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Open source is one of the most thankless jobs. People who do it should still think about other ways to make money, or find a way to earn while contributing. It

• benfortuna 2y ago
  As an Open Source maintainer, I have always considered it something to do when I want to. If it becomes a burden or a chore, then I stop doing it, regardless of demands from users. I have no expectations of the users, and I expect the same from them.
  • fsndz 2y ago
    best mindset tbh
  • stavros 2y ago
    This is the only way OSS can be sustainable, I appreciate people who make OSS their (unpaid) job, but it can't be healthy for them.
• theosp 2y ago
  At JustDo we make our source code available for transparency and collaboration, we use a source-available license that ensures fair compensation for our work. This model allows us to maintain the benefits of open development while avoiding the pitfalls of unrestricted open-source licensing, ensuring we can sustainably develop and support our software. I developed this license https://justdo.com/source-available-license https://justdo.com/source-available-license , if someone wants to adopt it for their project, I'd love to provide its Latex form, just DM me. (With enough demand, I might Open Source the Source available license ;) )."
  • llm_trw 2y ago
    Yeah, source available is the way to go. I'm not here to make Bezos' yacht ten feet longer.
    • mrob 2y ago
      What's wrong with AGPL?
      • llm_trw 2y ago
        monkey paw curls Your AGPL code now only runs on amazon lambda functions. Stallman et. al. have not worked in big corp since the 80s so they don't understand how misaligned incentives are now. The AGPL is a solution to the issues we were having in the 00s. The issues of the 20s are solved by source available licenses. Or my preferred solution, any open source license which can only be used by a natural person, corporations need not apply.
  • fsndz 2y ago
    this is super good
  • jpt4 2y ago
    Have violations of this license been successfully countered?
  • OutOfHere 2y ago
    This is a disease. It is not open source. No one who values open source will use it. For any task, for software that would run on my system, I would rather use open source even if it's five times worse.
    • llm_trw 2y ago
      No one is asking you to.
      • OutOfHere 2y ago
• mkleczek 2y ago
  Isn't it just a matter of choosing the license properly? To be honest, I find it contradictory: On one hand OSS authors select permissive license exactly because they want big corps to use their software. On the other hand - OSS authors are unhappy about big corps using their software in a way that license allows them to. Just stick to GPLv3 / AGPL.
  • OutOfHere 2y ago
    Those are good licenses, but lately I prefer LGPL for a wee bit more freedom.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • palata 2y ago
    There is a whole spectrum between AGPL and permissive. MPLv2 or the EUPL [1] basically say "you can use it as a library (and link it without the concerns of LGPL) but if you modify/extend the library, you have to distribute the code of the modified/extended library". I don't understand why an OSS author would select anything more permissive than that: big corps can use MPLv2/EUPL libraries in proprietary software just fine. [1]: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/how-use-eupl https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/how-use-eupl
    • ekidd 2y ago
      > I don't understand why an OSS author would select anything more permissive than that: Honestly? Because many things are too small to be worth paying a lawyer to write a letter to license violators. If I'm not willing to sue someone for disobeying the license on a library or tool, I just use a maximally permissive license. And at a good lawyer's hourly rate, it has to be a pretty big project before I'd even care. So for minor projects, MIT or Apache it is. Or I just CC0 it. I wrote the code because I found it useful, and I decided that it wasn't worth the often heartbreaking effort of building a sustainable business around it. So if someone else finds my code useful, that's great! (EDIT: See discussion below for why I don't bother with a license I'm not willing to enforce.)
• WalterBright 2y ago
  I receive $0 compensation for working on the D compiler. It's Boost licensed. Everyone is free to use it for whatever they want, and the source code is free to use, too. I'm fully aware of what I'm doing :-) The D Language Foundation is a non-profit, has expenses, and is funded by donations. None of it goes to me.
  • lionkor 2y ago
    I assume, then, that you do it because it's fun :) That's why I do open source.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      Yes, it's fun, and I like design work making things better. It's fun seeing other languages adopting D design innovations.
