Tea – the toolkit that builds the Internet
tea.xyz
tea.xyz
Oddly unspecific name? Check.
Low contrast? Check.
Generic illustrations like all hipster startups? Check.
Expects me to trust some random website with a root shell? Check.
"Decentralization" & "Governance"? Of course. True crypto bros.
"Whitepaper"? You bet.
And I still have no clue what specifically they plan to do. It's something about paying for open source, but then again we've seen many unsuccessful attempts there recently.
I do wish they put almost that exact sentence at the top.
> The tools that build the Internet have steeped too long. It’s time for a fresh brew.
What tools? The internet as in... HTTP? Servers? Caching? LLVM? DNS? BGP?
> We’re uniquely placed to have tangible impact on all aspects of software development and we intend to.
I'm not sure what this means. Hugely scoped.
If I spend a few minutes reading the copy, trying to gauge intent, and interpret what they're saying I get an idea of the pitch. But, not how it works. Not the product itself. It says it "sets my stack up right". I'm not sure what that means given it demo's placing a binary into ./bin.
The copy is only a story about payment. But nothing else about how that works. Plus, you're more likely to read the highlights, see stuff about a DAO, and write it off as another fad.
This seems to be largely the same pitch that oscoin.io / monadic.xyz / radicle.xyz had back in 2017. They must have burned, what, 10 million dollars by now? I'm really curious what the business model behind an outfit like this is...
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/binance-labs-leads...
sh <(curl tea.xyz)Then I sit back and realize that it's usually because most of the examples I read are trying to solve non-technical problem (attribution, trust, etc.) with a buzzy tech solution all wrapped in a serious bit of speculation.
I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the tech of our law, banking, and logistics systems (COBOL--> anything else?), but the kneejerk to some "decentralized" system that needs total but in from it's participants to work actually seems more fragmented and fragile than our current institutions...
- https://medium.com/teaxyz/tea-brew-478a9e736638
- https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/binance-labs-leads...
> Tea controls the graph of open source that underpins all modern digital infrastructure. Packages will be released on‐chain as NFTs with their dependency metadata included. As developers use Tea, governance tokens are available according to their real‐life usage to drive the entire open source ecosystem. ... “We’re not changing the nature of open-source. It’s still free,” explained co-founder Timothy Lewis. “Software wants to be free, but programmers need to be compensated. We’re bringing the creator economy to open source. Our vision is to fix how open-source is funded and create the tools that will accelerate its creation for the benefit of all humanity.”
and
> We’re moving the package registry on-chain (we’ll use a low-energy proof of stake chain). ... We’re not changing the nature of open source. It’s still free. web3 has enabled novel new ways to distribute value, and with our system people who care about the health of the open source ecosystem buy some token and stake it. Periodically, we reward this staking because it is securing our token network. We give a portion of these rewards to the staker and a portion to packages of their choice along with all the dependencies of those packages.
Yeah, no.
I read the page and didn’t really understand what it was, just something vaguely crypto and tons of millenial buzzwords. The fact that they didn’t mention NFT once is interesting.
This seems like a very cynical attempt to take what money is going to larger OpenSource projects and divert it towards making cryptobros more money.
Even if all the issues with NFTs and crypto are put aside. I think there serious challenges with the model and how it incentivizes developers if each package doesn't have direct control over how much of their payouts go to each dependency.
Oh yes this will definitely result in an improvement of the situation.
> Packages will be released on‐chain as NFTs with their dependency metadata included
Hello yes, a concept called “DRM” is on the phone and it wants its licence money.
Homebrew is far from the foundations of Open Source or Linux. It mostly serves to prop up MacOS using Linux originated tech and make it a usable developer experience. Everyone says Apple users are more likely to pay for the things they use and that's why developing Mac and iOS apps is so important. So what happened here?
and then
sh <(curl tea.xyz) install deno.land
?>In day to day development our decentralization increases reliability (leftpad is a sore memory)
...leftpad became a problem when a commonly-used deep dependency was ripped out of the ecosystem. And because npm is centralized, they can now prohibit anyone from causing that kind of damage again, ever.
Whereas in a decentralized system where people are pointing at random GitHub accounts? Yeah, they could totally delete the GitHub account (or force-push an empty repo) and cause the same exact problem as leftpad.
They are claiming to solve a problem using decentralization that was caused by too much decentralization. And then using Deno as an example install...which has the exact same problem in its ecosystem.
