I’ve been checking that repo for many years. The guy is pretty chill, but several companies have taken advantage. They use the stack, post massive integration issues and demand free labor. Building a commercial product on top of a free open source software is pretty awful practice tbh
Building a commercial product on top of a free open source software is pretty awful practice
But as @Deleted said, a lot of stuff you use daily is based in some form on FOSS. Linux was just one big example.
I agree that building a commercial product on top of FOSS without giving back in some form is pretty awful practice. But the bold part is important. Simply taking something that’s free and open source and using it for your commercial product is not bad, it’s more common than you might think. But if you do that, you should give something in return.
every website is built on layers and layers of FOSS libraries. The really stupid move is building a commercial product on top of free proprietary software or APIs, as all the 3rd party app developers for reddit learned recently.
Usually companies that use open source software in their products contribute actively to the projects.
And with “actively” I mean sponsoring the project and/or contributing to the development with PRs.
Considering the “rude” reply, it seems that there were already other arguments between the dev and the one that reported the bug.
you open your code under a licence that means other people can use it, that means other people can use it
reporting a bug is not demanding free labor
Like how do you think this is supposed to work?
A) That everyone who wants to use open source stuff needs to be a programmer and contribute?
B) That if someone posts code under GPL or some other licence permitting commercial use, that it’s not permitting commercial use anyway?
C) That you need to pay to report a bug?
Come on. If the dev wants to only fix particular things and wants payment for fixing other things, fine, but don’t say this is the only way foss should work.
I’m a bloodsucking corpo dev and honestly my read of this was very sympathetic to the FOSS dev.
Pretty much all of my FOSS contributions have been to software that I’ve integrated into my for-profit projects. I will find a nice helpful tool, see it doesn’t have all the flexibility or functionality that I need, I’ll improve it, write tests, submit a PR, and do my best to fulfill the requests of the maintainer.
INEVITABLY I will start getting messages from MY COMPETITORS saying “hey we saw you added this feature to this tool, that’s great but doesn’t quite integrate with our software, can u plz fix?” It’s comical. Like, I’m already leveling the playing field by making my improvements to the FOSS tool freely available to you, and now you want to pay me zero dollars to improve your competing product? This happens all the time, it’s a funny nuisance to me, and I expect a massive headache for popular maintainers. Nobody is under any obligation to help you with integration problems - you can ask, but you aren’t entitled. Fix it yourself, adhere to the maintainer’s standards, and put it out for everyone to benefit from.
Well, there is a difference between an Average-Joe asking for a fix and Big-Tech knocking on the door with a list of issues.
I can imagine that it is frustrating to see people making money off your voluntary labor and just reporting back with problems. Depending on how many times this has already happened, I can absolutely see even a levelheaded person eventually snapping. And given the remark in the comment, it has happened multiple times.
I checked their service, and they offer support for business customers. For a price, of course.
Reading the notes this appears to be an ongoing issue with them. This isn’t their first rodeo with the customer. Closing the ticket is fine since it’s already handed in another request.
It is, to find and report a bug is time contributed to make the software better. This maintainer is an asshat and probably has never had the luxury of knowing how expensive and time consuming QA really is.
the guy is super helpful with issues i’ve had, or, issues that other ordinary users have had. but a bunch of companies are leeching off the stack and they really don’t actually contribute. they try to implement stuff, which break stuff, and then innocently post help requests.
they build a commercial product on top of a free stack. what developer wouldn’t be pissed
Sure, but that’s the sort of things that is hashed out by lawyers in a private meeting room. Not in the GitHub’s public issue tracker. A simple “Report doesn’t meet criteria” would’ve sufficed. The rant is out of place and it makes him seem hostile.
There are pro-bono FOSS lawyers. There are foundations that help with these things. There are lots of free legal resources made available. If it hurts him so much, then he should just archive and make the repo private, then re-release under a private license, or maybe step back from maintaining a public repo. No piece of software is worth mental health and peace of mind. Nobody is forcing him to participate. I mean, fuck private companies that suck the life out of open source projects. But suffering abuse is never an excuse to dish out abuse. And when it comes to the public sphere, it is a rant in the end. Composure is important in the eye of the public. No one will want to be sympathetic with someone who lashes out in public. It is only hurting him, not the person who received the reply.
i’m actually posting this cause he is actually going to stop maintaining, exactly because of the reasons you listed. it’s sad cause he is a pretty chill dude
You really should’ve gotten permission from him to post this. You’re all over this thread basically laughing with emojis at his disgrace. It’s a couple of small developers doing home automation stuff. They don’t need this kind of diss. You should delete this post, and if you really want to say something about open source culture, maybe get permission and actually put effort into anonymizing the image.
i’m laughing at the reply. i don’t think it’s a disgrace. i think it’s a good example of what happens when bloodsucking corpos take it too far. they not only squeeze their employees but force people working on an open source project to work for them, for free as well.
Yeah, but OP is not exactly bringing useful context. Whatever the history might be. The public tracker is not the best place to air these kind of grievances.
That response is quite…hostile?
Someone spent their time to report a bug they found but close it because they didn’t pay the dev? Isn’t that a kind of contribution?
It is totally acceptable to ignore it but closing the issue with hostility is a questionable practice.
I’ve been checking that repo for many years. The guy is pretty chill, but several companies have taken advantage. They use the stack, post massive integration issues and demand free labor. Building a commercial product on top of a free open source software is pretty awful practice tbh
Everything is built on top of free open source software.
Oh boy the face once he realizes that Linux is foss and who uses it.
But TBF, many of the big players also contribute to Linux
That took time though.
Ssh only started getting major industry support after heart bleed and it’s been the go to secure shell for at least over a decade before that.
