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First, I don't know if the average age of open-source coders is increasing (in a way you wouldn't expect from general demographic trends). Second, if it is happ
by jonnycomputer 2y ago
First, I don't know if the average age of open-source coders is increasing (in a way you wouldn't expect from general demographic trends). Second, if it is happening, blaming mature coders is probably pretty far down the list. More likely is (in no particular order):
(1) corporate contracts that discourage employees from contributing to OSS
(2) green-field effect (there is already a lot of OSS and few obvious opportunities for new OSS, and creating a new open-source project is often easier than it is to gain the trust of developers of an existing project and a lot more exciting,
(3) VC culture: imagine if Facebook had open-sourced their platform from the start; yeah, I can't either, where's the money in that?
- causal 2y ago(1) Is a problem for sure. Proprietary devs always overestimate the value of their code, and lack of open source scrutiny typically makes code quality worse. (2) Definitely. (3) VC culture can be an issue, though Facebook might not be the best example (they gave us React, GraphQL, PyTorch, and more).
- jonnycomputer 2y agoYes, but Facebook, the original platform, not the big corporation it became.
- Delphiza 2y agoI would add (4) (Related to your 2) OSS projects are probably getting bigger on average. Corporate-sponsored projects that tackle complex problems, as with a lot of current data science and AI, means that one-man projects are almost impossible to get off the ground. One-man projects have to be very lucky - get the right idea, the right time, and by a person who can do it (capability, time, personality)
- JohnFen 2y agoHow does the average size of OSS projects impact an individual's effort? There is no requirement that a one-man project has to be of any particular size.
- jonnycomputer 2y agoI think they mean that some projects (say a competitive Excel alternative) is just too big for a single person to do.
- JohnFen 2y agoThis is certainly true, but my question is why does that matter? It's not like projects of a more manageable scope are any less interesting or useful.