Fail piled on to more fail.
But you don't need blockchain for immutability, you just need it for trustlessness. And I think in general people don't care about trustlessness enough to deal with the overhead that blockchain requires. Plus the perverse incentives that I imagine will result from having a currency that you need to buy/spend in order to publish your packages.
To be fair, they explicitly say everything would be backed by a distributed file store like IPFS. Nobody will be able to randomly delete their own Github account and leave anyone in the lurch.
Now if someone successfully publishes a hack that steals everyone's data and/or creates a botnet everywhere it's installed, there's no way to actually pull it down and override it.
Unless there's a centralized authority with the ability to do that, in which case it's not decentralized and we're just changing who controls it.
I have a few open-source libraries, and I figure that... since I give them away explicitly for free... there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product.
When I was much younger, I used to be in awe of how OSS devs can do all this amazing stuff, put it with no expectation of compensation, get a wall of critiscm and demands back, and continue working on it stoically without burnout. As I got older, I learned that the burnout is very real and only getting worse. I'm still extremely impressed by any OSS developers ability to keep going [so you should know that at least someone appreciates you ;) ], but it doesn't seem right to me now.
So... while I don't get 100s of e-mails a day, I do get a good amount per year demanding I implement a feature. I point out that my personal contact details are there (as well as my corporate entity) and that we can be contacted for custom commercial work.
The way I see it... OSS is my past-time. The moment there are deadlines you need to pony up
"My consulting rate to implement this feature is $500/hour. I estimate this feature will take N hours, and I require 50% of that to be pre-paid before I start work. If you agree to these terms, I will send you a contract to sign and we can get started."
Hopefully that will get them to go away, but if by some miracle they agree to that, at least I'll get a nice chunk of change for doing the work.
I can't say I blame him either but the attitude seems to raise a flag.
edit: lol, dude's got history:
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=max+howell
as a mac user I certainly appreciate Homebrew, but I can see why he's not the current maintainer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038010).
Statements like this always really irk me. It just feels so pretentious.
A year down the line, 20 companies are using your code. Two years down the line, 100 companies are using your code.
Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money?
If you choose yes, know that typically at least one of those companies will be hounding you for bugfixes or out-of-scope demands. We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work. If your turnaround for a fix on your globally used code is anything more than minutes, you will be hated. At least, until it's fixed, then you'll go back to being ignored.
If you choose no, well you have two choices: Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to a scammer who breaks the whole internet. Either way, the internet will vilify you for twice as long for your choice.
Many people, especially with programmer brain chemistry, end up going down the high-momentum-low-friction route of burning themselves out for the sake of conflict (and bad reputation) avoidance. Because it's very easy for you to say "sell your product", especially if that's something you're good at (or if you've never done it before and so presume it's something you're good at).
So once you see that, and you know that, and you see fellow developers stuck in the same hole and you see that you are well placed to do something - anything - to help change that, wouldn't you?
> there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product.
Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on.
No. I'm very clear with demands on my time that either companies have to provide resources to implement features (and I'll charge a consulting fee to train devs) or pay me directly to implement them (and I'll name the cost). Actually, several companies have paid me, and my project is significantly smaller than homebrew (niche Haskell library).
> We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work
I don't really care about being vilified online. Have had my fair share. I'm old enough to not give a second thought to online trolls.
> Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else
Or... don't change the license. Stop giving updates, and put up a notice that says you are not actively working on project X but for a fee you will be happy to make updates.
> Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on.
I wish them every success, and I may end up using it myself. However, I don't like the accusations of unfairness being levied against open source users (among which I would also include myself) for using freely available code for free.
That's great for you, and the other commenter who said the same. I'm pleased you feel comfortable enough with that.
Would I be right in thinking that you have spent a significant amount of time being a full-time contractor?
Either way, I'll wager that makes you the 1%, not the typical. The typical developer works a full-time job and does a little project on the side. Their boss may or may not know about it, and if they do, they are happy so long as work on the project does not impact their full-time job responsibilities.
But this presumption of "I feel comfortable with X and therefore nobody else needs help with this" is terribly damaging, and the fact that these over-confident voices shout about how weak and inexperienced and dumb everyone else is for falling into that trap, only serves to cement the impostor syndrome and erode self worth.
People usually cannot be shamed into becoming more confident and assertive. People need to be supported into becoming more confident and assertive. And a project that helps people feel supported cannot be a bad thing imo.
