reading "The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus" and I mostly agree with it, except for this tiny aside at the top which turns out to be important
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reading "The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus" and I mostly agree with it, except for this tiny aside at the top which turns out to be important
Free/open source has been on my mind lately – more than usual. (FOSS or OSS for short, the distinction matters, a lot, but for the purposes of this post the two are similar enough to lump together.)
often it's fine to lump together free software and open source, but this article talks about the intersection of FOSS and industry, which means it's almost all about open source and hardly about free software at all because The Industry is ... almost entirely unconcerned with free software
the only point raised in the article that actually affects FS is how more coders becoming unemployed means less free time to hack; beyond that it seems that FS will roll on mostly unaffected, because FS (programs that put the end user first) has always been at the margins
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-slow-evaporation-of-the-foss-surplus/
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technomancy (turbonerd aspect)replied to technomancy (turbonerd aspect) last edited by
arguably this part could also apply to free software:
Burnout. Very few FOSS projects are lucky enough to have grown a sustainable and supportive community. Most of the time, it seems to be a never-ending parade of angry demands with very little reward. When the software labour market was growing steadily, burned out maintainers often got replaced by fresh-eyed graduates or coders who relied on the project at work.
I hear a lot of discussion from maintainers dealing with burnout, mostly due to rude, demanding users, but I haven't actually experienced it firsthand despite maintaining several different programs, including one with with tens of thousands of users
I have been thinking a lot about why this happens, and my best theory is that you're a lot more likely to get rude users in OSS than free software because free software users usually benefit directly from your work, while OSS users are usually using it because their boss told them to
it's easy to see why attitudes would be different in that light
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>>>>>>>replied to technomancy (turbonerd aspect) last edited by
@technomancy can you remind me the differentiator between "free" and "open source" i've forgotten it
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technomancy (turbonerd aspect)replied to >>>>>>> last edited by
@artemis sure so like ... free software is like "what if software could be a liberatory project that could empower users?" and open source is like "what if developing software in the open could allow companies to become more profitable because they're more efficient"
there's also an unspoken "...and what if by using open licenses you can exploit labor better by appropriating the good vibes of the free software movement without actually doing anything to further its aims?" scam that a lot of dumbass politically-naive hackers fell for in the 00s and early 10s, including yours truly