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Comment by tempguy9999 | Hacker News Reader

This is an unfair go at the poster. He said "I'm not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn't)."

That's clear as can be. He's asking the same question I am, how do we get sufficient funding for these projects. Re your patreon suggestion, I thought we recently had an article where someone got little to nothing on that.

> or getting hired by FAANG

So one way to support foss software is to get hired by a closed source company. Kind of defeats your point.

This is the problem right here, "I want but I'm not personally going to pay". We get ads (funding model of the modern web) or foss remains underfunded while non-foss companies get the cash they need. The problem is human nature. And yes, I've personally opened my wallet for them, and will again.

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>This is an unfair go at the poster. He said "I'm not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn't)." That's clear as can be.

Please reread my reply to OP carefully and notice I did not say he endorsed NPM ads. Instead, I specifically disagreed with his suggestion to redirect the discussion away from the NPM ads to the general topic of open-source funding.

>He's asking the same question I am, how do we get sufficient funding for these projects.

To be clear, that's a different question and I wasn't even attempting to answer it. I mentioned funding like Patreon as examples of social acceptability and not as examples of income sustainability.

>Kind of defeats your point.

My point was a narrow one : others are criticizing the unwelcome ad solicitation and that's a correct area of focus.

The other question of how to get sustainable open-source funding is also an important topic -- but that doesn't mean it forbids discussion of unacceptable spam/ads. They can be 2 parallel discussions.

you said

> However, if the concrete implementation of trying to get money is unwanted and unexpected ads, then the correct focus of discussion is the criticism of that ad delivery method

But he'd already said, prior to that

> I'm not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn't).

He'd already said no to them; you're both in agreement. There's nothing to argue about.

Having agreed that nobody wants ads, the next step is to determine how to not have them (and their nastier big sibling, telemetry and malware, which will follow) by providing funding.

(edited for brevity)

You’re missing the point and illustrating it further. The comment was garbage because it derailed the entire discussion around terminal ads to try to direct it to FOSS funding.

It doesn’t matter if they both agree that text ads are bad. It’s basically a “think of the children” derailment except it’s “think of the poor foss dev”.

I think you are making an extremely valid point; i often see the same “think of the children” argument made when discussing advertising and the web. Likewise, no one is saying websites shouldn’t have an income.

If you're only talking about how you don't like the solution; and refuse to talk about the underlying problem; you're going to keep seeing the bad solution again and again and again.

Here everyone says they don't like ads; and then are shocked that people want to talk about why ads are showing up and what to do about that.

Ads show up regardless of funding. Cut the bullshit. Look at how many ads are on cable television and even pay for news websites.

Please stop having "you said he said" discussions. If someone clarifies their position that they meant to say something else than you read, please accept it in good faith and don't see this as an invitation to hark back to their previous messages.

This comment is not aimed at you specifically, but everyone in this comment thread who engages in this pointless arguing.

> That's clear as can be. He's asking the same question I am, how do we get sufficient funding for these projects.

We don't. Only a fool would expect to make a living wage giving something away for free.

From the beginning FOSS has been either interested individuals or employees at corporations with a vested interest. There's no reason we should expect that John Q Developer independently working on a bunch of NPM modules to be compensated by the world at large.

> There's no reason we should expect that John Q Developer independently working on a bunch of NPM modules to be compensated by the world at large.

With all due respect, I feel this is a lack of imagination. We could have said the same thing about soup kitchens, or basic income, or social welfare, or anything else that doesn't cleanly draw profit.

So yes, it doesn't work. At least not until we demand it does and distort the legal, social, and cultural frameworks around it.

As one solitary example, what about a shift to using copyfarleft licensing that only allows MIT-level freedom to nonprofits and co-operatives, while for-profit orgs pay fees instead of just leeching. This has the added bonus of shifting benefit to platform cooperatives, which governments are already starting to ideologically favour as we all see the gleaming metal edge of platform capitalism.

There are a hundred more options if we believe building the commons is better than milking it dry.

> With all due respect, I feel this is a lack of imagination. We could have said the same thing about soup kitchens, or basic income, or social welfare, or anything else that doesn't cleanly draw profit.

Those are all driven by charity for the destitute. It’s not meant to be a patronage paid to starving artists. On the contrary the able bodied are expected to not draw from that well if they can provide for themselves so that more remains for the truly deserving.

> So yes, it doesn't work. At least not until we demand it does and distort the legal, social, and cultural frameworks around it. As one solitary example, what about a shift to using copyfarleft licensing that only allows MIT-level freedom to nonprofits and co-operatives, while for-profit orgs pay fees instead of just leeching. This has the added bonus of shifting benefit to platform cooperatives, which governments are already starting to ideologically favour as we all see the gleaming metal edge of platform capitalism.

