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Comment by ibains | Hacker News Reader

Our industry is doing quite well (If you leave the ad-economy out - basically Google/Facebook)

Cloud computing, Open Source Software in commercially feasible way and so on. Tremendous growth and innovation is underway.

We do have a problem of wokeness, left in SF destroying the city, teacher unions hurting competitiveness of kids, police unions stopping all police reform in California.

Basically just like USSR, all the do-gooders - claiming to do good in the name of the “people” are the problem.

So, don’t be a protester - do real work, build something, be the solution. Create a small open source project of value. This is really really hard - that’s why do many people protest instead - that is easy.

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I honestly agree in part with a lot of your sentiment. But the truth is, I can do both. I can work hard at my day job to, as you say, "do real work", while at the same time standing up for my beliefs.

Just because there are protesters you disagree with doesn't make protest itself a bad thing. I fear the larger issue is that there aren't enough mixed groups of protesting individuals to spark real discussions. But what do I know, I'm still trying to get more involved...

I wonder how many 'small open source projects' really have any value in terms of police reforms, teachers unions, etc...

If you're interested in making a difference I think it's better to look at career resources like https://80000hours.org/ than trying to think of open source software that will, in all honestly, probably make 0 difference.

I feel like this comment is too negative about OSS. My ideal job would sponsor as much open source code as possible. Given the focus on civic and public service in these threads, I think public code is a very natural fit.

To be clear I prefer OSS over closed software. I contribute in my spare time and I've worked on OSS projects in my career.

What I'm saying is there are far better methods to do Good in your career or spare time than starting an OSS project. I don't have stats here but I'd wager 99% of OSS projects die by the way side and 99% of those aren't providing any sort of tangible use in relation to problems mentioned in this post.

Happy to be proved wrong - working on effective things is the driving force of my career.

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