What he did was incredibly valuable to a huge number of successful people and corporations. But no one owes him anything. That's the point of open source. If they did owe him something, they wouldn't have used it. They used it because it was great, it was established/known, it was available with no strings attached whatsoever. Again, that's the point, that's why it's popular.
But also, he owes them nothing. He doesn't have to keep maintaining the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and flexible package, as a full-time job, for free. He could could have just stopped after his first couple years where it was an inherently fulfilling passion project, he could just put in a couple hours a week, whatever. People would make do, it would still be quite valuable for a lot of people for a long time. Or those other projects and companies would come up with an more up-to-date alternative when really needed.
You really don't have to be a martyr, and we don't have to "give up on open source" or whatever. You can just make stuff available that you wanted to do anyway. Sometimes it leads to bigger opportunities, sometimes (usually?) not. Don't slave away and sacrifice your personal life because of what you think you deserve if you do, that's not going to materialize that way.
Remember this is all stuff just offered up with NO WARRANTY, NOT EVEN FITNESS FOR PURPOSE etc. And in practice it's super super valuable that way. Even without you sacrificing yourself. Let companies spend the big bucks on it, just work on what's fun in your free time.
I think the disagreement here will continue indefinitely because it is a question of (personal and professional) ethics. Ethics doesn't necessarily offer easy answers, just sometimes hard questions. In every discussion like this on HN you see the direct conflict of several competing Ethical Frameworks that people choose to live by which is why the discussion will likely always recur and it will always seem like two or more teams talking past each other.
"What do we owe to each other?" is a massive, hard ethical question. It's not just an easy economic question with an answer of "well he did the work for free, so obviously it is priced at free" though many ethical frameworks, especially on HN, happily stop there. Some ethical frameworks, on the other hand, don't believe there is any such thing as "free labor", just "exploited labor" and find guilt in every bit of open source usage, expect some amount "owed" in backpay to eventually pay back. Some of those same ethical frameworks still feel that "open source" is an ideal, a community good, but also think that for the health of the community as a whole, some support needs to be given to individuals in that community when/where/as they need it, for the good of the whole, and that both things can be true: "open source creates good software" and "open source sometimes creates the conditions to exploit labor (and we owe it to ourselves to mitigate that)".
I can't tell anyone what their ethical framework should be, just that this discussion will likely remain an impasse because it is about personal and professional ethics. How much I feel that I owe the most exploited of the workers in our industry, is something that keeps me up at night sometimes, and that guilt doesn't come from "nowhere" and I'm well aware of the economics and the license agreements in play: that guilt comes from the ethical frameworks that I hold dear and am unlikely to waver on.
I strongly disagree. Only because so many people feel that he owes them something.
Is this really how we want the world to be? Someone who is trying to help needs to be ok with being treated badly? I can understand not being put on a pedestal, but I think a "thank you" and a bit of gratefulness is warranted by people actively being helped.
Edit: maybe I used wrong comparison. Most of the income of the photo publishers should be from sales (to unlock paywall of exclusive content), not many will donation.
What? Why?
> I think mostly because it's not entirely clear how to get such a job
Same as any other job, by looking. Even I do something like that and I am not even close to corejs maintainer level
> reins
If you do this while working as independent contributor (popular in Russia) then it's not even a question, the company will not have any reins on whatever you do outside the contract. If you are employed then company may have the reins, but you will publish OSS while getting money and recognition for it, which is 80% of the formula.
I myself have left the country but I have some friends who are still there, they consult just fine and get paid. Including for foreign businesses.
Uhh… Yes and that's my point? He could earn 50-100 USD per hour, which would get him a more than decent lifestyle in Russia. Why would someone pick between Lots Of Money and begging and not accept an alternative between that would allow him to keep doing OSS while feeding his family? This whole plea just doesn't compute with me.
> Glad to hear though that there are lots opportunites for tech folk in Russia to make good money.
It's not good money, it's just money to live okay. And it's not in Russia, it's everywhere. Internet, it did wonders.
I see a lot of open source use the same way. Companies use open-source contributions but don't contribute back any of the value they receive. I'm strongly in favor of using strict GPL licensing or dual licensing for corporate and nonprofit use for every open source project. I know people like the MIT license so that people will use their projects, but fundamentally if you want open source to continue then open source contributions need to be enforced, because otherwise it doesn't happen
He's the maintainer of a major software library. Everyone who depends on his work does owe him gratitude and respect. They'd have to pay me big bucks to care enough to do what he did, so I respect him for doing it.
Thankfully 95% of the people I interacted with in the community were great and were great, but that other 5% was rough.
He keeps it incognito because the vitriol his alias receives from impassioned members of the community makes him afraid of getting doxxed. He showed me some of them. I don't blame him.
I'd like to find sponsors for a few non-web-related projects. In particular the Linux USB Gadgets userspace stack (libusbgx/gt/gadgetd/etc), a library for the Microsoft PST email format (libpst) and a tool for running linters/etc (check-all-the-things). Happy to chat about these over email.
https://github.com/linux-usb-gadgets https://github.com/pst-format/libpst https://github.com/collab-qa/check-all-the-things
However, I'm not going to return the favor by ignoring your personal context.
Is the reason you're denouncing core-js's maintainer because you, yourself, have been subject to particularly awful circumstances owing to Russia's war? Are you projecting on him because you've been hurt? What's your situation?
The manslaughter came as a shock, yes, and I think there's more to that story than he's telling us. He probably isn't a great human being.
None of that, however, is relevant to the fact that maintaining core-js in particular and FOSS in general is a thankless and awful job.
It's possible to support FOSS, and support remuneration for FOSS, without supporting specific individuals.
This is like saying that you're not sad about your mother dying because you didn't immediately burst into tears. It's well understood that we all process grief differently and sometimes we even struggle or fail to process it.
So is it so unreasonable that one may process any notable or traumatic event differently? I can try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is sent to a gulag for 7 months under circumstances that appear to be unfair, and I can't imagine anything except how much it would fucking suck and how actually, I might have complicated feelings that range from anger to despair.
Whether I like this guy or not, or think he is a good guy or a bad guy, has absolutely no bearing on this. It's just not useful or helpful to police someone's reaction.
Jesus Christ.
Well, I hope he enjoys his beloved home country now. He will have to stay there for quite a while.
Edit* looks like he does indeed enjoy it. Good for him. https://twitter.com/roman01la/status/1625254253156528147/pho...
What in that twitter thread makes you think he enjoys it? The fact that he does not share a certain political opinion? Is a political belief, or lack of it, enough to enjoy life in a country?
Nah, he should get creative.
1. Silently change the license to GPL.
2. Wait a few billion downloads.
3. Meticulously sue one company after the other.
Sadly this is the state of open source projects. People feeling entitled and doing nothing but complain. It's sad really because negative compacts often have a more lasting impact than positive ones.