>> tech giants accrued fortunes on the backs of people they’ve never thanked, paid or even met.
> I don't like the accusations of unfairness being levied against open source users (among which I would also include myself)
There's the problem. Unless you happen to be a tech giant, you are not the entity this project is trying to shame.
I don't think anyone is claiming that the common case is the developer who stands up for themselves, has healthy boundaries, and doesn't let internet-hate scare them. Most developers fall into this trap, including a past version of myself.
But I think it's a pretty objective fact that this isn't a good way to be. I'd be hard-pressed to find someone that would say that it's awesome to be a doormat who allows others to walk all over them. But with work (possibly with the help of someone like a therapist or professional coach), people can change their attitude in order to have a healthier relationship with their OSS projects, and can develop the assertiveness necessary to enforce their boundaries. If you (not you "you", just the general "you") don't want to put in that work, that's ok I guess, but then maybe you should just accept that you're always going to have a toxic relationship with your OSS projects and with some of your users.
Just to be clear, from your statement:
> But this presumption of "I feel comfortable with X and therefore nobody else needs help with this"
I'm having trouble finding where anyone said this (and if that's what you're reading, maybe you should step back and think about why that is). I see people saying that they're able to set healthy boundaries, presumably as inspiration to others. "If I can do it, don't despair: this is something you can learn too, and it will improve your life." We need not accept that the status quo is the only option, especially when it's a fairly bad option.
I don't know if Tea will be good or useful or will solve any problems, but I do note that it (at least in part) seems like a technological solution to a social problem, and those tend to not work out so well. Or they do work, but serve as a crutch to allow people to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about themselves.
> I'm having trouble finding where anyone said this
I'm indicating the general tone. I'll be more careful not to misuse quote marks in this comment and use [] to denote paraphrases!
When I itemise the traps people can fall into, and then get the response of "No. I'm very clear with demands on my time" it ignores the vast swathes of people that don't have this luxury. Now maybe this commenter just felt I was talking about them directly; I did, after all, phrase the though process in the third person. (Now YOU have a choice, do YOU continue donating... etc)
But given this is a comment in the public domain, this seems unlikely. More likely is that the commenter is dismissing the problem, because it doesn't apply to them.
In general, I think we're mostly on the same page here:
> I don't think anyone is claiming that the common case is the developer who stands up for themselves, has healthy boundaries, and doesn't let internet-hate scare them. Most developers fall into this trap, including a past version of myself.
Exactly. Me too. The problem is, having addressed it to some extent, some people choose to believe that it's no longer a problem. Often it manifests as kind of a "I fixed myself, so why haven't you?" mentality.
> people can change their attitude in order to have a healthier relationship with their OSS projects, and can develop the assertiveness necessary to enforce their boundaries
Putting the idea of access to therapy aside, you and I can agree that it is absolutely beneficial for people to work on this aspect of themselves, as a general rule.
However, while it is right to say [This is not a healthy stance to take] but we should be careful not to imply [It's your fault you are being weak] or that the recipient is the problem, not the toxic individuals.
And while that isn't overtly being said in these comments, that's still the implication I take from them, even trying to re-read it charitably.
Every single number you mentioned is completely irrelevant because your underlying premise is faulty. If you released some very good code to the world for free under an open source license, it doesn't matter whether 0 people or 1 million people use it. You are under literally zero obligation to fix or update anything, just like it says in the text of the license you picked.
Any social obligation that people imagine you have (or in your case perhaps more importantly that you imagine you have), is just that: imaginary. If you can't stand the idea of some stranger on the planet not liking you because you refuse to spend your time fixing their pet bugs, that would be a good topic to bring up with your therapist.
And of course, just because something you did crosses some arbitrary line of popularity doesn't mean the universe suddenly decides you are entitled to compensation for it. If that's how you hoped things would go, then you should have started a business to sell it in the first place.
That's great for you, and the other commenter who said the same. I'm pleased you feel comfortable enough with that.
> Any social obligation that people imagine you have (or in your case perhaps more importantly that you imagine you have), is just that: imaginary. If you can't stand the idea of some stranger on the planet not liking you because you refuse to spend your time fixing their pet bugs, that would be a good topic to bring up with your therapist.
