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This is so disappointing. Finally we had a fantastic, fully OSS, non-profit harness. Very extensible, well-made, minimal, untainted. None of the baggage of Open

by deaux 7mo ago

This is so disappointing. Finally we had a fantastic, fully OSS, non-profit harness. Very extensible, well-made, minimal, untainted. None of the baggage of OpenCode both in terms of codebase as well as its.. "passionate" leadership, to put it mildly. > Earendil is a public benefit corporation Ah, so like OpenAI then. > But I've also learned what I do not want. I do not want to build my own company around pi. We have a four-year-old kid. I want to watch and help him grow up as best as I can. This is, first and foremost, what I want. Everything else is secondary to that. In the past 2 months, he cried a lot because "daddy isn't here". I never ever want to experience that again. That's completely fair. And above it, you sketch exactly what you could've done instead to solve this: > I mostly handed over the reins to a beautiful team of core contributors in 2016, who to this day keep the project well maintained. I never commercialized libGDX, unless you consider it commercialization to build a proprietary piece of software like Spine on top of it. Sounds like the above worked great, and this would've been the obvious option to do once again. > part of me wants to take this further. That includes building a team. It also includes commercialization to feed the team, done in a way that doesn't repeat the shit I lived through with RoboVM. So this is the only part that really answers the "why" - you want to earn a living from working on Pi, and presumably (?) believe you can't achieve that with OSS. I think you're wrong, and belong to the 0.001% of OSS projects that can earn a very nice living from working on Pi without taking this step. I'm not exaggerating, I would fully agree that the number of OSS projects where this is possible is exceedingly small. But this is one of them. If you don't believe that then fair enough, I guess, though I'm curious why you believe that. Because there clearly exist a good number of OSS projects that make their lead developer a very comfortable living. Which condition do those projects satisfy that Pi doesn't? If that's not it, then the article doesn't really answer the "why" despite lots of text that appears to do so. You obviously owe me, or anyone really, nothing. So far all you've done is contribute for free. But if you're going to write this kind of article to clearly do a little bit of soul searching, assuaging fears and "make things public" to stop them weighing on your mind, then it looks better to go all the way and state things in plain terms.

colinmarc 7mo ago
I don't think Earendil and OpenAI seem very similar. The former is a tiny startup of friends working on exclusively open source stuff.
rob 7mo ago
> So this is the only part that really answers the "why" - you want to earn a living from working on Pi, and presumably (?) believe you can't achieve that with OSS. I think you're wrong, and belong to the 0.001% of OSS projects that can earn a very nice living from working on Pi without taking this step. I'm not exaggerating, I would fully agree that the number of OSS projects where this is possible is exceedingly small. But this is one of them. If you don't believe that then fair enough, I guess, though I'm curious why you believe that. Because there clearly exist a good number of OSS projects that make their lead developer a very comfortable living. Which condition do those projects satisfy that Pi doesn't? Because he wants to have tons of money in the bank and get up every day to go do anything he wants with his four-year-old kid when he wakes up. Building something in a couple months that got popular enough to be able to this is amazing. Not check GitHub issues and PRs from ClawdBot5000 and hope he'll make some money from it in 5 years. We're entering a new world of software development that allows people with no coding experience to do things like build their own mobile apps, websites, and all sorts of other things that were previously reserved for only technical people. The gap is closing quickly. At this point, if you're a "real" developer and have an app that somebody wants to purchase, you'd be crazy not to take the offer if it's a good amount and have cash in the bank that would allow you to do your own stuff in the future without worrying about $dayjob.
- tasuki 7mo ago
  Yes, but iirc Mario Zechner is – in his own words – post economical.
Lerc 7mo ago
>> Earendil is a public benefit corporation >Ah, so like OpenAI then. What kind of reasoning is this? The sort that can respond to. "I'm a doctor" With "Ah, like Harold Shipman" How is this sort of framing good for anyone?
rvz 7mo ago
> So this is the only part that really answers the "why" - you want to earn a living from working on Pi, and presumably (?) believe you can't achieve that with OSS. I think you're wrong, and belong to the 0.001% of OSS projects that can earn a very nice living from working on Pi without taking this step. He already has a GitHub sponsorship with lots of sponsors himself. The problem is they get to set the price and the minimum is at least $1. This tells me that he believes he is not earning enough from OSS sponsors. So with that, how do you even start with answering this: > It also includes commercialization to feed the team. The author knows that in his case, OSS does not pay the bills and certainly won't pay for his staff.
the_mitsuhiko 7mo ago
Armin from Earendil: At the end of the day there is nothing I can demonstrate to you now that we will be doing a good job here. But I want to be able to put back at comments like this in a few years and be able to demonstrate that we made the right calls for everybody involved.
- deaux 7mo ago
  Please do provr me wrong! I closed with the "you don't owe us anything" because I mean it, not to hedge. Even if it goes wrong, I don't think Mario is a bad guy, neither are you! It has just become impossible to believe this kind of thing unless IMO the post is even more transparent than this. That was my point, if you really do mean the best and want to show that to the world, then even this (while much more transparent than anything with investor involvement) I don't think reaches the bar. So that's something I think that could've been done to demonstrate that this was a good call. If you can demonstrate a few years from now that my disappointment was unwarranted, then everyone's a winner :)