      • movedx 2y ago
        Do you think making important, widely used open-source software is a good idea when it's being done, for fun? What happens when it's no longer fun, but 150,000 people depend on it for their job? Imagine Linus Tarvolds stopped working on Linux before there was a foundation to take over because he did it just for fun and no one else wanted to take up the mantle? It's hard to say what the outcome from that would have been... maybe Google would have claimed it entirely and slowly shifted the license to something else? I appreciate that people can create things for fun, and those things can be open-source, but if someone creates something because it's the right thing to do and not just about fun... well where do we stand now? Should they make it open-source but demand money? Should it be closed-source if the fun-factor is less than 80%? 50%? Unless a small, dedicated team of capable people agree that your open-source project is worth preserving, allowing it to survive you as the founder, I question the validity of open-sourcing anything for fun unless you design the licence, and more, to enable you to walk away and/or get bored. Would love to hear your thoughts.
        • satvikpendem 2y ago
• AyyEye 2y ago
  I sew my own clothes, grow my own food, and give away all my excess instead of selling it. I use only open source software. Thanks for writing it.
• ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  > "It makes no sense to write amazing software, used by large corporations to generate billions, while you end up poor and bitter." Lots of us said this in the 1990s by the way. Even back then, the belief that many developers and businesses would reciprocate by freeing their own source or even that enough would reciprocate for FOSS to be self sustaining was clearly, ahem, unrealistic.
  • yobbo 2y ago
    This is what has happened with things like Linux, Android, chromium and so on because they are released products. GPL didn't foresee SaaS becoming such a huge thing. As I understand, AGPL is a step on the way to fixing this.
    • swiftcoder 2y ago
      Android (and to some extent, Chromium) are weird cases of a major corporation weaponising open-source to broaden their already market-dominant position. Android in doesn't even accept patches from the like of you or I, and future versions are developed almost entirely in secret.
      • Expurple 2y ago
        SQLite is developed in a similar way, by the way. Maintainers aren't required to accept community patches. It's not part of the four freedoms or whatever. Realistically, open-source licences only give the user the rights to use the software, redistribute it and fork if needed, but no "voting" rights regarding the upstream copy. You're talking about open development and governance, which are often associated with open-source, but aren't required.
        • swiftcoder 2y ago
          You are correct, but I'm not sure that the colloquial usage of the term "open-source" is very consistent with propietary platforms that just happen to make source code available
• bun_terminator 2y ago
  It's not a job
  • ChoHag 2y ago
    It's very revealing that this response is so disliked that it's going grey. But it is the truth. Do you not like the truth? It is not a job. Nobody asked you to do it. You do not get to be sad when nobody pats you on the head. You are owed nothing. Thanks for the code.
    • navjack27 2y ago
      I believe in patting on the head anyone who puts in effort to anything that I end up repeatedly using overtime. Mostly through comments of words of encouragement because I don't have the means otherwise.
    • Workaccount2 2y ago
      Often you do get a return, just not necessarily directly monetary. Connections you make, recognition for your work, fame if it becomes really popular, or if nothing else something to have on your resume. You might not be getting paid, but you also aren't getting nothing.
    • matheusmoreira 2y ago
      We like truth. We don't like self-righteous ingratitude. > You are owed nothing. You owe them exactly what is written on the license file. If you do not give them what they are owed, you do not have a right to use their software. Even if we assume they used the most permissive license imaginable, if you used their code you are still obligated to put a copy of their name and copyright notice as well as the license conditions and warranty disclaimer somewhere in your software or product. Typically you are also prohibited from using their name in the marketing materials of your derivative work. Your "thanks for the free code loser" attitude is why I will AGPLv3 all of my current and future projects. At least the AGPLv3 is big enough to intimidate away people who don't even read licenses.
