Sustainable open source will stay a dream
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.
While I can fully understand his pain, I can’t quite follow how adding a paid subscription model will make his life easier (except financially).
Before, he had to deal with entitled asshats, and now he’ll have to deal with asshats feeling even more entitled, because they paid for it.
I’ve oddly seen people be more entitled to free things then things they pay for. There is now a legal entitlement for these people now though
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.
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.
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.
I appreciate your attitude about dealing with people. And the other stuff too.
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.
Damn
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.
And they justified with
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)
I don’t know what to make of this.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
Then FOSS is not for you. Stop using it.
deleted by creator
Who’s entitlement is “this entitlement”? It’s a stupid idea to use pronouns in an opening comment, especially when you’re adding little extra.
Then they started complaining that the image search plugin was not compatible with Apple Silicon.
What kind of psycho fucking does this.
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.
Unfortunately, college kids are still very much kids, even if they’re over 18. Which means a lot of them are dicks.
…I fucking hate teenagers.
Apparently Mac users.
I’ve given up on humanity, but not open source for some reason
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.
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.
Is that contract copyrighted?
Is that contract copyrighted?
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.
Ah… This guy sounds a bit like a prima dona tbh. This shit is standard fare for all open source projects.
If you can’t handle the heat…
This shouldn’t be the case. 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 definitely should reward it, and respect it. But people.are assholes, and that’s not a fixable problem
Not with that attitude
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.
That is naive to think that companies will take your shit for free and give you something back in return.
I know a lot of companies even if using your OSS won’t pay for bug fixes etc. It’s really sad.
As shown by a Microsoft employee opening a bug for FFPEG for issues with Teams…
Maybe fix it yourself and contribute or donate to the cause?
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 👍
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 sincerely hope they can make a living from their project
Or someone will fork it and put some time in.
Good that this developer speaks up. The recent XZ backdoor story is an example of lack of sustainable infrastructure and normalizing of pushing developers.
Good that this developer speaks up. The recent XZ backdoor story is
Is unrelated. XZ is about burnout. This is about some guy saying “I did this thing for free. Where’s my money?”
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:
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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.
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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.
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