I’m not saying it doesn’t suck for this person, but product market fit is a thing for open source too. If people need it they’ll use it and contribute until something better comes along. If not, your idea wasn’t the one. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Nearly my whole life runs on open source software, so it’s pretty clearly sustainable.
over the years, using “open source” has become an excuse to avoid paying for software
Um. Yes. And to be blunt: obviously. And in return, I give away software I create for free whether people need it or not, and try to give back in the form of contributions too. But I’ve never once given up my day job for it. Would that be nice? Maybe. But open source software is more frequently sustained by passionate people using and expanding it for their own projects and not by expecting people to pay you for your efforts when you’re likely not paying (nodejs, github, ahem) for the software you’re building it on anyway.
To be honest it has always been this way. Especially when we were talking about “Free Software”, and open source was in part a way that it was free as in freedom, not free as in doesn’t cost anything.
Of course the term open source didn’t change anything, because if you look at the definition of open source, you’re allowed to share it so obviously you’ll be able to get a copy for free.
And uesst what, not having to pay is such a big difference that’s what people remember.
Which I made clear I would not be able to fix without a machine to test on. So if nobody is willing to lend me a machine or sponsor me, so I could get one myself, it’s not going to happen.
You think anyone made a move? Nope.
Once I decided to take the investment myself, but charge for the new plugin, I suddenly turned into the greedy asshole that’s not giving away everything for free.
… and …
I’ll continue to work on nut.js, but updates to the repo will happen with a delay. New features, patches, bug fixes and security updates will be made available to subscribers first.
You have no idea. I once did an open source library that became somewhat popular and shit like that made me give it away to a consulting company that will happily attach a quote to the bullshit requests.
As in my case it was a library I also got the university students demanding I do their homework for them, which is another delightful group.
I dont blame em for going with that decision. Maintainer/devs are also wearing customer service/ PR and bookeeping hat on top of the things they build. Things cost money, especially time, call it greedy or not but people have to pay housing and food. Its tough and similar to a lot of industries, nobody cares until something goes wrong. All the best to this person 👍
Offering the source code of a project to the world is extra work and an act of kindness. We should reward it in kind.
We should have the option to reward it. We shouldn’t be harangued for not.
Disclosure: I maintained a well-used piece of software for about 10 years, and contributed to other projects as time permitted. I never, ever, wrote a single line of code or email expecting money for any of it. I went into it as a spare-time thing and I stopped when that ran out. I have no compassion for people who just magically expected a wealth of ready donations for whatever they produce. It’s entirely naive. It’s like the beggar yelling at you for not dropping a twenty into the cup.
You should do a better job updating your documentation so that people do not waste their time like I did. This change to closed source was announced where, exactly? All of your READMEs and documentation sites do not mention this. Very easy to be confused and very disappointing to me that this went closed-source.
Not only did you sell out, you also removed all the old versions that were released under an open source license so that others couldn’t continue to use out-of-support versions. DISGUSTING.
tl;dr get off GitHub and npm entirely if you want to do the closed-source thing, kthx.
Sorry for this and others. That’s a horrible experience.
I’m having a mental health crisis right now. What I said was wrong, I could not see that a few days ago. Take whatever you want from that. I am sorry. Please stop piling on now that I have removed everything. I am seriously ill and need to stop being involved in anything for several months.
(Leaving the end out as it can be triggering, talking about death)
TBH I felt this is something they made up once it got more attention. If they had felt remorse, they might have come back to apologise or correct their mistake, sometime in the past two weeks I guess.
Who knows maybe they are really ill. Maybe they just made everything up.
Sounds like they’re going through some shit and using toxic online interactions in an effort to try to ameliorate their internal struggles. It reminds me of a wounded animal lashing out.
Doesn’t justify them, but it does give more context so people can respond accordingly.
Sucks to see something destroy a mans spirit. Not only did it change his outlook on creating open source but it soured his view on open source in general. Reads a bit overly salty but, understandable as it sounds like he went through a lot.
You gotta have thick skin to be an open source dev. A lot of people will talk to you with an impressively entitled tone, and say very disrespectful things.
I hope this dev can experience the better side of their community more often, and I sincerely hope they can make a living from their project, even if it stays closed source.
With the subscription they can focus on the Pareto optimization. 20% of the subscribers will be causing 80% of the entitled asshattery. Drop those, focus on features, raise prices, keep the good contracts. This software looks like a good fit for enterprise spending tens of thousands to get a support contract.
It sounds like the repo is still up and open and they just aren’t going to deal with unpaid work packaging it up and managing idiots whining about it? Good for them, I honestly don’t have any complaints with this.
I don't see how this will solve any of these problems he talks about. If he thinks a few bad faith accusations are impossible to tolerate, he's really going to be unprepared for the death threats devs in closed-source companies constantly receive.
My experience with maintaining open source projects (though mine are very much smaller) is that it’s quite similar to a business: you just have to deal with stakeholders and people who think they are stakeholders.
I had all the same experience at work:
Some unknown person from an unrelated team contacted me because something that my team does not manage broke. I tried to help a few times and I suddenly became their personal IT support team.
Another time someone not even working at my company demanded that I drop everything and fix their problem, because my name appeared in 3rd parties libraries.
It’s sad that open source authors don’t always receive the recognition that they deserve.
Developing software and managing a community are totally different skills and mastering both is not to be taken for granted.
Plus, since you are very passionate about the open source projects you maintain or contribute to, it is difficult to “detach” yourself from people’s issues and not feel every criticism as a personal attack (and yes, when your software does not have the features/behavior they expect, some people can express their disappointment in quite a sharp way).
I prefer not to make anyone pay anything but “you get what it is, be warned that you may experience some bugs or lack of support for certain devices” (because I can’t buy every piece of hardware and test). Few people have accepted this model but, those who did, have always been supportive and respectful, making me rediscover a little hope that kindness isn’t dead at all.
The dude tried one business model, and rather than seeing the frustrations as a guide to make a better product, decided to fuck up his on ramp to new business because he thought it was a personal attack
The self-entitlement in open-source has to stop. This is only one example of a maintainer quitting. There are many more.
And the shaming of projects who want to make money to sustain their projects also has to stop. Nothing is free. Somebody is paying for it in time, resources or money.
If you don’t like what a project is doing, or how they’re monetizing, don’t use it. Move on.
Playing Devils Advocate it sounds like the options, for them, would be to stop providing a non-paying version entirely.
I understand where they are coming from but providing an open source version that won’t get timely security updates feels like it would be more trouble than it’s worth to use.
If they only want to work on a version that pays for their time I’d suggest they make the whole thing closed source.
A universal basic income would better permit developers to choose to create collaborative software, rather than proprietary.
Move on or keep using it is the normal choice when proprietary software changes in a way you don’t like. Trying to make money is fine but that doesn’t make choices immune to criticism. If you value your software freedom then one aught to criticize the creation of proprietary software, even if you never used it.
But opinions on what somebody should do with their time and project are just that.
Feedback must be given in a respectful way or it’s not effective. That often doesn’t happen with open-source projects and until we change the culture around open-source, this is going to just keep happening.
Opinions ate like assholes. Everybody has one. Doesn’t mean its relevant or important. The number of intelligent people who confuse opinion with fact never fails to astound me.
The issue causing offence and collecting unuseful feedback is surely an issue in every project. Is there sometime unique or prominent when it’s open source software?
We can judge opinions to the degree they appear to accurately represent reality or achieve a goal. I can understand wanting to monopolize your work (without money survival is difficult) but if we agree to the goal of human flourishing then we can same some opinions are better than others.
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