  • goodpoint 2y ago
• tsimionescu 2y ago
  Many of the most important open source software is developed by paid professionals, not by volunteers. The large open source projects are basically just collaboration efforts between various large tech corps to jointly develop infrastructure that they all need. This is true for Linux, Clang, Kubernetes, KVM, for example. There are some critical bits that are still volunteer work (xz being an infamous recent case), but this is clearly the direction things are going.
  • mu53 2y ago
    If you took a list of every open source project that FANG-type companies depend on, there are small libraries that don't draw benefit/attention from large companies. Outdated, less optimal, almost-famous code/libraries/frameworks that businesses still rely on for money and don't want to spend money migrating away from that need various updates for new OS versions, security patches, and those are the maintainers that are underpaid and struggling.
    • sfn42 2y ago
      Nobody's forcing the maintainer to maintain though. If a company needs updates they can do it themselves or hire the maintainer to do it.
      • firesteelrain 2y ago
        Right, either the company will continue to reap the benefits of the constant updates, accept the risk, or find another way (paid or free) to do it.
    • WJW 2y ago
      Why are the maintainers working for free in the first place if they don't like it? If they're struggling financially, spending a lot of time on charity is not likely to improve the situation.
    • nkrisc 2y ago
      > Outdated, less optimal, almost-famous code/libraries/frameworks that businesses still rely on for money and don't want to spend money migrating away from that need various updates for new OS versions, security patches, and those are the maintainers that are underpaid and struggling. They can just not do it if they don’t want to.
• watwut 2y ago
  Per FOSS yearly survey, almost all maintenners are doing it as a paid job.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• bravetraveler 2y ago
  Surprise safety orientation, we're on an airplane: take care of yourself before others. A big part of Open Source is not knowing or caring about the intentions of the user. Wherever it may go is magical but also, potentially, terrifying. I can't articulate it that well, but look back at the whole RSA/military grade encryption thing for references.
• ascorbic 2y ago
  I'm lucky enough to be employed full time to work on open source, but I still build my own OSS in my own time because it scratches a different itch. My work on Astro is fun, but it's my job, with Linear tickets and standups and 1:1s and quarterly planning. My own OSS is where I build whatever fun stuff I feel like without pressure. It has enough users that I do get issues, but not too many that they're overwhelming. I think the very fact that I have a job in OSS makes it easier for me to dismiss the entitled users who come to my personal projects demanding support. I build that for fun, and I owe you nothing.
• matheusmoreira 2y ago
  GitHub Sponsors seems promising... If one somehow gains a large amount of fans. I gained one last time my work was posted here and I'm really grateful for it. I refuse to advertise my projects though. Simply because I hate ads myself. I think the best option is to just AGPLv3 everything. You maximize freedom but still own the copyright so if corporations want your software they can simply pay for permission to use it. AGPLv3 gives us our leverage back in an ethical way. Even asked Richard Stallman what he thought of it. His reply: > It is my understanding that as the copyright holders > they have the right to do it without any problems. > They leverage the AGPLv3 to make it harder for their > competitors to use the code to compete against them. I see what you mean. The original developer can engage in a practice that blocks coopertation. By contrast, using some other license, such as the ordinary GPL, would permitt ANY user of the program to engage in that practice. In a perverse sense that could seem more fair, but I think it is also more harmful. On balance, using the AGPL is better.
• WJW 2y ago
  I've always seen contributing to OSS as more akin to volunteering as a treasurer at a local sports club than as a job. Just because you do many of the same activities that other people get paid for doesn't make OSS a "job". Making something useful and giving it away for free is laudable charity, but it's not sustainable business strategy.
• FeepingCreature 2y ago
  As an open-source developer, my thanks is that I get the program or the change. Everything else is charity, and I treat it accordingly.
• kelnos 2y ago
  Or maybe accept that we know what we're doing and we're even perhaps happier not accepting money for our work. To me, an exchange of money implies a stronger commitment to timely support and to prioritizing and implementing features or bug fixes that paying customers want. A big part of why I volunteer with open source projects is that I hate that feeling when doing professional software development. Even if it was strictly a donation model, I'm not sure I'd feel completely comfortable with that.