As a user of Hypothesis I’m very happy it exists. I can’t help but feel the author’s anger is a bit misplaced, though. There is little-to-no-precedance for the creator of all these open source tools making a living wage off of their work. To be cynical, though, one of the problems with Hypothesis is that it’s too good. It solves a particular problem and it solves it very well and doesn’t create new problems for the user. IME, the way open source projects make money is by creating problems so an ecosystem to solve the problems they have created can be sustained. Look at Java. A huge part of the Java ecosystem is consultants solving problems that Java ecosystem has introduced. So, while I sympathize with the author, I also don’t. They were wrong to think the outcome would be any different.
It’s weird to me that you said “I can’t help but feel the author’s anger is a bit misplaced” and then went on to list the set of reasons I said I was angry.
Did I? Perhaps I’m not connecting with your post because what you are upset about is something that seems entirely obvious to me. OSS didn’t ever seem predicated on making money off these endeavours. There are people who have contributed far more than Hypothesis who both aren’t making money and not angry about it. If your expectation was ever to get rewarded in any other way than people using your software then I feel that was poor expectations management. Maybe I’m missing the point you were making though.
I wrote a post saying “I am angry that the industry is terrible and also this is affecting me personally” and you’re replying “Yes but the industry is terrible”.
I don’t have the energy to be polite to you over this right now, so I’m going to end my participation in this thread here.
And I’m saying that if you think “everything is terrible” is a good reason to not be angry, you need to rethink your life, and if you think “but everything is terrible” is a good way to respond to someone who is currently upset you need to think about improving your abilities at basic human interaction.
I didn’t say everything is terrible, I said the industry is. If you don’t judge success by dollars made then there is a lot of joy to be found in software.
To be fair that is really easy to say when you are well off financially and can afford to spend your time working for the greater good of the programming community, if you actually need to work to pay the bills then not so much.
And that is very easy to say when you are well off financially and can afford to spend your time and resources commenting on an Internet message board. If you have no access to computing resources, then not so much.
I’m not trying to troll you, although it probably looks that way. My point is there’s no use in trying to invalidate someone’s experience because of perceived differences in valuation—it’s all relative.
Anger is wasted if it’s not going to help you change anything. Yes, many of these things are terrible. It is also terrible that e.g. humans need to eat to live. But if you don’t eat and then get angry about being hungry, people won’t sympathise with your righteous anger - they’ll just think you foolish.
As a user of Hypothesis I’m very happy it exists. I can’t help but feel the author’s anger is a bit misplaced, though. There is little-to-no-precedance for the creator of all these open source tools making a living wage off of their work. To be cynical, though, one of the problems with Hypothesis is that it’s too good. It solves a particular problem and it solves it very well and doesn’t create new problems for the user. IME, the way open source projects make money is by creating problems so an ecosystem to solve the problems they have created can be sustained. Look at Java. A huge part of the Java ecosystem is consultants solving problems that Java ecosystem has introduced. So, while I sympathize with the author, I also don’t. They were wrong to think the outcome would be any different.
It’s weird to me that you said “I can’t help but feel the author’s anger is a bit misplaced” and then went on to list the set of reasons I said I was angry.
Did I? Perhaps I’m not connecting with your post because what you are upset about is something that seems entirely obvious to me. OSS didn’t ever seem predicated on making money off these endeavours. There are people who have contributed far more than Hypothesis who both aren’t making money and not angry about it. If your expectation was ever to get rewarded in any other way than people using your software then I feel that was poor expectations management. Maybe I’m missing the point you were making though.
I wrote a post saying “I am angry that the industry is terrible and also this is affecting me personally” and you’re replying “Yes but the industry is terrible”.
I don’t have the energy to be polite to you over this right now, so I’m going to end my participation in this thread here.
I’m saying the industry is so terrible you were wrong to expect anything else.
And I’m saying that if you think “everything is terrible” is a good reason to not be angry, you need to rethink your life, and if you think “but everything is terrible” is a good way to respond to someone who is currently upset you need to think about improving your abilities at basic human interaction.
I didn’t say everything is terrible, I said the industry is. If you don’t judge success by dollars made then there is a lot of joy to be found in software.
To be fair that is really easy to say when you are well off financially and can afford to spend your time working for the greater good of the programming community, if you actually need to work to pay the bills then not so much.
If you are having trouble making ends meet then you should not be writing free software.
And that is very easy to say when you are well off financially and can afford to spend your time and resources commenting on an Internet message board. If you have no access to computing resources, then not so much.
I’m not trying to troll you, although it probably looks that way. My point is there’s no use in trying to invalidate someone’s experience because of perceived differences in valuation—it’s all relative.
Anger is wasted if it’s not going to help you change anything. Yes, many of these things are terrible. It is also terrible that e.g. humans need to eat to live. But if you don’t eat and then get angry about being hungry, people won’t sympathise with your righteous anger - they’ll just think you foolish.