Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoctorOW | Hacker News Reader

Why not spend this effort contributing to Servo, which is also written in Rust? It seems the two projects share similar goals but Servo has a massive headstart.

View on HN

Because Servo is run by others with a different agenda that came from a billion dollar company that gets hundreds of millions from a trillion dollar company and they decided to dropped it. The political effort to get to a place where you can shape the project is a huge mountain to climb and unlikely.

Starting your own project you can set the agenda and pace and truly create your vision.

The people who want to do the first idea are very different from the group that want to do the second.

Why not fork it then? You don't need to be able to set the agenda for a project if you just fork it and rename it: you can now set the agenda for your fork and ignore the other project, while not having to spend time reinventing the wheel.

As if that wouldn't end up with the same style of "why don't you just" comments?

This is a slippery slope argument.

Me saying there's not a distinction between forking and writing your own project from the "why don't you just" perspective has nothing to do with a slippery slope.

people really need to take a democratic vote on what they do in their free time, it's getting ridiculous, some of them are even having fun now!

Agreed. Honestly, wasn't the whole purpose of open source to be kinda free for all ( the followers, the inventors, the grinders... you name it ). Why does everything I read lately start with a 'should'. I am making a mental note to self.

Try replacing "should" with "wouldn't it make more of a positive change in the world if" and see how that leaves you feeling.

The problem is that we all vastly differ on what constitutes a positive change. I can practically guarantee you that you are somewhat unlikely to see changes I would suggest as 'positive'. On the other hand, it is not unlikely I would see yours as positive either.

That is why, for all its flaws ( and current set of issues ), current attempt at self-organization is simply better in the long run even if it is a little messy.

no, it probably wouldn't. if people are doing it for fun, they don't want to sit in meetings with strong personalities telling them how to do it. they enjoy coding, they enjoy thinking through interesting things, they don't enjoy taking orders and doing things a certain unfulfilling way just because somebody else prefers it that way. usually you have to pay them for putting up with that kind of thing.

Wouldn't it make more of a positive change in the world if you went and did something useful instead of posting snarky comments on Hacker News?

It isn't snark.

I've been writing an open source DAW for 25 or more years. Every time I see somebody else working on their own new open source DAW or DAW-adjacent project, I find myself wondering whether it would be a better or worse thing if they put their efforts into our already-existing project.

from your point of view, they're wasting their time and effort. from their point of view, they'd rather fail than do unpaid work for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com