I mean, I'll ignore the elitism in this statement, and presume you meant this sarcastically. But the idea that you associate this kind of unassertiveness with mental dysfunction is probably not a million miles wrong.
However, it is not an unusual mental dysfunction, and one that many more software developers suffer from than the general populace. Assuming that your bravado is matched in your offline life, that would put you in a very small percentage of programmers.
And declaring that as a source of shame rather than an opportunity for support only serves to further entrench the stigma and impostor syndrome. Which then leads to further unassertiveness and self-worth issues. Which then leads to more people feeling they are not worth being paid for their time. Which leads to more people on the internet making them feel shame.
Which means I can agree with you wholeheartedly when you say:
> You are under literally zero obligation to fix or update anything
... and at the same time be pleased to see people attempting to improve the situation for those thousands of developers who, in their own heads, do not feel that zero obligation as a daily reality. I may not agree it's the right approach. I may not even agree that it will work. But I'm not going to dismiss the premise, just because it's not how I personally feel.
> And of course, just because something you did crosses some arbitrary line of popularity doesn't mean the universe suddenly decides you are entitled to compensation for it. If that's how you hoped things would go, then you should have started a business to sell it in the first place.
This on the other hand is just plain naivety. The idea that every small side project would even support the costs of a business is not just assertiveness, it's delusional. Would you buy a shell like fish? A json query language like jq? A context summerizer for your shell like starship? An ad blocker? A file manager? And would you pay more than a payment processor or business bank account would take in fees?
Something can be used by millions and make hundreds of dollarbucks in aggregate, and yet be practically worthless individually.
Which is, again, one of the stated goals of Tea. I'm pretty sure it won't be a through-the-roof success, but again, happy to see people trying new ways to tackle the problem. You know. Beyond telling people to go get therapy.
I think you're getting a little unnecessarily combative here. Discussing something with a therapist, regardless of level of severity, is a great way to improve your mental health and with dealing with various types of social situations. The parent suggesting that someone discuss their lack of assertiveness in a particular aspect of their life with their therapist is probably good advice! There's no reason to bring up things like "mental dysfunction" here, and there's no shame in realizing that you might not handle certain situations too well and that it could be helpful to discuss that with a professional.
For me, it was a long process of disentangling my feelings of self-worth from my work product. Unfortunately, part of the aftermath was that I don't really maintain much OSS these days, and that which I do is fairly niche and therefore unpopular (which tends to cut down drastically on the entitled freeloaders who demand uncompensated work from me).
I wish more OSS developers would take steps to make their relationship with their work healthier. There's no shame in falling back on these unhealthy reactions to entitled demands, but it's certainly not a good thing.
To be clear, I'm not commenting at all on whether or not OSS developers deserve to be compensated, whether that is even practical for most projects, or whether or not Tea can or will end up being a good or useful solution. I'm merely addressing the fact that (as you have pointed out) many OSS developers have an unhealthy relationship with their code, and it's really unfortunate that most of them will -- instead of changing their approach -- end up burned out as a result.
The statement "Mental dysfunction" in my mind has absolutely no negative connotations. As far as I'm concerned, most people on the planet have some form of mental dysfunction. And in this case, I am genuinely and totally agreeing that this outlook on life is not necessarily the product of a fully healthy mind - and that's ok.
What I did take exception to was the idea that every Open Source Software developer has access (via money, time, social skills... whatever) to a therapist, and that it is acceptable for the rest of the community to offload the blame onto those developers. In other words, I do not accept the false dichotomy of "Be exploited" vs "Get a grip".
> I wish more OSS developers would take steps to make their relationship with their work healthier. There's no shame in falling back on these unhealthy reactions to entitled demands, but it's certainly not a good thing.
Couldn't put it better myself!
1) You create an anonymous online identity, and release your software under that identity, and be very careful to avoid linking it to your real-life identity. Then you don't have to care at all if you're hated, because they don't know you. If you want even more separation, you can create a separate identity for each type of thing you release. You can even take this to extremes: if you feel like an identity has been "burned" by hate, you can create a new one, start contributing to the project under the new identity, and eventually your old identity can "step down" and hand the reins of the project to the new identity. There are certainly downsides to this, but the trade off may be worth it for some people.
