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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

I lost respect for a lot of you today who had the nerve to suggest that these amounts aren't enough money. For the OSS contributions I've made, I've never been given a penny or even so much as a single coffee for the things I've created, but if someone did, it could be a nickel and I'm not going to say anything but thank you. Nobody owes you anything in this world, and a little grace goes a long way in this industry.

For those of you who complained about the money, you people need to reflect on your attitudes and what brought you to this point.

Ugly.

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There's a decent point you're making that's getting lost because you're choosing to use the inflammatory language. Delete your first sentence, and the last two sentences, and the same point is there and more likely to be taken.

I agree with you and it's unfortunate that you're being downvoted simply for trying to lower the temperature of the discussion.

Just as a note that when the parent comment was posted, the comment section looked very different. It was almost all vitriol. It was genuinely discouraging and disheartening to read, and ugly was the correct adjective. I really resonated seeing this comment, and was pleased to then see it and similar comments basically within minutes jump to the very top. Ie suggesting that others resonated with it as well. The comments being made now are significantly lower temperature, and I think this comment is partly responsible for that de-escalation. Although I do agree that absent that context it comes off as inflammatory--it's a shame that there's no way to see that context in online comment threads like HN!

With all due respect, I feel there is a time and place for some emotion to come through. The tone policing and courtesy concern isn’t well warranted here, even if well intentioned.

We’re not the computers we program.

Suggesting he's tone policing the original posters patronizing is kinda pointless, isn't it?

Open-Source was always and forever will be an act of charity. Volunteering. Something born of good will for the common good. I feel there was a rush for gold and power with the rise of the iPhone appification and the Social Network rockstarification of the software world.

Thank you for writing exactly as you did, it’s frustrating for the “old timers” coming from the hacker culture of yore to grapple with the money grubbers.

I don't think this really represents the full spectrum of beliefs for why people open-source their work. Some of us just fundamentally disagree with the copyright system in general and OS or public domain is more of a "non-participation"

If someone wants to put their work in the public domain and only leave a note in their README that they don't want this to be used for profit and then complain when a company uses it a way they don't like then I 100% agree and support them.

This is the problem with laws and rules. They tend to replace independent moral thought. Instead of asking whether it was right or wrong for that company to use it without the consent of the author, we all get stuck on "well, technically". There's a difference between legal rights and morals.

tl;dr: Some people choose not to participate in the copyright system simply because they wanna push back against us offshoring our abilities to think critically about morals to regulatory bodies. Open source isn't "an act of charity". It's a lot of things to a lot of people

> they don't want this to be used for profit

This sounds like the Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses. Too bad they aren't recommended for code too. https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...

Yeah but that's missing the point imo. The ideological battle is about what is the "default" here. Our legal system has overtaken the commons and now to do something that would have at one point been the assumed default of human cultural products is now something you have to explicitly state. And even then it's just giving you sort of a platform to fight off of within the very legal system that took this away in the first place

> Open-Source was always and forever will be an act of charity. Volunteering.

Many high-profile Free and Open Source software projects are developed mainly by paid employees. Some examples: the Linux kernel, OpenJDK, Firefox, and Chromium.

I couldn't lose any more respect: I have almost none for people who devalue my labor the way these people do. To see them then complain when one of the corporations they give their labor to for free offers them a pittance in return is just amusing. Maybe they should negotiate a salary and stop working for free.

I suppose if you released software for free in order to guilt people to donate you’ve already devalued your labor.

There are plenty of open source maintainers who do it for the good of sharing knowledge and enabling others under no expectation of pay.

No one is devaluing your "labor". Perhaps you are devaluing yourself because you think that software development (and especially open source) is about "labor".

I have more respect for people who refuse money than for those who blindly accept it.

opensource doesn't pay the bills and this thread is exhibit A as to why it doesn't

Open source shouldn’t be about paying the bills. Otherwise just charge for it.

Time isn't free and the number of "issues" that many projects have to deal with due to entitlement derangement syndrome makes a maintainer's life miserable.

This is why most high volume OS maintainers are either employed by companies just to maintain the code or they are younger with less life commitments.

I do open source, and I do charge for it. I make a bit less than I would on proprietary, but plenty to live off of.

Any technical project requires focus, and if I paid the bills with something else, I wouldn't have time and space to focus.

I've never been particularly successful with side projects until they became full-time projects. I don't know many other people who have. Side projects are great for exploring, but when one gains traction, to be successful, I've always needed to find a way to focus on it full-time (which means using it to pay the bills).

Me too, but only in the case where accepting money compromises something.

Here, I don't think it applies.

What's ugly here is calling your peers names just to defend a huge corporations PR.

Your parent didn't call anyone a name, but described as "ugly" the actions of the people who impugn GitHub/MS for this act that benefits open source maintainers--and surely seeks positive PR for GitHub/MS as well.

(Meanwhile, you solely mention the PR aspect of this act, as if there is no other benefit in the equation. There are two general entities that will benefit from this, although some here seem to prefer no benefit whatsoever befall GitHub/MS and even want to turn this into negative PR. Anyway, assuming it does turn out to be net-positive PR for GitHub/MS, then 900 devs as well as GitHub/MS will benefit from this act.)

There's no need to defend name calling, or Microsoft. Neither benefit anyone.

Maybe your parent commenter made it too personal by bringing respect into the discussion. I just didn't feel your parent poster called anyone a name, so I disagree with what you're saying was being done there. That commenter named an action as being ugly, which is not problematic, IMHO.

I don't think it's the same thing as calling names; it's an important distinction to me to criticize actions and not people, and that's what your parent did.

Many here are criticizing the actions of GitHub/MS. That's fair, but we can also criticize the act of criticizing just the same.

(Again, I might agree with you if bringing "respect" into it could be seen as having a similar effect as name-calling in the sense that it makes the discussion more personal than it needs to be.)

wait, what names?

Judge much?

I’m not a maintainer but adjacent to the tech industry (Ed tech) and am hurting for money due to inflation, and I live in a low cost of living area.

You don’t know everyone’s situation. Stop judging them.

First of all: Everyone should have enough money to live a life in dignity.

However, this is about public open source projects. You can earn money with those projects. But then you also have to clearly communicate this. Either by asking for donations, sponsorship or offer a support contract. Because the default model of open source is: Here is some code, here is the license, feel free to use it without going through a paywall first.

There's a great way to work in software without hurting for money: stop giving away labor for free.

I can and will judge them, especially the ones who complain about this money specifically because of their choices.

Your comment reminds me of the dating book “He’s just not that into you”: there’s no complex reason why your OSS contributions have’t made a penny. If you aren’t able to make money off them, it’s because they’re worth zero dollars. Making money starts with not giving away ones work for free.

And I disagree that it’s the complainers that need to self-reflect. If I had received $500 even in the times I was making the equivalent of ~300EUR per month from such huge assholes like MS, I would honestly have been very conflicted about accepting the money in the first place and in no way would have jumped to their defense.

> Making money starts with not giving away ones work for free.

For most financially successful open source projects that’s exactly how they start.

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