you maintain any public communication channel, you are bound to get a bit of garbage coming in. You cannot fix it by saying how things should be.

Eji1700 3y ago

I've always found the diehard linux/FOSS crowd naive and abrasive simply because it seems to totally ignore reality. If you're good at coding, and you enjoy coding, you probably want to do it for a living. Not as a second job, not as a side project, and certainly not as a charity case that just flat out will not sustain you. There are precious few things that have the adoption and support linux has, and a lot of that is very much a "right place, right time" thing. The fact that I've seen plenty straight up vilify a coder for daring to want to, you know, make enough to support a library full time has always struck me as self destructive. I'm sure many great coders have given up and moved on to paid projects doing boiler plate because inventing new stuff gets you chewed up and spit out by the community if you monetize.

talldayo 3y ago
It's turtles all the way down. Selling your library sounds like a great deal if your B2B sales don't dry up and the investors buy into your story. But then you reach a pit of disillusionment where you realize that you relied on free software more than your own work, and probably ran up quite the karmic deficit selling whatever product you made. Maybe you decide that you don't care, but you have to reason with it somehow. I think a lot of people lash out at the entrepreneurial spirit because a business venture inherently necessitates risk. Your audience is not going to reward high-risk plays, and if your business proposition threatens their use-case enough then they'll probably protest. That train of logic isn't "diehard linux/FOSS" in my mind but more just holding someone to their own standards. Making a living out of coding is one thing, but turning your passion project into a business is another. If simple abrasive comments are what made them quit Open Source, I can't imagine how long they'd last trying to sell people a Javascript library.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > Selling your library sounds like a great deal if your B2B sales don't dry up and the investors buy into your story. What "investors"?!? As a single developer, you need a computer and an Internet connection. Where do the six-(or seven-, or eight-)figure amounts of Venture Capital investment come in? > But then you reach a pit of disillusionment where you realize that you relied on free software more than your own work, and probably ran up quite the karmic deficit selling whatever product you made. That's what the LGPL is for: Even if you release your actual product only under a commercial license, you can help improve the tools you use, to pay back your karma to the community that enables you to do the whole thing in the first place. (Disclaimer: This is the only way I can see being able to both make a living as a one-man software development company and participate in / contribute to FOSS... But I haven't taken the leap of faith, put my living where my mouth is. (Yet.) So this could all be hot air.)
fsckboy 3y ago
none of the "fathers of opensource" had a problem with people coding for money, and it was always presented as a choice to donate code to the commonweal. And they knew how to handle and put constraints on people who were rude and asked too much, LART them or send a clue by four. But it's "you", the people who demand snowflake "codes of conduct", who don't know how to handle the negative energy and then you wind up exhausted and depressed and flailing. I'm not criticizing anybody or the way you/they want things to be, I just think you are mischaracterizing the past because you don't understand the social contract.

fsckboy 3y ago

>They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) you grew up thinking you were drinking koolaid, but you weren't, it was indeed fine wine. > of how awesome Linux and BSD are it's hard to think of two things more awesome than those two things. There's no koolaid, they are monumental achievements and are amazing. >the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical Stallman is/was a socialist, so yes, he had a Marxist take, "from those who have the ability, to those who have the need" and "there should be a limit to concentration of wealth regardless of the value of what you provide": much like so many people here. So yes, that's koolaid, but given that a majority of young people/people here believe it, you can't really pin that koolaid on GNU or open source, that's koolaid that was brought from home. But the rest of Stallman's idea and motivation, that if you find an annoying bug while using your printer, you and everybody else benefits if you have the source to the printer driver to fix it: that's not koolaid, that's the same type of can-do idea that drove "American ingenuity" on the frontier. It's nice to be able to fix a printer just like the blacksmith could fix your plough, and once in awhile we get together for a barn-raisin'. I just think you're oversimplifying and mixing separate concepts.

refulgentis 3y ago
This seems to be tone deaf fluffy theory in the face of "well, I can't afford to eat but at least some guy online says it's fine wine" Printer driver is a nice motivating story but in practice its a lotta work for no benefit
- fsckboy 3y ago
  the entire web grew up on and still runs on open source, and everything lamented today as "wrong" with the web is proprietary. there is no fluffy theory, i have no idea what you are talking about. you're just not grateful for what you have, you're (analogy) like a teenager who assumes you're entitled to everything your parents provide... wait till you have kids of your own and you realize your parents had no fluffy illusions
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > Printer driver is a nice motivating story but in practice its a lotta work for no benefit Printer driver is what the Free Software movement, and therefore its bastard son the Open Source movement, comes from. But, sure, you want to call that "no benefit", you do you, man...