2) Or, you can develop a thicker skin and just not care if entitled freeloading losers "hate" you (because, seriously, why do the opinions of people like that matter?). Have a form-letter response to such demands that quotes a somewhat-outrageous hourly contracting rate, with a time estimate and a requirement that half be paid up-front. Include a reminder that otherwise the work is done in your spare time on a volunteer basis, and those paying $0 for the software get $0 worth of support. (And optionally point to the warranty disclaimer that is a part of pretty much all open source licenses.)
I think if more people would do #2 it would get normalized, and then no one would be "hated" for this, because it would be the common case. But too many OSS developers tie their identity and self-worth to their code, so any criticisms or deficiencies feel like personal failures that need to be fixed.
I don't maintain anything popular anymore, but I used to be a core maintainer of Xfce during the 00s. I got a lot of entitled demands from various people who hadn't contributed a line of code or a sentence of documentation. My only regret is that I wasted time and energy getting into arguments with some of these people, when the best thing for me to do would have been to cut them off immediately, or just ignore them entirely. (The overall project maintainer, Olivier Fourdan, was very good at dealing with this. He would calmly reply with his reasons for not wanting to do whatever it was that someone was demanding, and then completely disengage and not reply further.)
To be clear, I absolutely agree with you that many many developers handle this sort of thing poorly and contrary to their own best interests. But it doesn't have to be that way, and each individual can choose to take a healthier approach to their open source work. We have no one to blame but ourselves if we choose to engage in self-destructive behaviors in response to the entitled leeches.
And then we have something like the recent Log4j vulnerability, and all the companies come rushing to the developers, filled with entitlement, demanding immediate fixes, throwing shade on the developers for "causing" this problem in the first place, and all that. Open source developers certainly deserve some amount of compensation for having to deal with that garbage, even if we agree that there's no expectation of being paid for the software itself.
I’m almost always doubtful on blockchain projects, but this does feel like something that might have a slightly bigger chance to succeed than other more scammy projects. I’d appreciate a less buzzword-heavy site though.
My main objection of this would be that dependencies might start gaming the system though. Would expect a bit more info on this in the webpage.
I had the exact same question. What sort of controls will the Tea team have to add/remove packages, or modify owners. And how would this be any different from centralized package managers?
Does your platform have user created content? If so, you will need a delete operation.
Is the technology you use capable of permanent and complete removal of user data? If the blockchain is only for payments, then maybe it is admissable, but there are still further considerations.
This whole thing just stinks of web3 BS and another victim of the cult therein.
[ref] https://www.deviantart.com/team/journal/DeviantArt-Protect-H...
But blockchain is not the way to implement it. “Every project exists as an NFT.” Does that mean I’ll have to pay roughly $500 (the price to create an NFT in Etherium) if I want to deploy a package? Will I have to pay gas fees to download packages? How will I, with no interest in cryptocurrency, transfer money?
Is actually a lot more straightforward to do this centralized without blockchain. There are already projects like ‘npm fund’ whose goal is to create a graph which you can use to figure out how to divide $X among package contributors, and how yo send that money to their bank accounts. If the developer actually cares about funding package maintainers they should realize that blockchain is overhyped and pivot to distributing real money, managing it through something like a PostgreSQL database instead.
He says they don't want to use Ethereum mainnet so no - gas fees may be fractions of a cent.
> Will I have to pay gas fees to download packages?
Read operations do not require gas.
It seems to be something do with blockchain? I'd like to say it could be one of the few decent/non-scammy implementations of a blockchain in recent years, but yeh, I can't really say that until I know what it is.
You need a list of packages, and new versions shouldn't prevent finding older versions, so an append-only system makes sense.
You want to allow anyone to upload packages, not just a blessed list of maintainers, but need to be able to authenticate that new versions were uploaded by the same entity as the previous version, so a decentralized trust system makes some sense.
So some sort of blockchain makes sense. On the downside it's almost certainly going to be more expensive, get filled with junk packages made by "maintainers" who aren't the original authors, and cause confusion about which packages are actually trustworthy.
Like Namecoin, I think it's a viable use of a blockchain (other than the usual three of speculation, separating fools from their money, and evading laws around money). Like Namecoin, I doubt it'll end up going anywhere because the advantages of the system aren't that big compared to the disadvantages.
Interested to here more, but not putting out any hope for this.
Nix has already replaced it for me. I'm not getting involved in any NFT stuff, it's all just scams all the way down.
> graph of open source [software] on‐chain creating a map we’ll use to guide value redistribution... compensated without direct payment
Perhaps what they mean to say is.. `tea` facilitates a relationship between payer (commercial user of open source) and payee (open source developer of that software) with a smart contract.
