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There's a reason why FOSS is by hackers for hackers—it's software written by people to solve their own needs. They release that software as Free/Libre so that o

There's a reason why FOSS is by hackers for hackers—it's software written by people to solve their own needs. They release that software as Free/Libre so that others can benefit from it if they would like to, but first and foremost it's written because the author themselves saw a problem and wanted a solution. What's changed is that as startup culture infected hacker culture a few subcultures developed within FOSS that thought that that wasn't good enough. One of those subcultures decided that it was an imperative that they make more money off of their FOSS projects than anyone else does—this is how you get the Matt Mulenwegs of the FOSS world, who diss on other FOSS developers because "most of the value" of their projects was "captured by others" [0]. They see FOSS as a revenue stream and if it's not a revenue stream (or if it ends up being a bigger revenue stream for someone else than it is for you) it's a failure. Another subculture thinks that FOSS should be mainstream. That's the idea typified here: by "hackers for hackers" is selfish and we should instead "reshape our thinking towards more political goals and values". The fact is that both of these perspectives are fundamentally not about adapting FOSS to the times—they're both about building two entirely different philosophies. FOSS is not a business model, and what the Matt Mulenwegs of the world actually want is to be a tech startup CEO. And FOSS is not and cannot be mainstream because to become mainstream requires a bucketload of UX design and user support work that no one in their right mind wants to take on for free as a hobbyist. FOSS is by hackers for hackers because it must be. If you want to make more profit than anyone else does off your project or if you want to pursue "political goals and values" you're looking for an entirely different type of organization. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20241014235025/https://ma.tt/2024/10/on-dhh/ http://web.archive.org/web/20241014235025/https://ma.tt/2024...

asoneth 2y ago
> to become mainstream requires a bucketload of UX design and user support work that no one in their right mind wants to take on for free as a hobbyist. There are several open source communities with UX designers and user researchers in them such as KDE, Gnome, Krita, GIMP, Inkscape, Penpot, Godot, Open Street Map, etc. For smaller projects that just need one-off design help there's a job board at https://opensourcedesign.net https://opensourcedesign.net though I've seen challenges when developer-only projects start to collaborate with non-developers. I think you're more right about user support. Many people dehumanize tech support and for some reason users who don't pay for software seem to be significantly worse than average so I can understand why very few people are interested in supporting strangers for free. That's why FOSS support ends up being via forums or personal connections. In a forum no one is obligated to respond to rude or demanding requests and when there is a personal connection (family, friends, in-person user groups) people tend to be more polite and grateful.

asoneth 2y ago

> to become mainstream requires a bucketload of UX design and user support work that no one in their right mind wants to take on for free as a hobbyist. There are several open source communities with UX designers and user researchers in them such as KDE, Gnome, Krita, GIMP, Inkscape, Penpot, Godot, Open Street Map, etc. For smaller projects that just need one-off design help there's a job board at https://opensourcedesign.net https://opensourcedesign.net though I've seen challenges when developer-only projects start to collaborate with non-developers. I think you're more right about user support. Many people dehumanize tech support and for some reason users who don't pay for software seem to be significantly worse than average so I can understand why very few people are interested in supporting strangers for free. That's why FOSS support ends up being via forums or personal connections. In a forum no one is obligated to respond to rude or demanding requests and when there is a personal connection (family, friends, in-person user groups) people tend to be more polite and grateful.