Is it even worth working on FOSS anymore? | Hacker News Reader

Is it even worth working on FOSS anymore?

yzena.com

34 pointsmooreds49 comments

Writing free software is like painting. You should do it if you feel like it, or if you, yourself, get something out of it. The moment you start to feel that you are owed something is the moment that you should stop doing it, because what you do from then on is probably not going to be any good.

By all means, do try to aim for the greatest good that your software can create, by making good software, good documentation, a nice community, an AGPLv3 licence, etc. But never feel like you deserve anything, that the world somehow ought to pay you back. It might or it might not, whatever happens happens. The world is not just, and to assume it will be just is setting yourself up for inevitable disappointment.

Unlike paintings, FOSS software is critical to many governments and multi-trillion dollar corporations.

Paintings are responsible for the happiness of millions. So what? What people choose to do with your work you gave away (or allowed a museum to hang on a wall) is up to them. Don't give your work away if you don't want people to use it.

I know it's not great. But software being used as intended by rich entities is not an intrinsic evil.

> Don't give your work away if you don't want people to use it.

This about sums it up.

But at the same time, many people feel like there should be another way to do things. To create code, libraries, frameworks or whatever else that many can benefit from, but there also be some sort of a financial gain to make it sustainable, rather than just a hobby.

Recognition is nice, but recognition won't pay your bills or put food on the table (it may help indirectly by opening up new opportunities, but that's a different conversation).

That's why some are looking in the direction of software that's free for non-profits or non-commercial usage, but requires a license to use commercially, yet that's not as easy as one might believe (bureaucracy and legal aspects), as opposed to ticking a checkbox in GitHub or wherever that would say "i'd like to charge money for someone using this commercially" and filling out some other data. There's probably a company or two out there to make software licensing easier for developers, though.

That said, then we are no longer really talking about "open source" anymore, since we're coming up with limitations of who can or can't use the code and for what, that's more like just source available at that point. That's why licenses like Server Side Public License (SSPL) aren't commonly recognized as open source licenses.

So, in summary:

  - if your goal is money (now or in the near future) then NO, open source is not worth it (at least if you expect a degree of certainty)
  - if that's not a concern (you have a job) or maybe it's something you just do out of passion or for the experience, then YES, it's probably worth it

To summarize: What some people are looking for is a business model. Free software is not a business model. Free software is an ethical stance, around which any number of business models may conceivably be constructed.

> Free software is an ethical stance, around which any number of business models may conceivably be constructed.

Genuine question: where are they?

Why do we get articles like the one in this thread, or maybe others like it, for example https://christine.website/blog/open-source-broken-2021-12-11 and https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html

Are we not just there yet, as an industry? Or are there models that work really nicely, but just haven't gotten popular enough?

Every company which is contributing to free software, in any form, is a free software business model. A business model does not necessarily need to be defined by its ethical stances; an industrial manufacturer might decide that for ethical reasons they will not use child labor, or use CFCs in their products. But simply saying “I will be ethical” will not lead to a business model¹. I.e. to start with free software and from there try to find a business model will only lead you to a few well-known examples; to wit:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.en

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

However, any business model which is otherwise ethical and supports free software in some capacity is a free software business model.

1. https://ozyandmillie.org/archives/comic/ozy-and-millie-96

So, for example, the arts have gone in the opposite direction. Play my recording of my song anywhere and you need to pay me. Make a song too similar to mine and pay me. Put my song in the background of your movie and pay me whenever the movie is on, (even if the TV was on mute or the viewer can't hear).

Royalties might be the opposite to open source ethically, but they'll let some developers get rich, for sure.

The key difference here is that for, say, a piece of music, you can very easily point to someone as the creator of said piece. Or a group of people, or a record label, or whoever owns the rights to it. How do you handle royalties for a FOSS project where dozens, or even hundreds of people have contributed various amounts of code over the years?

> How do you handle royalties for a FOSS project where dozens, or even hundreds of people have contributed various amounts of code over the years?

Look, you just mint a NFT for it. Easy peasy. If you can do it for Bored Gorillas or whatever, you can do it for a software release.

You don't. Royalties are a proprietary model, not an open source model.

I understand that, I was just pointing out a practical issue with the royalties model if it were to be applied to an open source project.

Isn't this already a solved problem, though? I have tools that are "free for non-commercial use, pay $xxx for commercial use." Sure it's an honor system (until you need support!), but so is any other licensing method.

That's a choice the governments and those multi-trillion dollar corporations made.

They are free to write it themselves if they want.

No one held the US Department of Defense over the coals and said, "You MUST use log4j."

If FOSS is critical to your government then your government should participate in maintaining it. They're owed nothing either way.

Governments are not demanding that anyone is creating FOSS. There is no labor camp for developers and bi mandate.

They are using FOSS as license permits.

I don't think you're considering the context of my reply.

And that's a good thing - I surely would not want governments and corporations to depend on secret, proprietary code! Free software should be a moral obligation, without restrictive "non-commercial use only" or "no use in a public cloud" conditions attached.