by deaux 7mo ago

colinmarc 7mo ago

I don't think Earendil and OpenAI seem very similar. The former is a tiny startup of friends working on exclusively open source stuff.

rob 7mo ago

> So this is the only part that really answers the "why" - you want to earn a living from working on Pi, and presumably (?) believe you can't achieve that with OSS. I think you're wrong, and belong to the 0.001% of OSS projects that can earn a very nice living from working on Pi without taking this step. I'm not exaggerating, I would fully agree that the number of OSS projects where this is possible is exceedingly small. But this is one of them. If you don't believe that then fair enough, I guess, though I'm curious why you believe that. Because there clearly exist a good number of OSS projects that make their lead developer a very comfortable living. Which condition do those projects satisfy that Pi doesn't? Because he wants to have tons of money in the bank and get up every day to go do anything he wants with his four-year-old kid when he wakes up. Building something in a couple months that got popular enough to be able to this is amazing. Not check GitHub issues and PRs from ClawdBot5000 and hope he'll make some money from it in 5 years. We're entering a new world of software development that allows people with no coding experience to do things like build their own mobile apps, websites, and all sorts of other things that were previously reserved for only technical people. The gap is closing quickly. At this point, if you're a "real" developer and have an app that somebody wants to purchase, you'd be crazy not to take the offer if it's a good amount and have cash in the bank that would allow you to do your own stuff in the future without worrying about $dayjob.

tasuki 7mo ago
Yes, but iirc Mario Zechner is – in his own words – post economical.

Lerc 7mo ago

>> Earendil is a public benefit corporation >Ah, so like OpenAI then. What kind of reasoning is this? The sort that can respond to. "I'm a doctor" With "Ah, like Harold Shipman" How is this sort of framing good for anyone?

rvz 7mo ago

the_mitsuhiko 7mo ago

Armin from Earendil: At the end of the day there is nothing I can demonstrate to you now that we will be doing a good job here. But I want to be able to put back at comments like this in a few years and be able to demonstrate that we made the right calls for everybody involved.

deaux 7mo ago
Please do provr me wrong! I closed with the "you don't owe us anything" because I mean it, not to hedge. Even if it goes wrong, I don't think Mario is a bad guy, neither are you! It has just become impossible to believe this kind of thing unless IMO the post is even more transparent than this. That was my point, if you really do mean the best and want to show that to the world, then even this (while much more transparent than anything with investor involvement) I don't think reaches the bar. So that's something I think that could've been done to demonstrate that this was a good call. If you can demonstrate a few years from now that my disappointment was unwarranted, then everyone's a winner :)