So.. replace payment processor and middle-man fees with smart contract and gas fees? That's mildly interesting, but I'm not even aware of a "centralized" version of this if it exists so not sure it's called for.
The most important question I see here is how the money is supposed to flow into that system.
At the core if you strip away the "web 3.0" language then it's a decent idea. There is a lot of devil in the detail so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
The author's firm charges hefty fees for consulting services. These are directed at enterprises needing "certified" versions of sqlite. I'm assuming these are companies providing software under military/government contract.
So it's an interesting strategy: release sqlite as public domain. The software is used everywhere, so much so it's an indispensable part of the infrastructure. Then when giant enterprise uses it charge huge fees they gladly pay.
Hipp is without doubt a genuine genius.
It seems they're going to be releasing a whitepaper. I'm willing to hear out ideas for how OSS developers could be compensated, especially if it's coming from someone who has already created a successful and well-loved project from scratch.
Going by the owner's blog, which is a bit more in-depth on his reasoning and less hyperbolic:
- Packages will be immutable (no more left-pad incidents) Don't need blockchain for this. Just add a ToS that you can't pull packages from the centralized repo. - Packages will always be available (we’ll use decentralized storage) NPM availability hasn't been an issue, but could be. Blockchain still not needed for decentralization. Anyone who has to download the entire chain... yeesh, gonna be huge. Scaling issue greater than NPM or Github in my opinion. - Releases will be signed by the maintainers themselves (rather than a middleman you are told you can trust) Doesn't seem to be an issue with NPM? When this happens they usually hijack an account or the github. Some sort of token to sign with can also be grabbed, especially shared between maintainers or (inevitably, because no one actually enjoys decentralization) just becomes an automated feature of Github etc. Even then this issue is solvable with NPM, don't need a blockchain to sign releases. - Tools can be built to fundamentally verify the integrity of your app’s open source constitution Don't need a blockchain. I've thought of building these myself for NPM, maybe something to check VCS release tag hash vs package. - Token can flow through the graph (this is re: financing devs) Don't need a blockchain for this, though my inner dev likes the automation.
I don’t necessarily think that’s a terrible idea but I can’t even begin to imagine why it needs a blockchain or what a blockchain could offer that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.
I release my software as open-source because I am happy for people to use it for free, I don’t fully understand what problem this is solving — most open-source software usage is so widespread because it’s free, the problem is not that there’s no way to charge companies for usage — but it’ll be interesting to see how they set about doing this.
$ sh <(curl tea.xyz)
$ curl tea.xyz | shWhat part of this project is improved by using a blockchain?
And is that worth the cost?
I can totally understand feeling bitter about the corporate worlds approach to use of open source software, but it's also precisely _because_ some of these tools are open source that they get traction in these environments in the first place.
I feel like a open source developer should not expert to be financially rewarded or given a fast-track ticket to career success solely because of open source contribution. However, of course there is more the development community could do to support open source initiatives.
Another idea on this topic:
Someone should try an open-source license where any company with more than, say, 500 employees need to pay a small tribute, for example a fixed $1000 / year. Small enough of an amount that any large org could pay for it, and large enough that if you have 10+ large companies you'll get good money from your open-source project.
500 dependencies would be 500 000 a year, which should be sustainable for most 500 employee the company.
Don't really know how to enforce it or build an org around it, and there are likely several hurdles to overcome.
There are projects out there like this; I would say Unreal Engine is one. However, I wouldn't consider this open source (it's source-available).
That said, it's way more likely that someone working at that big company, if the need was strong enough, would just write their own and open source it (and everyone would use that project), or just buy a vendored solution (and in that case, if that company is you, you are now running a company and you also have to provide support; which is no different from how things exist today).
The OSI zealots will attack you for violating some vague moral values, but that’s a small price to pay I think.
Anyway, you could maybe have a tri-license:
- GPL/LGPL
- small-company proprietary license ($0)
- large-company proprietary license ($1000)
Although the proprietary licenses mean that despite providing a GPL license, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of outside GPL code. Plus I think you'd need to have any open-source contributors sign away the copyright of their code to you/your project's foundation.
it's not like npm / pypi are that much better (anyone can post), but at least they have a paper trail.
but until we have an open institutional review culture for OSS, everything is dangerous.