If you want in those deep pockets, figure out licensing

Once the proverbial cat is out of the bag, it's done. They'll fork and maintain if they have to

They could just as well create an equivalent in house. Nothing is owed

More sponsorships and such would be great of course... but expecting more than the system requires is excessive by definition

Thankfully, governments and multi-trillion dollar corporations are well equipped to pay for ongoing development and maintenance of FOSS.

IMO the AGPL license implies adequate compensation - you get to have access to the source of any derivatives of your source, thus you're able to benefit from them as they do from you.

Nope. The GPL, AGPL, etc. requires of anyone who changes the code to give the changed code to the users of that changed code. Not to the original author. It has absolutely nothing to do with compensation; it’s purely a question of freedom for the users of the code, so that the users, in turn, can further change the software as they see fit for their own reasons and purposes.

Obviously a personal subject, as you have to figure out what you value in your life.

But for me the answer is, and I think always will be: absolutely yes! I flunked at school early, never paid any attention and was only drawn to computer stuff, even though that was before it was mainstream. I found programming, and learned programming thanks to public knowledge posted on the internet, people sharing information via IRC channels and reading through open source code. I don't think I would ever become a real programmer unless it was for open source code and general openness of the internet at the time.

Now I live a comfy life beyond what I imagined at the time, when I was just programming for fun. So now I can give back and give others the opportunity I had, by doing the same activities and helping others to learn more on their journey.

I couldn't ignore the shoulders I stand on and not offer my own shoulders to others. A life without contributing back patches to libraries I depend on is not a life worth living.

For me.

> Since companies steal Open Source software without a care in the world, what’s to stop companies from stealing Rig and embedding it into their proprietary software?

I don't understand this viewpoint. How can a company "steal" open source software? The license you have given the project is to allow anyone to access/modify/use the software in any way they want, so it can't be stealing at that point. That sounds like you want to write software that is not open source, which is fine as well, but has nothing to do with open source software really.

Yeah. It's not stealing if they use it under the terms of the license you placed your project under.

I personally prefer licenses like MPL or LGPL, because it aligns with my own views of open source. If you're going to change and/or improve my project, I want those changes available to the community. If you just use my project as-in, I don't really care.

I mean, if you turn my shower-thought open source project into the next multi-million dollar service, ya know, a kickback would be nice, but I'm not expecting that in any way. And either way, if a company were to put money into one of my projects, I would personally consider myself to have an obligation to listen to them. That turns the project from a thing I did to relax into a potential chore, and I may not really want that.

MPL and LGPL don't make the changes available to the community, only to downstream users. Those users won't necessarily share the changes back upstream. There aren't any open source licenses with this feature, and it is arguable that such a feature wouldn't be open source, because someone on a desert island (or a dissident) can't reasonably comply with them.

Right, but nothing prevents you from closing the loop. If I (project developer) purchase a copy of their application or convince another customer to help, I can then request their changes and either merge it or cherry-pick parts of it into upstream if I wanted to.

None of the licenses require work on the part of downstream to collaborate with upstream, only that a user of downstream can get the changes made to components the license applies to.

Correct, but it isn't always possible to do that; it might be too expensive, the company might be picky about its customers, existing customers might be unwilling to share the competitive advantage they paid for, the company might have a grsec style "we don't give updates if you share the code" setup, etc.

The author brings up some rather salient points and supports with compelling examples; I think the compelling points they raise about writing FOSS are:

1. The work _will_ be stolen, in parts or in whole as proprietary software, if it has commercial value.

2. You are unlikely to be adequately compensated for the value of your efforts.

3. The vocal users are often the least thankful, most entitled, and most offensive.

So unless you feel a moral obligation to support and create FOSS, or you're comfortable with the aforementioned three concerns, then it is probably not amenable to your mental health to be developing FOSS.

Honestly, 3 is the one that bothers me the most out of that list. People being irritating and entitled about something that's free (as in beer) is beyond frustrating.

On the upside, you literally do not owe them anything. Even with rude paying customers, I feel somewhat obligated to respond to support requests... but with FOSS you can tell them anything or nothing at all. Just block them instantly. Tell them you'll send a refund.

Out of those three, that one is also the easiest to fix (or at least, least effort to combat): don't reply to them, ignore them, kick them out from you community with a warning or simply ban them. Most communication tools support those patterns, use them if you find it draining. Just because you publish open source code doesn't mean you owe the users of that software anything.

Most of this post would be irrelevant if you actually talked about Free Software as in FSF's definition. Free as in GPLv3, not just open source.

Is permissive non-gpl software worth working on? For me, the answer is no. Is Free (gpl) Software worth working on? Again, for me, the answer is: i wouldn't have it any other way. I want/need free software to do my computing so I will literally never release non-gpl software in my spare time. And I won't have to struggle with any of what is described in this post.

> what’s to stop companies from stealing Rig and embedding it into their proprietary software?

It’s not “stealing” when you license software as MIT then decide you don’t like a particular user.

