 “The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus” https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-slow-evaporation-of-the-foss-surplus/ Where I try to explain, as succinctly as I can (which isn’t that succinct), why I’m worried about where FOSS is heading 66 comments
 I blame the decline of the #FSF. Users are using OSS because it's free as in free tech support, Devs are making it OSS to increase their userbase for VC. Ask either group why their software isn't #AGPL3 and they would recoil with horror at the idea, but wouldn't really be able to articulate why not. Just pressed send and realized I told a lie. If you asked Devs these days most would reply "GPL? What's that?".  @divclassbutton On the other hand, the "Why AGPL" post makes for insightful reading, including the limitations of licenses against Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS). AGPL means that the behemoths have requirements if they want to use software licensed that way. This might be Kryptonite to them, but I don't know that that is a bad thing. @tim_lavoie For sure AGPL3 is the best license, even if you don't care about the four freedoms. 1 - Unlike MIT, you are compatible with most other stuff, no need to worry about virality or derivative works, just set it and forget it.    @baldur You're absolutely right. Just look at the age of open source developers and us GenX:ers who were early inte home computers pop out. However - I think there is a solution and I think it'll happen for a host of societal reasons outside of open source needs. We will see a lot of countries implementing some form of Basic Income scheme in the somewhat near future. More than a few people will be happy to live off that while poking away at their favorite piece of code. O'rly? ;) You're of course right, don't want anyone to believe I meant we aren't standing on the monitors of our ancestors. @troed @baldur Out of curiosity, have you seen any concrete pointers on basic income (notably, *not* just welfare) being implemented in the near future anywhere? Because I know that lots of countries are doing 'trials', but they've been doing that for several decades now, and then it never gets talked about again until the next 'trial' that has the exact same outcome.  @baldur "Most of the time, it seems to be a never-ending parade of angry demands with very little reward. " I used to answer 100% of SQLAlchemy emails / questions. these days I try to answer as few as possible, hoping someone else can pick it up. when your project is new, your users are all enthusiastic, motivated people who picked you. but in 20 years, most of your users are people who were told by their bosses to learn it @baldur Sounds realistic to me. Good to see explicit recognition that "free" OSS has always been subdidised by developers (their time, their investment in education and skills) and industry (directly supporting FOSS projects, providing jobs where developers can maintain/extend their skills, paying enough for developers to have free time they can spend on FOSS, etc). All of that ecosystem is being scoured away. I really see little future for most FOSS projects without strong industry support. @baldur Really interesting topic. I find myself mostly agreeing with your points. A couple we might argue/discuss. @cxj The context for that is that US interest rates used to be effectively zero until a couple of years ago which drove a lot of investment in tech. The change in behaviour in tech after 2022 when they were raised was really noticeable. It's "high" insofar as it's higher than zero @baldur You're certainly correct about the npm ecosystem as it currently is, not being sustainable. It *could* have been, if a few different choices were made (notably ones rooted in governance, that have nothing to do with the technical decisions that people like to complain about), but they weren't, and so here we are...  Thank you, I'm not into coding at all, but your ideas seem applicable to other sectors of life. I appreciate the help!  @baldur @toxi This seems undeniably true and likely to only further aid the concentration of software development into the handful of megacorps that will fund their own internal ecosystems, will often rent their fruits to the wider world “as a service”, and occasionally offer a landmark project as actual open source, though whether these are gifts or traps is a question worth asking. @baldur @toxi The other color I might add is that, in addition to the rich California coder cadre, a couple of decades back at least, there was a cohort of developers doing open source as a hobby alongside college work, or even work outside the industry, back when the cost of living crisis didn’t require full-time professional employment and there was room for, well, slack. In the US at least, that path has narrowed to a knife’s edge. @baldur@toot.cafe  @baldur Awesome article. My hot take is that a decline in OSS participation will be a good thing. People need to re-evaluate what things are worth spending unpaid labour on. And companies need to stop receiving an endless supply of free labour via using FOSS software, tools & libraries. Because as great as the philosophy is, it just results in a massive transfer of labour-wealth from skilled coders to savvy corporations. @baldur The philosophy of FOSS works best when all parties are cooperative. I'll share my OSS library & you share some free sound effects you made, and that guy shares an icon set & that girl shares her plugins. And the companies who use these things give support in terms of $$ or staff who are given paid time to contribute. But this isn't the world or economic system we live in yet so FOSS becomes a spinning top that is too heavy on one side. That wobble will just keep growing. @baldur Good points. In the days of "create more value than you capture" a lot of startups were so profitable that they could afford under-utilized developers. Then came zero interest rates and "employee hoarding," when it was cheaper to for a big co. to keep someone on staff than to watch them go develop a competing product and have to buy them out along with their VCs. Now both productivity-boosting innovation and money are scarce, so developers are