4 ms·
I think there's a basic contradiction at the bottom of a lot of the angst over OSS, sustainability, etc.: there are a lot of OSS people who simultaneously want
by woodruffw 2y ago
I think there's a basic contradiction at the bottom of a lot of the angst over OSS, sustainability, etc.: there are a lot of OSS people who simultaneously want their projects to be important, but also don't want the responsibility (in a basic civic, not legal sense) that comes with being widely adopted.
If you don't want your projects to be important, there are well-trodden ways to send that message to companies that attempt to extract wealth from your free labor: you can close and ignore their issues, send them nastygrams, etc. But if you do put effort into making your projects easily adoptable, I don't think it's crazy that companies do in fact come knocking.
(This is a non-normative position: I don't think any of this is particularly fair. But I think it's telling that there is a huge pool of OSS that companies mostly ignore, since it gives of "go away and don't rely on me" signals.)