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.
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.
Honestly, this really resonated with me. Running an open source project on its own can be hard, running a popular one that gets used by tons of people and companies, while giving free labor, is extremely hard. Acting as free tech support to a large company, for nothing in return, is ass. Full stop.
I’ve seen some people make the statement that “maintainers owe you nothing”, and I’ve seen people state that “your supporters owe you nothing.”
While I believe there’s nothing wrong in a person willingly running a project on their own terms, just as there’s nothing wrong with refusing donations and doing the work out of some kind of passion… there’s only so many hours in the day, and developers need to feed themselves and pay rent.
I think a lot of people would love to be able to work on open source full-time. I’d devote all of my energy and focus to it, if I could. But, that’s a reality only for a privileged few, and many of them still have to make compromises. The CEO and founder of Mastodon, for example, makes a pittance compared to what a corporate junior developer makes.
This is why I’m thinking the almost religious ideal of “free to everyone for anything” is probably a mistake, because there’s a lot of FOSS software being used by corporations for evil things like shareholder profits.
We need to start licensing things under a “free for humans, insultingly expensive for corporations” model. “My code is free for private citizens, sole proprietorships, small businesses, charities, students, etc. and $900,000,000,000 per minute per seat for any organization with stock that is traded on an exchange.”
I think by far the biggest problem with open source is that the user community fundamentally mis-understands the nature of the transaction involving them and the developer(s) of the software they’re using.
I think if we could make everyone sit down, take 10 minutes and just read The Social Contract Of Open Source a lot of people would keep developing OSS software.
Brass tacks: You are being given a gift. The person who gave you that gift owes you NOTHING because… They gave you a gift and by using their software you chose to accept it.
I see it all the time in the open source project I co-maintain, and I have it SUPER easy beacause ours is really just a bundle of configuration files for Neovim.
In my case, I dropped one of my projects because there were so many trolls in the community who called my project crap
Honestly, the biggest enemy at times to the community is ourselves. It is sometimes so demotivating at times.
And the biggest trolls are often the ones with the least knowledge about running projects
It’s like the wankers at the moment telling developers not to use GitHub or discord or whatever. They’re not going to contribute resources or money to the project, but they’ll be a backseat driver
The OSI definition of opensource ain’t gonna pay my bills.
Lobby your company to donate to opensource projects they use. Lobby for them to attribute an opensource budget. If you have money, set aside a budget yourself to donate to opensource projects. If you don’t have money, but can code, have time, and the will, contribute to opensource. If you are non-technical and don’t have money but use opensource, just promote it.
Whatever you are, be part of the solution and help opensource become a meaningful option to make a living.
I work in a state government and we can’t “donate”, but I have happily paid thousands for maintenance/support or hosted options. I appreciate when projects offer other ways to contribute.
As an open source software maintainer myself, I don’t quite agree with some of the points.
I also always believed that if you ever started a project that is valuable for companies, they would support you in return
For me, I do ask for donations, of course, because life is hard and who doesn’t want money? Especially when you deserve it. But I never expect anyone to make a donation. It’s only when someone actually does it that I feel so much happiness. Some leave a thank you comment and stated that they cannot support me financially, and I’m also perfectly happy with that.
All I got was complaints.
I see it as feature requests and bug reports, and are another kind of contribution. Note that some of the people may seem rude, it could be because they are simply bad at English (as am I) and try their best to write a short sentence. Some may not familiar to GitHub and talk about their problems in an unrelated issue. In that case I simply try my best to understand and kindly answer them, and guide them to the right direction.
It may seem to you that open source is great because it’s free to use. Truth is, it certainly is not free.
I use open source software for free, and I want to pay it back by contributing more to open source. I don’t forget that my own open source projects also have a lot of other open source components in them, all for free. I don’t like to force people to pay for my softwares in order to use it.
Of course, my open source projects will forever be hobby projects, I can never make them into a serious business nor work on them full-time, but I’m fine with that.
Good thoughts. Did you follow the link to thread that was the tipping point for the blog author? The thread creator was very rude (according to, due to his own mental health situation). We all have different levels of tolerance and patience, but I can totally see why the blog author would be fed up after such a comment, if things were already stressful.
Yes, I’ve just reread it, and while I completely disagree with the issue creator’s attitude, he does have a point:
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
I haven’t verify if this is true of not, but this is just not necessary. If the author stops providing pre-built binary for newer release versions, so be it. But I think it is a little too much aggressive from the author to delete old release versions as well.
Very well said. 100% agree - my projects are hobbies that allow me to contribute back for the many OSS I use, with the added bonus of helping me learn/retain knowledge of languages.
SOME of the points in this rant are valid. The conclusions are wrong because the context is wrong.
This guy wanted to get paid for his free software. Sure it’s not free – any more than the miniatures my warhammer-lovin’ cousin painstakingly paints are ‘free’ for his time. Wanting to get magic money compensation, though, is wrong in both cases.
The public issue on github where people are slagging him for maybe expiring some old software; that’s just stupid drama. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. NO. ONE. CARES. They’re just pissed at the apparent rug-pull and “buy a license” isn’t the best way to be not-a-dick about it.
I do like the solution of the developer. Share the source code for those who want to compile and let those who want packages pay. And very good that the “shouting at open source developers” got some more attention again with this blog post. Too many people wanting to grab and demand but not give anything back. Time for a change!
There are two types of Open Source users; those of us who understand and live by the ethos of FOSS, and users who just want to use a software that they don’t have to pay for and don’t care or understand the underlying ideas behind it.
That second group is the group who, no matter how many times they hear it explained to them, will refuse to believe that “free” doesn’t necessarily mean “no-cost” and therefore develop an expectation of “free” and decry that you’re not allowed to sell your software because it’s open-source, and even asking for donations is forbidden, when in reality neither of those things is remotely true.
Far more important than anything is to change the perception of Open Source to something like value ware; If you value the use you get from the software, pay an amount that you feel is fair. If they can’t afford it, that’s okay, but if they can, then the expectation needs to be that they DO. Even just a few bucks.
This is a pretty good option, though I also think something like what aseprite has done is pretty good too (compile it yourself for free, or pay for a precompiled binary available through e.g. Steam) - from what I can tell this setup is fairly profitable.
Fundraising is skill, and it needs to be learnt, I have looked at a fairly large chunk of open source project that are successfully funded and i think that is what sets them apart.
I think it is important that users should have a very clear understanding of how you are doing, if you need X money to keep doing this, there should be a pop up saying you need X money on the software and it should be very hard to miss on the website and read me.
Will some people not like that? probably but you can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t let a vocal minority determines how things happen.
If what you bring has an immense value, like nodejs where pretty much all the internet runs on it, you shouldn’t have to scrap by or need fundraising skills.
At that point, you’ve become a business. So yeah, you need skill to fundraise.
or a non profit, and not surprising running a business or a non profit requires the skills to manage a business or a non profit, iirc the software freedom conservatory and maybe the SPI say the can help with fundraising, but you need to be modest and consider you might benefit from learning from other people.
Fuck the companies, they will always take and never give anything back. They won’t give you money anyways, so might as well shut them down.
That’s just factually wrong, for example most of the contribution to the linux kernel are from companies, blender development fund is a good case study for this (see how much each corporate sponsors pays)
It was a hyperbole that companies never give back, but for every company that donates, how many don’t?
If the companies would give back even a fraction of what they generate by using FOSS, then it would be viable for a lot more people to be a FOSS developer.
Very much. Thunderbird are receiving like 6M on donations. They simply know how to market and subtlety but assertively advertise their donation requests.
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