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.
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.
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.
Good that this developer speaks up. The recent XZ backdoor story is an example of lack of sustainable infrastructure and normalizing of pushing developers.
I really hope that most of the developers won’t listen to this. Any commercialization makes software worse because the devs don’t care about it being good as much as if it was fully FOSS. I know it’s very hard to maintain large software projects without a sustainable income but hey that’s why the community exists. Advertise your software so you can have more users, contributors and donators
Until the day FOSS development does not get recognised as a critical job by governments and global ruling bodies, FOSS will not carry over into the next century. FOSS is barely surviving due to passion, and passion alone does not pay for tummy, let alone families or creating an environment to encourage people to become FOSS developers. People hate donating, so FOSS will die and capitalism will win.
I wonder, is it possible to create a license that would allow you to simply ban people who are being a dick about something from using it? Sure, it may turn away some people, since there’s always a risk of abuse, but it’s your work and as far as I know, you are the one who sets the terms.
If I’m not mistaken, most of the FOSS licenses (or maybe even laws?) guarantee you that you would be able to use the software even if the project later decides to change to proprietary license. But I assume you can simply specify in a licence “Everyone can use it, expect X.Y.Z”.
Would that be legal? Sure, it would probably be pretty hard to enforce, but in some cases it could make for a pretty satisfactory (and petty, of course) C&D letters, for people that really deserve it. You insult the devs of a software your company depends on, demanding something while being a dick about it? Well, fuck you, no library for you and your company.
You can certainly make such a license but I think it will hinder adoption. Just do a paid license at that point and refuse to renew if someone makes you mad enough.
But a paid licence will affect users that are all right abd for whom you’re doing it.
I understand that using something with a risk of loosong access because you’ve upset the developer is something that will turn away a lot of people, but then again, I’d say that “don’t be a dick” is a pretty reasonable requirement. The only issue I see that it’s a pretty vague definiton, but maybe just limiting it to profanities and insult towards the contributors is something more concrete, which would be easy to fulfill and also enforce.
There is a paint pigment that is available for sale but you have to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor (another artist) and that you will let Kapoor get his hands on the pigment.
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