The main problem is, that BigTech abuses the inner fire of Open Source developers. They monetize it, but don’t send money to the makers… They send the money to their shareholders.
FOSS works on the premise of an angry engineer, that someone finally got pissed off about a problem enough to write a solution.
This so tracks.
All we need is for the communist government to say we like what you’re trying to do. Here’s an allowance for expenses!
The motivational component hits first. Developers lose the ability to push through tasks.
Eh… they lose the motivation to fix issues for free that don’t affect them. Crazy, I know.
Is there a good resource for determining how “effective” your donation to any given open source org is? As in how much of it is going to be paid to the actual devs, QA, and other related workers vs higher management?
IIRC that’s a major complaint with Mozilla and a lot of other large open source orgs.
This is purely subjective and depends on whom you’re talking to. While I’ve had series of burn out stages with free software development and maintenance, I only distanced myself from writing code but not the community altogether. I also only work for orgs that are run by volunteers not by companies so theres that. If you work on projects that are led by a company, you’ll always feel like you’re being used because there’s no sense of belonging.
Time for OnlyFloss
The FOSS vtuber community is not far from that
We need a website to highlight what projects need funding and how much. Potemtially partner up with open source social media too so projects can display how much they need for the year
She reviewed academic literature, analyzed 57 community materials, and talked to seven OSS developers directly.
7 developers = entire open source community
That article reads like it was written by AI. Feels like a ChatGPT bullet list just with the emojis deleted. They also didn’t really say much specific about the FOSS dev burnout, just generic explanation about what burnout is. The article cites a study but then instead of talking about things from it, it just says generic slop about how a burned out FOSS dev could feel.
Edit: I feel like my comment contradicts itself but it’s hard to put into words exactly what’s wrong with the article but it just reads so poorly.
It’s definitely click fodder like 99.99999% of today’s content. That’s where we’re at because many years ago we let the pigs into the palace.
I agree, the article is in the uncanny valley where it just feels off. If it weren’t for AI slop, I would call it clickbait.
The open source developers should unionize against the large corporations not paying them. A virtual picket line, and collective bargaining
Lots of open source developers are working for those same companies and getting paid to work on open source code.
I don’t have numbers in front of me, but I think only a slim minority of contributors make money off their work. And those that do make money often can only do so because of the earlier, unpaid, work by others which caused the projects to be valued and widely used
Related blog post I saw posted yesterday goes into a lot of depth on exactly what you’re talking about.
It does not. It pledges source-available software as a better alternative to FOSS. So it by definition is not about FOSS devs. (I’ve only read part of the article because I oppose the opinions they share, so maybe it talks about FOSS devs in the part I have not read.)
I noticed them talking about one of their softwares being licensed under FSL, not having heard of it, I looked it up and…
They kinda lost me at
What about AGPLv3 though? AGPLv3 is not permissive enough.
However, in the original article, this section definitely had me thinking. I thoroughly agree with the author’s stance on this, and I wonder if their alternatives will actually solve the problem.
As the former VP of Community at Discourse (GPLv2) I spent half a decade participating in the making of certifiably Free, Open Source Software that got put to use by literal nazis to amplify their organized hate, and all we had to say for ourselves was “well, the license says free for everyone”.
It makes me think of “”“Truth”" Social" using Mastodon code, and illegally at that. I guess… at a certain point if a bad actor is gonna be bad… Will a license stop them? I’m unconvinced that AGPL isn’t enough, but I could still be won over.
So long as my freedoms as a regular individual are maintained with the software that I use and love (my primary concern is some megacorp enshittifier being able to just take the stuff I use on the daily) then I’m open to new licensing schemes. I could be won over.
I’m not very educated on the Fair Source stuff but the idea is that you create source available software which will after some time become Open Source. So I guess their idea is that if you use AGPL, people cannot do that. AGPL means nobody else can make Fair Source software from your work. AGPL is a good license, it just does not work with their
[new software] -> [source available] -> [FOSS after a while] -> [new software made from the now FOSS software]loop.
Are you sure? Because based on the internet armchair developers I see around, open source developers are an inexhaustible source of unending miracles that work for free and are fueled by incoherent, conflicting, entitled demands from 14 year olds.
open source developers are an inexhaustible source of unending miracles that work for free and are fueled by incoherent, conflicting, entitled demands from 14 year olds.
Ah, I see you’re a Bazzite user
e: (No offense to the Bazzite user, I’m sure you’re a special little guy and not at all a problem.)
That’s because FOSS is not paid. Imagine all distros minimum price of 1$
If that were the case I’d have spent thousands on Linux by now T.T
Lots of FOSS developers are paid by companies.
I understand that you want money, but if I created FOSS applications, I would do it for fun.
So do they. But then the tiny tool they built for fun Kris expanding as they add features until is useful, then really useful. And some eventually become a small, ignored, absolutely critical components in software used by millions. Too small or unsexy to stay any money, but user errors or scammers or AI slop or bugs or feature request lead to enormous volumes of email, comments, forum posts, vitriol, pressure, stress, angst, burnout, depression.
FLOSS is dumb because it’s too good for us. I haven’t paid for software in ten years. And I could use this great stuff to build bad stuff.
That’s why I refuse to use Linux. It enables a front end of tech stacks for morons to profit from, and sell ideas like state surveillance, AI worker displacement, and other boogey monster tech to audiences gooning for tech to profit from, instead of honoring the purity of open source and what it enables creative young folk to do with it.
FLOSS didn’t radicalize me to create, it radicalized me about worker rights.
I feel like there is scope for a Patreon type thing that allows you to donate a fixed amount but choose the projects it goes to so it gets split between them. So I can donate €20/month and choose projects A, B, C and G so they all get €5 each