There’s no such thing as partial BSD style licensing. You’re either all the way there or you’re not. Favored status to non profits is no different than discriminating from “evil” usage.

I’m not saying one can’t do that, just that there’s no half measures. I make it a point to contribute to BSD style software that I actually use and explicitly do not contribute to “shared source” bullshit.

> There are a hundred more options if we believe building the commons is better than milking it dry.

I don’t see anything going dry. The system has worked fine till now. What’s changed is the unrealistic expectation of hand outs for something you’ve already agreed to give away for free.

I would like to disagree with your point on basic income. It’s usually called _universal_ basic income. Precisely to clarify that it is not a “charity for the destitute”, it is absolutely meant to be for everyone.

And for the larger discussion on building the commons I happen to think UBI is an important component. Focusing on the amateur work being done by the civil society at least, an UBI could be precisely the thing needed to free up time for cultivating the commons.

Now, granted, most UBI proponents do argue from a solidarity angle, and do think of it as some kind of charity. But I’ll offer an alternative view point. To me UBI is the foundation from which private property can be justified. Locke argued that commons, such as land, can only be taken as property when there is no contention, which is clearly not the case for anything having a market value. The just way to solve that conflict could be for the owner to simply pay the market value in rent to the commons, as compensation for the exclusive rights. Such payments could be divided as as an UBI. And I suspect it would also result i a pretty handsome amount. Enough to fund a few open source projects at least.

> I would like to disagree with your point on basic income. It’s usually called _universal_ basic income. Precisely to clarify that it is not a “charity for the destitute”, it is absolutely meant to be for everyone.

In the credible UBI plans I've seen, the income is Universal in the sense that "everyone gets a check", but in practice that income is paid for by those with middle or higher incomes, such that for many earners that "income" is a net tax (or neutral). "Charity for the destitute" is a bit hyperbolic, but its absolutely income supplementation for the less well off at the expense of those better off.

In case it was missed. My take in UBI outlined above would avoid this. Even better, I’m hopeful we could abolish all forms of income tax.

Since when are FAANG companies considered to be closed source? Have any of them snatched up maintainers to continue development behind closed doors?

There are examples of large corporations hiring maintainers to work on open source and keep those projects open source. I believe pypi is an example of that.

I am fairly certain that Apple has hired people who previously worked on permissively-licensed projects to work on the closed-source fork.

I'd like to see that backed up, really. There are certainly criticisms to be made of how Apple has handled their open source projects (slow to update and push out new releases, not great at cooperating with upstream projects when Apple has forked them, typically cryptic Apple communication practices). But if Apple has taken open source projects, created closed-source forks of them, and hired original developers of and/or major contributors to the original open source project to maintain and develop the closed source fork without contributing back to the open source original, none of them immediately come to mind.

Apple certainly hires people from their open source projects and keeps closed-source forks. Most of the changes make their way back to their original projects, though, but the caveat is that this only seems to happen if the project is used heavily outside of Apple and after the feature has "shipped" (which may be a while after the code was actually written).

I remember finding an article on HN about a developer for FreeBSD going to work on Mac OS[1], before returning to work in open source. Isn't the Mac OS user space an example of what you describe?

[1] https://www.wired.com/2013/08/jordan-hubbard/

I don't think I'd say it is, no, because Hubbard wasn't hired to work on a closed-source fork of FreeBSD at Apple but rather as an engineering manager. AFAIK, Apple did not make any closed forks of major BSD-related work.

I got direct quotes from Apple employees about how their employment has banned them from doing anything related to GPLv3 code in their free time, specifically GCC.

I don't want to mention them in a public website in case that gets them in trouble.

Well, depending on the employee, it would make sense. Apple funded a large part of clang/llvm, which many assume was specifically to avoid a GPL compiler. You'd hate to accidentally pollute a BSD(-ish) project with GPL code, if your primary purpose for funding the project is to avoid GPL code. Not that anyone would purposefully do such a thing, but it would be important for Apple to even avoid the appearance of anything like that.

That doesn't surprise me. The GPL, especially v3 and AGPL, are specific weird cases at a lot of companies -- sometimes because they want the freedom to close of forks, but often because they're convinced the GPL/AGPL could "poison" their work and force them to open previously closed source. (This turned out to be a problem for us at RethinkDB, which was AGPL-licensed.)

They've certainly hired people to work on open-source projects and keep them open-source (e.g., LLVM, CUPS). What closed-source forks have they made?

Apple keeps internal forks of projects where they can do so legally; it helps them prevent leaks and lets them add new features quicker. These changes often do end up getting merged back in, but this is usually after they have shipped.

Since always? Their core business is developing proprietary software. It's impossible to git clone and say, fix any of the popular complaints.

You might be confused because they build on top of a Free foundation, and do contribute changes back to those layers. But the bulk of their activity is plainly closed, especially the software directly associated with their brands.

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