Open source is a promotion tool
(vitonsky.net)
from vitonsky@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev on 25 Jun 15:41
https://programming.dev/post/32861970
from vitonsky@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev on 25 Jun 15:41
https://programming.dev/post/32861970
#programming
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Only posers create open source projects as a promotion tool
It’s statements like these that remind me just how different the internet is for some people. I don’t think I’ve ever strayed far outside of the “look at this cool thing I made!” parts of the open source community. The idea of chasing fame and monetization isn’t really a thing in those circles, let alone “influencers” shilling content like that.
Most successful projects I've seen are: I needed/wanted X, so I made X and now I'm sharing it with you so you can use it and maybe help me out.
This is the same as people who don’t want to pay artists for their work and just say they get paid in “exposure”
If you are using open source as a company, you should pay the maintainers money, either through hiring them or directly funding the development.
I donate money to the pieces of software I use every day, because I’m in a position as an individual to, but there are lots of companies that are free riding
You can’t rely on their goodwill, you either make it enforceable with a license, or you just treat it as a something that you don’t expect to make money from.
The comparison to artists doesn’t really hold, because they won’t start a work for someone without them asking, then showing off their creation and hoping that the involuntary “client” will pay for it once it’s already been done.
While programmers can be commissioned to make some piece of software, that will most likely end up as proprietary, unless stated otherwise in the contract between the two parties, akin to a commissioned piece of art, hardly any client will be ok or even proactively ask you to release the work under a CC license.
Companies especially are more revenue than image driven (or solely tbh), so they won’t “waste” any money where they can avoid it, if Amazon finds a nice service they can host and tweak on their AWS that promises to be useful and make them lots of money, they will just go for it and stay within the lines of what the license allows, which often is “too open” for its own good (think MIT), so the project won’t see nothing like a contribution back, let alone money.
The illuminated companies that can (more like want to) afford to contribute in any way to software they rely on are few and far apart and it takes them to realize how much of an impact the project they’re using makes on their business, which is often difficult to put into tangible numbers, we see that happening mostly with the biggest projects, think Blender, Linux, etc. The poor library developer will most likely never see a dime coming from the thousands of employers whose developers will pull in their dependency for their product
Many people enjoy programming, you know. I’ve got like ten reasonably-sized projects and I haven’t posted about them anywhere. Because I built them to scratch my own itch, both in terms of functionality I could use and the itch to build something, no matter what it is. I’m not wasting my time, because I’m doing something I enjoy.
Same here. Bold of anyone else to assume that I want to share my open source project. I don’t mind if someone finds it, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I promote it. Haha.
Yeah, after writing that comment, I was thinking, if I do promote it, that means there’s a certain expectation that I’ll integrate or implement functionality that others want. At that point, it becomes less of an egoistic thing. And I’ll be doing more communication and whatnot, therefore less programming.
Maybe that’s the puzzle piece that OP is missing? If you don’t promote it, you have practically no extra work compared to developing it under a proprietary license. In fact, it often reduces the workload, if you can just post it publicly without having to secure the repo.
And you don’t incur costs from giving it away either. So, if you make sure to only put in the work that you want to put in in the first place, you have no disadvantage from publishing it with an open-source license.
Prelude to most of my projects:
Epilogue:
I now have exactly the tool I wanted. It makes my life better all day, every day, with no foreseeable end.
Happy user.
I THOUGHT THE GUY ON THE LEFT WAS SHELDON FOR A MINUTE WTFFF
gnu-bazinga
It is bold of the author to assume that anything I have open sourced is useful to anyone besides me, much less profitable to a corporation.
<img alt="Confused meme: You guys write useful code?" src="https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgflip.com%2F9yiw4l.jpg">
Laughs in Arduino blinky lights and gameboy ASM
Yep definitely, If you open source when you are a small team or individual a company will steal your code and, with their massive teams, wipe the floor with you. That is why I like what Plausible Analytics (Google Alternative) is doing, plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses there AGPL-3.0 licence scares big tech because by using code with it, you must open source all code using or related to the code you use, and they have the means to enforce that.
Author admits they don’t ask for donations and then use the lack of donation as evidence for their arguments. Amazing logic there.
Also whatever the fuck this is
Some of us ask for donations because we know people don’t actually think about it. Fuck you for implying we’re closer to being sellouts than you are.
This blog gives me righ- libertarian vibes with its promotion of “open - core” shite and how focused it is on money.
Is that SLC Punk ?