Look at:
The donations link is at the very bottom. If they need money they should put it up at the top the way Wikipedia does and make it a one-click easy thing with an embed that takes things like Apple Pay.
I've never been prompted or asked to donate to Homebrew at all.
https://twitter.com/mxcl 'ceo @teaxyz_'
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/binance-labs-leads...
Does look like they just got caught up in making cryptobro scams though.
As soon as they start paying app creators, a bunch of hustle culture shonkwankers will git clone a bunch of repositories and spam a bunch of bogus apps just like they currently do with other artists' work with NFTs.
Compensating creators will turn into compensating people who front-run creators and squat names and stuff.
"It will be gamed. No exceptions."
... and my own new law:
"The Internet is a dark forest." Announcing an opportunity to make any amount of money is the equivalent to announcing your existence in a literal dark forest. You are instantly overcome by tidal wave of spam, scams, and fraud.
Google sent a blanket, the world is unfair - is this going to be a solution to the problem that any complex software relies on the work of thousands of contributors, who would otherwise get NIL?
> at a glance this looks like it’s aiming to share funds of big, top-level projects to it’s dependencies
Use the blockchain to redistribute tech giant's wealth to the developers of its open source roots? Yes, send the cheques, please!
No thanks, goodbye.
- private, managed brew repos
- linux support
- onboarding / workstation setup via Brewfile
- maybe a graphical interface for that
- enterprise support plan (would have been handy when `/usr/local/bin` stopped being writable some OSX versions back)
Eventually a lot of it moved to NPM via artifactory for the ease of publishing & consumption.
What distro are you using that doesn't have a proper package manager? Brew exists precisely because this has been standard for years/decades on linux but OSX hasn't had anything built in.
- a lot of companies that use open source don't donate to open source
- a lot of companies that adopt open source refuse to contribute to it or try to takeover the project
- companies will always fulfill bare minimum license requirements at most. At least, they ignore the license completely.
- companies ignore any open source which isn't a first order dependency.
I couldn't really tell from this page whether this product will somehow address one or multiple of these items.
Nope
#!/bin/sh
set -e
if [ -n "$VERBOSE" ]; then
set -x
fi
if [ "$1" = "--show" ] && [ $2 = "twitter" ]; then
echo "https://twitter.com/teaxyz_"
elif [ -n "$1" ]; then
# Hi, I know you’re excited but genuinely, pls wait for release
# I added this so I can do CI :/
case $(uname) in
Darwin) suffix=macOS-aarch64;;
Linux) suffix=linux-x86-64;;
*)
echo "unsupported OS or architecture" >&2
exit 1;;
esac
if [ "$1" = "brew" ]; then
d="$HOME"/.tea/bin
mkdir -p "$d"
curl https://tea.xyz/dist/tea-$suffix -o "$d"/tea
echo "$d" >> $GITHUB_PATH
else
mkdir opt
curl https://tea.xyz/dist/tea-$suffix -o ./opt/tea
chmod u+x ./opt/tea
shift
./opt/tea "$@"
fi
else
echo
echo "418 I’m a teapot"
echo
echo "thanks for your interest in tea."
echo "alas, we’re not quite ready to serve you yet."
echo
echo "while you wait why not follow us on Twitter:"
echo
echo ' open $(sh <(curl tea.xyz) --show twitter)'
echo
fiSame for the linux build https://tea.xyz/dist/tea-linux-x86-64
$cat <(curl tea.xyz)
--- #!/bin/sh
set -e
if [ -n "$VERBOSE" ]; then set -x fi
if [ "$1" = "--show" ] && [ $2 = "twitter" ]; then echo "https://twitter.com/teaxyz_" elif [ -n "$1" ]; then # Hi, I know you’re excited but genuinely, pls wait for release # I added this so I can do CI :/ case $(uname) in Darwin) suffix=macOS-aarch64;; Linux) suffix=linux-x86-64;; *) echo "unsupported OS or architecture" >&2 exit 1;; esac
if [ "$1" = "brew" ]; then
d="$HOME"/.tea/bin
mkdir -p "$d"
curl https://tea.xyz/dist/tea-$suffix -o "$d"/tea
echo "$d" >> $GITHUB_PATH
else
mkdir opt
curl https://tea.xyz/dist/tea-$suffix -o ./opt/tea
chmod u+x ./opt/tea
shift
./opt/tea "$@"
fi