That their work is done in public and in front of the world should not give us extra ammunition to put their efforts down.
There are countless closed source packages that are arcane and hard to deal with - we just don't see them so there not able to be criticized.
Generosity shouldn't be sneered on, I agree, but we also have to recognize that the audience for our code is significantly broader than it was in the days of the Free Software movement. It all stated as a movement to empower end-users but it seems that end-users sometimes don't always feel empowered by it.
End users who don't feel empowered by freedom aren't entitled to free labor. They should realize that at least they have the option to control the software they use by hiring someone to fix/alter it or learning enough to do it themselves, which is impossible for proprietary software.
Yes, Free and Open Source software can sometimes be difficult to build and set up. This differs from closed-source software only in that closed-source software denies you the ability to build the software yourself. There are still plenty of ways for closed-source software to be difficult to set up.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Firefox, for instance, is difficult to set up.
The tweet misses the point. The choice is not between "hacky, janky free software" and "well-made, professional free software". It's between "hacky, janky free software" and "paid software".
Don't like FOSS? Pay.
That doesn't sound right. If you need a feature to be added to a typical proprietary software product, and you aren't a billion dollar company, you're pretty much out of luck.
With Free and Open Source software, you have a good chance at being able to pay to have the feature developed, perhaps even in-house.
If you did want to control the future of information flowing from person to person, I can think of no higher threat than free software.
Givin that premise, I would expect to see a lot more opposition to free software if large governent and large business intrest decide to consolidate their power and think that open communication is a hindrance.
There was also very recently a high-profile issue involving it and a ruby gem used by Rails that caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people, so it's top of mind for many.
I hadn’t heard of this, I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566925?
> The whole Github/MIT licence scene simply did not exist back in the days, it was either closed source or GPL.
BSD-licensed software, and probably also MIT-licensed and whatever non-copyleft licenses there are, has been a thing for a long time. I distinctly remember seeing discussions and opinions regarding copyleft vs non-copyleft open source in the early 2000's. Aside from BSDs themselves, there have been all kinds of non-copyleft licensed software all along.
It might be that more liberal (i.e. non-copyleft) licenses have been gaining more popularity and that the emphasis has moved from GPL to non-copyleft licensing. It might also be that's partially driven by the dominance Google et al. have on tech culture. But as a whole I'm not sure that hate (if it exists) towards GPL-oriented culture follows from that.
As a stab in the dark, it could also be that there's a new generation of people for whom the older days of the GNU project and the free software movement sound somehow archaic or "not modern" now, or there could be some other kind of a cultural shift. People don't always embrace newer trends because of some kind of a clear economical or other direct motive.
Economic interests of the current powers that be might of course be one of those things that affect cultural changes, but I wouldn't necessarily buy it that it's the only reason.
Lots of random BS on the internet is getting lots of hatred because the entire world has a metric fuckton of stress on its plate and access to a global platform called "social media" with which to try to vent about it as the only thing they know how to do to get through the damn day.
* Global pandemic and uptick in open source contributions
* Elastic/Amazon
* RMS
GPL's often a point of debate due to the virality of the license. AGPL is significantly more problematic due to the risks that it poses to corporations.[0]
IMO, overall this is a net positive, there's a lot more debate on long-term sustainability for open source, and a significant push for more corporate backing.
Like, if I were a woodworker, and made free chairs... you would be right in complaining if it was full of splinters, if it required you to buy hardware and drills, if it was uneven and clunky. It's a shit chair. There's no dishonor in acknowledging what it is. I would not expect a pat on the back just because I made it free.
Open source software is rarely "here's a free chair, that also doesn't have splinters." It's far more often "Here are some free blanks for a chair I made. It's not totally finished, so you'll probably need to do some work on it yourself. But the joints are easy to dis/re-assemble, so feel free to examine it all and modify or replace them to meet your needs. Also, don't sue me."
In that context, it's much more understandable, not because anyone's wrong per se, but because fundamentally the expectations are mismatched.
It seems unfair to complain that you're getting rough products when you're snatching them off the factory floor -- or out of the design room.
To me in this general form it is a valid observation, not an attack. Especially since quite a bit of published open code chooses that perspective intentionally: Feel free to use it however you see fit, but it was written because the author wanted it to do a specific thing for them and it's on you to make it useful for you. Which is still massively better than if they hadn't published it, but not for every audience, and that's totally fine. It's just something to be aware of. And understandably the messaging around this is mixed, because different authors and communities have different views on this.
And a street piano you could own... arguably better than merely renting one.