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Free Software is for the people who build it. Great closed source companies become great through their ability to sell to many customers. Great free software pr

by 827a 2y ago

Free Software is for the people who build it. Great closed source companies become great through their ability to sell to many customers. Great free software projects become great through their ability to coordinate and integrate the contributions of many people. The larger the percentage of "people who have contributed something" to "people who use it", the healthier the project is (think of this as [C/(C+U)] where C=Contributors and U=Non-Contributing Users; every Contributor is a user). The reality that you can use many free software projects without much contribution at all is a happy and good accident of the system; but a dangerous one that can and has been often-accidentally weaponized to burn out the actual contributors.

bruce511 2y ago
>> The reality that you can use many free software projects without much contribution at all is a happy and good accident of the system; but a dangerous one that can and has been often-accidentally weaponized to burn out the actual contributors. I'm not downvoting you, but I expect people are disagreeing with this last paragraph. (There's a metaphor between people voting up and down based on what they agree or disagree with - something this site doesn't advocate for, and the way some interpret Free licenses, and their goals.) I agree you can use any Free Software without any contribution at all. And that only the tiniest fraction contribute any code. In most projects the contributers past the owner are zero. This is not "by accident" though. It's very much by design. We can assume RMS thought a bit about his license and he most certainly expected most of his users not to need to read the code, much less add to the program. The Freedoms are thus Freedoms, not Requirements. Burnout is an issue completely unrelated to the license. It happens when an employee doesn't find a balance in their life and work. It happens with free, and non-free software alike. Yes, lots of programmers burn out because they cave to the demands of unreasonable bosses, or users. But that's unrelated to license and I'd certainly not a "weapon".

by 827a 2y ago

bruce511 2y ago

>> The reality that you can use many free software projects without much contribution at all is a happy and good accident of the system; but a dangerous one that can and has been often-accidentally weaponized to burn out the actual contributors. I'm not downvoting you, but I expect people are disagreeing with this last paragraph. (There's a metaphor between people voting up and down based on what they agree or disagree with - something this site doesn't advocate for, and the way some interpret Free licenses, and their goals.) I agree you can use any Free Software without any contribution at all. And that only the tiniest fraction contribute any code. In most projects the contributers past the owner are zero. This is not "by accident" though. It's very much by design. We can assume RMS thought a bit about his license and he most certainly expected most of his users not to need to read the code, much less add to the program. The Freedoms are thus Freedoms, not Requirements. Burnout is an issue completely unrelated to the license. It happens when an employee doesn't find a balance in their life and work. It happens with free, and non-free software alike. Yes, lots of programmers burn out because they cave to the demands of unreasonable bosses, or users. But that's unrelated to license and I'd certainly not a "weapon".