And nothing will stop it, even if you license it commercially - they would just be evil paying customers instead. This is completely orthogonal to OSS.

An example they gave is TikTok stealing OBS, which is GPL'd.

Moreover, the author appears to not use MIT for their FOSS work.

I never understood the point of FOSS. Giving away your valuable work for free, undermining other software developers (who would have liked to have a job doing the work) and then feel bitter that nobody appreciates your work or pay you enough. Why would anybody do that to themselves? It makes no sense. I personally have lots of fun writing software in my spare time. But I don't open source it. I don't want the hassle. I have enough of that dealing with customer at work thank you very much. And I have no need to virtue signal to my peers or prove anything to anybody.

That's why nobody uses your stuff, I guess.

Lots of people use my stuff professionally. Millions have used my code in the past (I used to be a game development). But the difference is that they pay me. Much better.

If you do anything publicly and give it away for free you will always have people complaining about it and undervaluing your work (you're giving it away for free after all). This is true of software or anything else (even if it's not free: retail work is hell).

Unfortunately FOSS is notoriously bad for this, whenever someone complains in a rude way and I'm at my limit I tend to respond with: "feel free to use different software" — that's it. You don't owe them anything, and sometimes even that response is an unwarranted kindness.

As Fred Rogers is famously quoted: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Look for the helpers. Try to ignore the detractors (not always possible, unfortunately). It can be very hard, but in the end I still find it worth it. Maybe someday I won't.

If you are frustrated with legal issues around OSS you can make a small contribution to an organization like https://softwarefreedom.org/, or if you're looking for general software advocacy you can contribute financially or with time to the EFF (https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/volunteer/coding-wit...)... there are a lot of helpers beyond these, and you can be one too.

> In other words, what’s to stop companies from using an Open Source Rig to harm users more than it would help?

Aside from the FOSS argument, I find this statement quite sad. How your creation might/could be used shouldn't be the main deciding factor whether you make it or not. Especially so if you mean well with it.

For example, knifes are useful for so many things. But it also enables a lot of crime. Should it not have been invented? Surely not.

Or imagine drawing a painting. One day you found out that it was used for money laundering. Should you not have drawn it?

Everything and anything can be used maliciously so that shouldn't be the reason to stop creating things. And if you take enough precautions to limit malicious usage, then perfect.

I don't get the point. So much corporate culture has poured into the Foss world, I don't see the point anymore. Why? To enrich some corporations for your free labor while mobs swarm your project and enforce HR-like policies in your community?

There are also some people that write FOSS software which has almost no commercial potential, and could only really exist as free software projects. For example, consider something like this Hacker New TUI app[0], great piece of software for fans of the terminal and likely could only exist as a FOSS project.

[0] https://github.com/aome510/hackernews-TUI

Somebody's got to do the work. Most corporate development groups I've seen adhere to the "Innovation Happens Elsewhere" philosophy. You're judged by how well you can copy and paste off of Stack Exchange, not how well you can evaluate customer requirements, design a solution and then implement it (or lead a small team to implement it.)

So... if people stop working on FOSS, we won't get any new web applications.

For me in terms of revenue it's not even something I'd consider to do for a living, I'm not that good of a programmer which is not even my main job (system administrator). I do it because I like to think that I contributed to some kind of obscure software that not a lot of people use but genuinely appreciate.

It's worth the satisfaction for me.

Yes. Free software is computer science in pure form. It is a verifiable and reproducible method to get results. You can build on it and step on the shoulders of giants. The front of computer science only moves forward with publications and code releases, everything else reinvents the wheel in an inefficient manner.

Working on FOSS is probably very unrewarding as an alternative to paid work. As a complement, sure, or maybe even as a component of paid work, but not as an alternative to it, unless you are wealthy enough to not need an active income.

> A company “bought” Audacity and added spyware. The same company also did it to MuseScore.

Doesn’t this support FOSS? Because we can openly see and remove the spyware. Or if the company ever makes the product closed-source, we have past versions. We can even make our own open-source fork and compete with them.

Nobody added spyware to Audacity, the fact that this meme keeps circulating is IMO evidence of how broken trust is on the net right now. The new owners of Audacity wanted to add opt-in analytics to help understand what their users were doing, to help prioritize outstanding tasks. The authors originally put in Google Analytics, which created a moral panic and led to hyperbolic cries of inserting spyware. They pivoted to a different opt-in analytics provider later, but the hyperbolic moral panic line continues to be echoed.

And yes, this is FOSS working as intended. Closed source software wouldn't offer you the same visibility.

We now have statements from two separate state EU organizations that Google Analytics is, in fact, spyware.

So how are statements by a few parties located in Europe relevant when a) this is opt-in behavior that doesn't hide the analytics provider and b) they don't use Google Analytics anymore? Moreover why is everyone saying "spyware" and not saying "Google Analytics" by name, if not to make a hyperbolic emotional argument regarding privacy? It's clickbait hyperbole meant to outrage the reader; call a spade a spade.

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