time-crunched at best, or laid off  @baldur another factor I have observed is that COVID and lockdown changed people's attitudes toward how much nonsense they are willing to tolerate. this has an impact both on projects and the software itself. projects previously got away with onerous procedures and odious personalities being involved in the contribution process. people won't slog through it now. the change in user attitudes has, for the most part, not been matched by a deeper focus on QoL bugsquashing and low-friction UX. @baldur the demographic who are deeply invested in FOSS as a philosophy are generally still willing to make that trade, as they always have done. in practice, however, the majority of users are more casual fans of FOSS, who will seek out alternatives more quickly when things frustrate them, and who will accept commercial alternatives that are more comfortable to use. when the bar for frustration shifts, but the design philosophy of the software does not move to match, those users leave. @baldur there are examples of projects that have made a concerted effort to solve these problems (KiCAD comes to mind, running user surveys and then acting on them rapidly) but they are a minority. my personal view is that this is an endemic cultural issue that has plagued FOSS for decades, but I don't have the energy to get into this because it inevitably leads to tedious reactionary defensive responses. @gsuberland @baldur Don't know that it's worth much, but if it helps: I agree on all of this, and it has been frustrating me for over a decade. (And I've experienced the same active resistance to changing that culture, too...) @joepie91 @baldur the core problem, as I see it, is a culture of code being lauded as the be all and end all. writing code is directly equated with creating software. if you're good at writing code, you're smart, you're useful. if pushed to explain what else is involved, folks will mention documentation and maybe community management. if design is mentioned, it's exclusively about architecture, not about experience and usability. as a result, well-designed user experiences are vanishingly rare.  @gsuberland @joepie91 @baldur could I ask you what I as a contributor/developer for OSS projects can do to improve things (even if that change might only affect a tiny amount of people)? @tsrberry @joepie91 @baldur the answer to that heavily depends on what kind of project it is, who the users are, and what scale it operates at. if it's a small CLI tool developed by one or two people and used by a handful of linux sysadmins you probably aren't running into many UX design pitfalls. having really good docs is nice, having error messages provide context and guidance helps, being welcoming towards contributors and not needling them with endless style changes is very helpful. @tsrberry @joepie91 @baldur if you're operating at a larger scale (especially on gui tools) then running annual community feedback campaigns is a huge winner. make it a simple survey form - minimum friction, maximum response rate. people will tell you all the things that have been bugging them but never got around to opening an issue for. commonalities in responses will help you direct your efforts and make a lot of users happy with relatively low effort. @tsrberry @joepie91 @baldur but ultimately at that scale you need input from actual designers - people who really know how to make a good UI/UX, and who can tell you what you can do better. that can be direct, by getting designers to come help with the project and help come up with better approaches and workflows, or it can be indirect feedback. and be humble. don't get defensive because you're attached to the project or it'll be work to fix the issues. it's hard work to do it right! @joepie91 @gsuberland @baldur Thank you both, this helped a lot! :D @baldur @mcc I feel like there's a missing link in articles like these; I worked on open source for a number of years that was fully funded by FAANG (Skia, the 2D rendering engine). This isn't an isolated incident--Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. actually fund a lot of OSS work that is truly free in both speech/beer contexts. It's not all hobbyists by a long shot.  @baldur This side branch deserves its own writeup: “Some are reaching for LLM-generated code before they even look for an OSS project, both disconnecting those projects from opportunities to grow a sustainable community and nullifying the strategic advantage of having made an OSS solution for a problem. Note that the models are originally trained on that OSS.” @inthehands It’s still purely anecdotal on my part, based on conversations and observations. It’s still to early to be sure, but I think that for some people, LLMs are fulfilling demand that OSS used to. The question is just how big that group is.  @baldur @glyph Not sure about the point about laid-off/unemployed engineers not coding. I have spent periods of funemployment between contracts/jobs on side projects (a few apps/frameworks, some playing around with various technologies/languages and such). Looking at the fediverse, I don’t seem to be alone in this. Perhaps better social security such as a UBI would lead to more open source contributions.  @acb @baldur I think the truth is nuanced (and I would love a heavily footnoted version of this article with stats! But that is probably a huge amount of work) but I am an interesting exception that proves the rule: my independent crowdfunded maintenance work pays about 0.01% (yes that is the correct placement of the decimal point) of the commercial/proprietary work that I do. That number has been climbing but it is a *steep* hill before this makes any sense whatsoever  @baldur I would argue the industry didn't overspend, but overbuilt on FOSS. FOSS was free, is free and that encourages usage. But as all infrastructure, even free one, there is a maintenance price tag and the people with the bills are starting to knock on the door. As a result: panic. Not to mention that governments start to pick up on the transparency FOSS provides for regulations. |
Gregory's Server
@baldur
"[...]dollars of value for the conomy[...]"
I choose to believe this is not a typo.
Well done.