Well most big distros offer tech support for companies, if they pay for their time, right?
You said:
But as @Deleted said, a lot of stuff you use daily is based in some form on FOSS. Linux was just one big example.
I agree that building a commercial product on top of FOSS without giving back in some form is pretty awful practice. But the bold part is important. Simply taking something that’s free and open source and using it for your commercial product is not bad, it’s more common than you might think. But if you do that, you should give something in return.
every website is built on layers and layers of FOSS libraries. The really stupid move is building a commercial product on top of free proprietary software or APIs, as all the 3rd party app developers for reddit learned recently.
Most distros, even German ones, don’t flame companies who post bug reports either. (My bad they’re in Austria)
Usually companies that use open source software in their products contribute actively to the projects. And with “actively” I mean sponsoring the project and/or contributing to the development with PRs. Considering the “rude” reply, it seems that there were already other arguments between the dev and the one that reported the bug.
You live in a fantasy realm. I’d bet less than 5% of companies are actively contributing to OSS.
Really? Because there’s only one issue in the repo…
That repo is for a plugin for a larger product, but I couldn’t find many other examples of this stuff.
you open your code under a licence that means other people can use it, that means other people can use it
reporting a bug is not demanding free labor
Like how do you think this is supposed to work?
A) That everyone who wants to use open source stuff needs to be a programmer and contribute?
B) That if someone posts code under GPL or some other licence permitting commercial use, that it’s not permitting commercial use anyway?
C) That you need to pay to report a bug?
Come on. If the dev wants to only fix particular things and wants payment for fixing other things, fine, but don’t say this is the only way foss should work.
To me that sounds like a feature request, and not a bug.
I’m a bloodsucking corpo dev and honestly my read of this was very sympathetic to the FOSS dev.
Pretty much all of my FOSS contributions have been to software that I’ve integrated into my for-profit projects. I will find a nice helpful tool, see it doesn’t have all the flexibility or functionality that I need, I’ll improve it, write tests, submit a PR, and do my best to fulfill the requests of the maintainer.
INEVITABLY I will start getting messages from MY COMPETITORS saying “hey we saw you added this feature to this tool, that’s great but doesn’t quite integrate with our software, can u plz fix?” It’s comical. Like, I’m already leveling the playing field by making my improvements to the FOSS tool freely available to you, and now you want to pay me zero dollars to improve your competing product? This happens all the time, it’s a funny nuisance to me, and I expect a massive headache for popular maintainers. Nobody is under any obligation to help you with integration problems - you can ask, but you aren’t entitled. Fix it yourself, adhere to the maintainer’s standards, and put it out for everyone to benefit from.
Well, there is a difference between an Average-Joe asking for a fix and Big-Tech knocking on the door with a list of issues.
I can imagine that it is frustrating to see people making money off your voluntary labor and just reporting back with problems. Depending on how many times this has already happened, I can absolutely see even a levelheaded person eventually snapping. And given the remark in the comment, it has happened multiple times.
I checked their service, and they offer support for business customers. For a price, of course.
Reading the notes this appears to be an ongoing issue with them. This isn’t their first rodeo with the customer. Closing the ticket is fine since it’s already handed in another request.
It is, to find and report a bug is time contributed to make the software better. This maintainer is an asshat and probably has never had the luxury of knowing how expensive and time consuming QA really is.
:) maybe i should’ve given more history.
the guy is super helpful with issues i’ve had, or, issues that other ordinary users have had. but a bunch of companies are leeching off the stack and they really don’t actually contribute. they try to implement stuff, which break stuff, and then innocently post help requests. they build a commercial product on top of a free stack. what developer wouldn’t be pissed
Sure, but that’s the sort of things that is hashed out by lawyers in a private meeting room. Not in the GitHub’s public issue tracker. A simple “Report doesn’t meet criteria” would’ve sufficed. The rant is out of place and it makes him seem hostile.
What lawyers 😂 it’s a small repo of a pretty handy tool.
rant, i’m imagining, comes from a place of years of abuse the poor guy suffered
What lawyers?
Nymea is a commercial company too. This isn’t someone’s hobby project.
There are pro-bono FOSS lawyers. There are foundations that help with these things. There are lots of free legal resources made available. If it hurts him so much, then he should just archive and make the repo private, then re-release under a private license, or maybe step back from maintaining a public repo. No piece of software is worth mental health and peace of mind. Nobody is forcing him to participate. I mean, fuck private companies that suck the life out of open source projects. But suffering abuse is never an excuse to dish out abuse. And when it comes to the public sphere, it is a rant in the end. Composure is important in the eye of the public. No one will want to be sympathetic with someone who lashes out in public. It is only hurting him, not the person who received the reply.
i’m actually posting this cause he is actually going to stop maintaining, exactly because of the reasons you listed. it’s sad cause he is a pretty chill dude
Why would the Senior Software Engineer at nymea quit his paid position?
i don’t know why, why would you ask me that? your comments are increasingly hostile. i’m following a repo, i saw a comment, i find it funny.
sherlock here, jeez.
You really should’ve gotten permission from him to post this. You’re all over this thread basically laughing with emojis at his disgrace. It’s a couple of small developers doing home automation stuff. They don’t need this kind of diss. You should delete this post, and if you really want to say something about open source culture, maybe get permission and actually put effort into anonymizing the image.
i’m laughing at the reply. i don’t think it’s a disgrace. i think it’s a good example of what happens when bloodsucking corpos take it too far. they not only squeeze their employees but force people working on an open source project to work for them, for free as well.
I don’t know, this sounds like there’s some history between developers and the reporter. If not, then somebody indeed had enough.
Yeah, but OP is not exactly bringing useful context. Whatever the history might be. The public tracker is not the best place to air these kind of grievances.