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Comment by j1elo | Hacker News Reader

This idea resonated well:

Writing code for free is charity.

I always saw creating open source code akin to being a plumber or carpenter who applied their hard earned knowledge and worked for free in homes they chose.

A plumber who works for free is a rare thing to see, however in software it seems lots of people _expect_ it to be created like that. Not uncommon at all to see comments in HN saying that "oh well if it's not OSS I won't try this software you're showing off". Try saying to a carpenter that if they don't give away their new chairs for free, you wouldn't even start to think of getting one! :)

But then, if you care about the "right to repair" (so to speak) of your software, well at least use a strong copyleft, not a permissive license that basically grant the permission to "steal".

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> A plumber who works for free is a rare thing to see, however in software it seems lots of people _expect_ it to be created like that. Not uncommon at all to see comments in HN saying that "oh well if it's not OSS I won't try this software you're showing off". Try saying to a carpenter that if they don't give away their new chairs for free, you wouldn't even start to think of getting one! :)

A big difference is plumbers use interchangeable parts and you are mostly paying for their time and skill. With closed source software, you are getting a blackbox that you can't extend beyond what the creators allow and the creators will only extend so long as they are in business. After that it might still be usefull but a liability or can be useless.

Another big difference is when the carpenter gives you their new chair, they stop having a chair. It's not the same with software.

I don't mind sharing software that I wrote for myself if it's useful to other people.

> Not uncommon at all to see comments in HN saying that "oh well if it's not OSS I won't try this software you're showing off". Try saying to a carpenter that if they don't give away their new chairs for free, you wouldn't even start to think of getting one!

Apples to oranges; if a carpenter tried to sell me a chair that could take actions against my best interests and that could just disappear or stop working one day or that I wasn't allowed to repair myself, I also wouldn't even start to think of getting one. I avoid proprietary software because it has a long history of going out of its way to screw users over; that it often costs $0 is secondary.

The way the Captura author did it sounds like charity indeed. But IMO they did it wrong (and that's unfortunate for them).

You should open source your code if you don't see a benefit in keeping it closed (usually "you won't sell it" is a good reason). Then maybe some people will contribute to it and improve it: bugfixes, new features, etc. That's great! But every single line you merge becomes your responsibility, so you should only merge it if it improves your project in your opinion. Maybe the feature is great but it is complex, and you don't want to maintain that: it's okay, don't merge it and let the author fork!

Do NOT implement feature requests for free, because this is charity. Either you help people contribute it or you clearly tell them that you won't merge that (but that they can implement it in their fork). Unless they are willing to pay for your work, in which case it's not charity anymore. And because you get paid to implement it does not mean you have to support it for 10 years: once it's implement it, they can fork the project with their feature, and you don't owe them anything anymore.

> every single line you merge becomes your responsibility

Your responsibility to whom?

To yourself - the code you just merged is now yours to maintain

Yourself.

- If your build breaks in the future because of this, nobody will come help you.

- If you decide in the future that you want to cross-compile to a new platform and porting contributed code is a big pain, that's on you.

- If the contributed code results in crashes for some users, they will come back and complain to you.

- Etc.

Wouldn't you save an old version so you can take out the faulty code in the future? If users complain they can offer monetary compensation or offer to fix the code or just shut up.

It depends on the kind of contribution.

Sometimes it is very low-risk, i.e. you know for sure that it won't impact many users or that it is easy to revert if necessary.

Sometimes it has a fundamental impact on your codebase, and if you build on top of that then it will be very hard to "just revert".

It's the job of the maintainer to decide what kind of risk they are willing to take. The thing is that many contributors don't understand that and put a lot of pressure to force their contribution in. And that's how you end up burning out the maintainers who try to be nice.

But plumbing kind of sucks. Programming, you don’t get any poop on you. Plumbing, you might at least.

I can see why people would sometimes program for fun.

You can have plenty of fun making a closed source app though.

But then nobody can marvel at the beauty of your code! Like potential employers

Yes they can, through the results of your development

Pfsh. Most times, it's easy to get results with crap code. For example, all modern software.

Is your code crap too?

I’m sure there are people who like plumbing

And people that hate coding

I still think it’s about ego as well. If you happen to release a piece of software that is used massively, then you become a “rock star” (well, at least in the scope of the software engineering world). That means, you may not need to work for others anymore (if you get sponsors), or that you boost your employability by 10x (“Oh, he’s the author of X!”), etc.

So there are many devs out there that want to win the jackpot. I don’t blame them.

Notably very few plumbers do years of work for free in hopes of being branded the "Rockstar plumber".

To be fair, after having accidentally ended up with a tiny modicum of name recognition I'll say if you do earnestly want that, you're probably much better off chasing visibility than thanklessly grinding away giving away free stuff hoping people will take notice.

You need to write your own story for people to be aware of it. What most people who have any sort of fame have in common is that they're good at crafting a narrative.

What sets John Romero apart from the next level designer and game dev is that John Romero loves talking about John Romero.

Your blog is much more important than your git repo. I don't think talking is enough on its own, but it is extremely important to put yourself out there.

> I still think it’s about ego as well. [...] So there are many devs out there that want to win the jackpot. I don’t blame them.

What I understand here is that you don't contribute to open source projects, but you think that you can understand the motivation of those who do. Let me be honest: I think you don't.

There are many reasons to contribute to open source, and those who believe they will get a salary from sponsors or become famous are naive beginners.

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