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I dare to say the inconceivable, you shouldn't have free plans even for the community. This will also push FOSS projects to seek some money to pay for their inf

I dare to say the inconceivable, you shouldn't have free plans even for the community. This will also push FOSS projects to seek some money to pay for their infrastructures which probably leads to better pay for their maintainers. Nothing should be $$ free unless you already paid with your tax. Same principle -> As long as HN starts to charge every account, I'm happy to pay a small amount per month. This token amount of pay per account will also reduce the number of bots.

diggan 2y ago
Are you saying that Gnome shouldn't offer access to their VCS for free, and all Gnome developers should pay a small sum to be able to access it? FOSS is generally built on the idea that anyone can use the code for anything, if you start to add a price for that, not only do you effectively gate your project from "poor people", but it also kind of erodes some of the core principles behind FOSS.
- ferguess_k 2y ago
  OK I'm dumb.
  - diggan 2y ago
    No, just overly capitalistic, but that's probably more because of your environment than anything, and very possible to change if you want :)
    - ferguess_k 2y ago
      Actually I'm anti-capitalistic. That solution was supposed to undermine corporations who take other people's work for free. Maybe it shouldn't cover the whole FOSS, but I do think it fits OP's use case.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > all Gnome developers should pay a small sum to be able to access it? There's access via (e.g.) the git protocol (git://....) and access via http. These attacks all happen via the latter, since the former is already access-controlled.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Offering read-only mirrors via git+http:// http:// might be a solution then, at least to shed the load if anything. It does remind me a bit about companies complaining about being scraped and trying to prevent it, instead of offering a API so no one would have to scrape them.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      We do precisely this ... and we're still dealing with the load issues. Currently I have fail2ban doing a 10 day block on any IP addr that hits our read only http-git endpoint twice in 30 mins. The problem with this is that the default implementation of iptables doesn't scale well to 100k blocked addresses.
      - diggan 2y ago
        Fair enough, thanks for explaining to an outsider. I hope you manage to work out a good solution in the end!
      - pabs3 2y ago
        Does that not cause your devs, or people doing contributions, or browsing commits via the web, to get blocked?
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Yes, it does mean that anyone using the web-based interface to git gets blocked. We mirror to github for public access; our developers all use git itself, not the web interface, for interacting with the repo. How/what github et al. are doing to deal with this, I do not know.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  There is nothing that says you can't charge money for FOSS software. FOSS is more about having the ability to inspect and freely change your software to your use-cases.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > There is nothing that says you can't charge money for FOSS software Well, yes and no. If you had a cost to access the source code, I'm pretty sure I'd stop calling that FOSS. If you only have a price for downloading binaries, sure, still FOSS, since we're talking source code licensing. > Nothing should be $$ free I took this statement at face value, and assumed parent argued for basically eliminating FOSS.
    - myaccountonhn 2y ago
      > Well, yes and no. If you had a cost to access the source code, I'm pretty sure I'd stop calling that FOSS Even the FSF thinks you can charge money for free software and still call it FOSS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.
    - anthk 2y ago
      I used to buy Debian DVD's when there was the freest Linux distro before GNUinos and now Trisquel.
    - pabs3 2y ago
      Something can be FOSS even if it isn't released to the public, just amongst friends. Its only about every user being able to access the source.

diggan 2y ago

Are you saying that Gnome shouldn't offer access to their VCS for free, and all Gnome developers should pay a small sum to be able to access it? FOSS is generally built on the idea that anyone can use the code for anything, if you start to add a price for that, not only do you effectively gate your project from "poor people", but it also kind of erodes some of the core principles behind FOSS.

ferguess_k 2y ago
OK I'm dumb.
- diggan 2y ago
  No, just overly capitalistic, but that's probably more because of your environment than anything, and very possible to change if you want :)
  - ferguess_k 2y ago
    Actually I'm anti-capitalistic. That solution was supposed to undermine corporations who take other people's work for free. Maybe it shouldn't cover the whole FOSS, but I do think it fits OP's use case.
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> all Gnome developers should pay a small sum to be able to access it? There's access via (e.g.) the git protocol (git://....) and access via http. These attacks all happen via the latter, since the former is already access-controlled.
- diggan 2y ago
  Offering read-only mirrors via git+http:// http:// might be a solution then, at least to shed the load if anything. It does remind me a bit about companies complaining about being scraped and trying to prevent it, instead of offering a API so no one would have to scrape them.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    We do precisely this ... and we're still dealing with the load issues. Currently I have fail2ban doing a 10 day block on any IP addr that hits our read only http-git endpoint twice in 30 mins. The problem with this is that the default implementation of iptables doesn't scale well to 100k blocked addresses.
    - diggan 2y ago
      Fair enough, thanks for explaining to an outsider. I hope you manage to work out a good solution in the end!
    - pabs3 2y ago
      Does that not cause your devs, or people doing contributions, or browsing commits via the web, to get blocked?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Yes, it does mean that anyone using the web-based interface to git gets blocked. We mirror to github for public access; our developers all use git itself, not the web interface, for interacting with the repo. How/what github et al. are doing to deal with this, I do not know.
myaccountonhn 2y ago
There is nothing that says you can't charge money for FOSS software. FOSS is more about having the ability to inspect and freely change your software to your use-cases.
- diggan 2y ago
  > There is nothing that says you can't charge money for FOSS software Well, yes and no. If you had a cost to access the source code, I'm pretty sure I'd stop calling that FOSS. If you only have a price for downloading binaries, sure, still FOSS, since we're talking source code licensing. > Nothing should be $$ free I took this statement at face value, and assumed parent argued for basically eliminating FOSS.
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    > Well, yes and no. If you had a cost to access the source code, I'm pretty sure I'd stop calling that FOSS Even the FSF thinks you can charge money for free software and still call it FOSS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.
  - anthk 2y ago
    I used to buy Debian DVD's when there was the freest Linux distro before GNUinos and now Trisquel.
  - pabs3 2y ago
    Something can be FOSS even if it isn't released to the public, just amongst friends. Its only about every user being able to access the source.