The story in the article is of a somewhat entitled corporate user of open source. But I’ve found that the toughest issues are ones by grateful but persistent users who encounter an issue that is not immediately obvious how to address. They create these unfinished investigations that are possibly actual bugs, but rarely lead to a satisfying resolution. So it feels like the workload keeps growing and there’s all these requests that are fairly reasonable individually, but hard to really close the loop on.
[..] you should only be maintaining open source software you use yourself [..]
[..] remember and really deeply internalise the fact that you can stop working on any open source project at any time [..] When your life or the project means it no longer feels good to work on it anymore — stop [..]
Me too. I’m not really sure if I’m reading this comment correctly, but if I am, I too really needed to hear this. I don’t think I knew how much I needed to hear it until I did and honestly I got kinda choked up reading it.
I have, more often than not in my time in open source, been a poor maintainer. I’m terrible at reviewing people’s PRs to my repositories, for example, especially if they’re not trivial. I often feel guilty about sending PRs and issues and such to other people’s repositories while not really paying attention to those same things in my own. I also feel guilty because I really love the open source community and I want to contribute to it, and I feel like this mode of contributing isn’t good because I’m not really consistent. Finally I have felt guilty about letting down users of a project that I maintain, users who aren’t developers but who believe in the same cause I do.
This isn’t exactly what the article was talking about. But this paragraph made me feel more like this was okay, and that meant a tremendous amount to me.
The article doesn’t mention Free Software. This is unfortunate because Free Software licenses ought to be listed among the possible coping strategies. There are many licenses which designate Free Software but are unpalatable to corporations. Corporate entitlement can be stopped by saying “no”, but also it can be stopped by denying corporations entry into our ecosystem.
I’m not sure Free Software is really a solution for this problem. Entitlement also happens (maybe even more so) if you have end users who are not developers. Also, without corporate contributions the software would be developed less quickly in the first place. It’s important to realise that corporate users are not all “takers”!
I don’t think it’s as much corporate entitlement. If you read the post, it’s the people within pushed by external factors that are under pressure, not so much corporate entity seeking to exploit.
That, and I suspect the way people treat OSS developers is orthogonal to economics. People will still be under those same pressures to get things working, regardless if it’s a cooperative or corporation.
I do think that there need to be some more radical free software licenses, corporations have gotten used to many of the ones we have now. I agree with you though, to be clear.
The story in the article is of a somewhat entitled corporate user of open source. But I’ve found that the toughest issues are ones by grateful but persistent users who encounter an issue that is not immediately obvious how to address. They create these unfinished investigations that are possibly actual bugs, but rarely lead to a satisfying resolution. So it feels like the workload keeps growing and there’s all these requests that are fairly reasonable individually, but hard to really close the loop on.
This hurts.
Me too. I’m not really sure if I’m reading this comment correctly, but if I am, I too really needed to hear this. I don’t think I knew how much I needed to hear it until I did and honestly I got kinda choked up reading it.
I have, more often than not in my time in open source, been a poor maintainer. I’m terrible at reviewing people’s PRs to my repositories, for example, especially if they’re not trivial. I often feel guilty about sending PRs and issues and such to other people’s repositories while not really paying attention to those same things in my own. I also feel guilty because I really love the open source community and I want to contribute to it, and I feel like this mode of contributing isn’t good because I’m not really consistent. Finally I have felt guilty about letting down users of a project that I maintain, users who aren’t developers but who believe in the same cause I do.
This isn’t exactly what the article was talking about. But this paragraph made me feel more like this was okay, and that meant a tremendous amount to me.
Living with the fact that you (won’t) don’t do as well as you would like to do, and forgiving yourself for that is a hard step, yes.
If it hurts, you’re probably doing it wrong ;)
well its not always easy to let something go, especially if you wanted it to succeed
The article doesn’t mention Free Software. This is unfortunate because Free Software licenses ought to be listed among the possible coping strategies. There are many licenses which designate Free Software but are unpalatable to corporations. Corporate entitlement can be stopped by saying “no”, but also it can be stopped by denying corporations entry into our ecosystem.
I think almost all companies use GPL software including v3 except Apple
I think almost all use AGPL software except google
So not sure this applies
Apple doesn’t use Linux?
Apple doesn’t ship GPL v3 stuff on their computers, like bash 4.0
That’s why they switched to zsh AFAIK
Linux is GPL v2
But even if Linux was GPL v3, they could still use it internally and not ship it on computers
How about CPAL or EUPL? I have a more complete listing here.
I’m not sure Free Software is really a solution for this problem. Entitlement also happens (maybe even more so) if you have end users who are not developers. Also, without corporate contributions the software would be developed less quickly in the first place. It’s important to realise that corporate users are not all “takers”!
I don’t think it’s as much corporate entitlement. If you read the post, it’s the people within pushed by external factors that are under pressure, not so much corporate entity seeking to exploit.
That, and I suspect the way people treat OSS developers is orthogonal to economics. People will still be under those same pressures to get things working, regardless if it’s a cooperative or corporation.
I do think that there need to be some more radical free software licenses, corporations have gotten used to many of the ones we have now. I agree with you though, to be clear.
Well articulated. I think this article is really about telling oss contributors/maintainers that they can be more selfish in their priorities.