OT: love thy local FOSS developer
This is a bit off topic, so feel free to tap Delete now, but i think everyone who uses and writes Free/Open Source Software should take a look at this: http://64.71.152.24/index.html i post it here mainly because of the number of "why won't you answer my question!?!?!" posts, and related immature and unappreciative behaviour which so often pops up here on this list. Reading that page, and the "background" page for that page: http://64.71.152.24/original.html might imbue some appreciation from the non-developers out there who so often DEMAND, without so much as a please or thank you, that FOSS developers solve the users' problems. It will certainly draw some sympathy from fellow FOSS developers who, like Paul, pay for domains and bandwidth out of their own pockets, and offer free support on their own time. :) -- ----- stephan@s11n.net http://s11n.net "...pleasure is a grace and is not obedient to the commands of the will." -- Alan W. Watts
stephan beal wrote:
This is a bit off topic, so feel free to tap Delete now, but i think everyone who uses and writes Free/Open Source Software should take a look at this:
http://64.71.152.24/index.html
i post it here mainly because of the number of "why won't you answer my question!?!?!" posts, and related immature and unappreciative behaviour which so often pops up here on this list. Reading that page, and the "background" page for that page:
http://64.71.152.24/original.html
might imbue some appreciation from the non-developers out there who so often DEMAND, without so much as a please or thank you, that FOSS developers solve the users' problems. It will certainly draw some sympathy from fellow FOSS developers who, like Paul, pay for domains and bandwidth out of their own pockets, and offer free support on their own time.
I dunno. I find his attitude dubious. I'm a sysadmin, not much of a programmer, but several years ago I wrote a little cpu/mem/etc monitor that sits in the old afterstep/windowmaker dock. It wasn't an earth shattering program, but it fulfilled my needs and used far less CPU than the others at the time while showing an awful lot of info in a small space. It got thousands of downloads and I saw that number as a craftsman: It was a praise of my little creation. I got a couple of thank you's, and two people that had ported it (one to FreeBSD, one to Solaris), but I didn't write it looking for thanks, nor would I have expected or even comprehended donations. This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer. If anyone writing free code has trouble hosting, just say so. There are dozens of universities with oodles of bandwidth with people that will gladly host your program, not to mention places like Sourceforge. Just say "Look, the bandwidth is too much, I can't afford to host it here", if the work was as in demand as his page suggests, he'll get plenty of offers in short order. You know why he got people whining about the GPL? Because he put up a PayPal link, and after he got the money, he'd then e-mail you a link to download it. Or you could download the binary-only for i386 directly. He then through a tantrum because most people just downloaded the binary. I can tell you honestly, there are two very valid reasons for this: 1) Anyone directed to that page would have absolutely no idea whether it worked or not. For all any of us know, he was peddling snake oil. 2) It's simpler. The vast majority of us will take the path of least resistance, rather than going through the paypal and waiting for an e-mail to eventually get the code, if you just put a link, people will gravitate to it. As the last nail in the "Whaa! I pay for bandwidth!", why didn't he simply release the source code patch? Even several thousand diff lines are tiny once gzip'd. So why did he choose this weird method? Because he WANTED it to fail. He wanted an excuse to throw a tantrum. You're right, in that developers are often underappreciated. Demands for support should simply be filed under the delete key. It costs nothing to simply ignore them. "If you have a problem, fix it yourself" is a cornerstone of open source.
Over the years, I have paid for free software. Last time, it was to the Damn Small linux developer. I just love the distribution. I pay for (free) software, not because I have to, but because I want to. I want to keep a good thing going. Good developers don't do it for the money, but still financial considerations point their ugly heads from time to time. I see free software not as completely free (no money) but as a cheaper alternative to proprietary software. We users, all have a moral obligation to keep it going by contributing to the process somehow. I'm not very good at coding so I help by contributing financially. Rich On Saturday 26 August 2006 14:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
stephan beal wrote:
This is a bit off topic, so feel free to tap Delete now, but i think everyone who uses and writes Free/Open Source Software should take a look at this:
http://64.71.152.24/index.html
i post it here mainly because of the number of "why won't you answer my question!?!?!" posts, and related immature and unappreciative behaviour which so often pops up here on this list. Reading that page, and the "background" page for that page:
http://64.71.152.24/original.html
might imbue some appreciation from the non-developers out there who so often DEMAND, without so much as a please or thank you, that FOSS developers solve the users' problems. It will certainly draw some sympathy from fellow FOSS developers who, like Paul, pay for domains and bandwidth out of their own pockets, and offer free support on their own time.
I dunno. I find his attitude dubious. I'm a sysadmin, not much of a programmer, but several years ago I wrote a little cpu/mem/etc monitor that sits in the old afterstep/windowmaker dock. It wasn't an earth shattering program, but it fulfilled my needs and used far less CPU than the others at the time while showing an awful lot of info in a small space.
It got thousands of downloads and I saw that number as a craftsman: It was a praise of my little creation. I got a couple of thank you's, and two people that had ported it (one to FreeBSD, one to Solaris), but I didn't write it looking for thanks, nor would I have expected or even comprehended donations.
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
If anyone writing free code has trouble hosting, just say so. There are dozens of universities with oodles of bandwidth with people that will gladly host your program, not to mention places like Sourceforge. Just say "Look, the bandwidth is too much, I can't afford to host it here", if the work was as in demand as his page suggests, he'll get plenty of offers in short order.
You know why he got people whining about the GPL? Because he put up a PayPal link, and after he got the money, he'd then e-mail you a link to download it. Or you could download the binary-only for i386 directly. He then through a tantrum because most people just downloaded the binary.
I can tell you honestly, there are two very valid reasons for this: 1) Anyone directed to that page would have absolutely no idea whether it worked or not. For all any of us know, he was peddling snake oil. 2) It's simpler. The vast majority of us will take the path of least resistance, rather than going through the paypal and waiting for an e-mail to eventually get the code, if you just put a link, people will gravitate to it.
As the last nail in the "Whaa! I pay for bandwidth!", why didn't he simply release the source code patch? Even several thousand diff lines are tiny once gzip'd. So why did he choose this weird method? Because he WANTED it to fail. He wanted an excuse to throw a tantrum.
You're right, in that developers are often underappreciated. Demands for support should simply be filed under the delete key. It costs nothing to simply ignore them. "If you have a problem, fix it yourself" is a cornerstone of open source.
[..]
I dunno. I find his attitude dubious. [...]
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Yup. He complains it costs him AUD 110.95 per month ( approx USD $85) to distribute his code from his web site. His biggest problem is he needs to find a better web hosting service. I didn't spend a lot of time comparison shopping for web service and I pay less than 10% of what he pays. It is interesting that he can't afford to put up a link to a little gzip'd source code. Per the web site: "Can I Still Get The Code? Nope. Bandwidth is all gone. (40GB as at 16:50 AEST (GMT +1000))" However he still has the bandwidth to put up a page complaining about ungrateful code downloaders using up his bandwidth. Well, dangitall. I didn't know I should be charging people $84 for downloading files from my web site. It's time to switch my home page to a giant, blinking, neon PayPal button.
On Saturday 26 August 2006 20:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Ah yes, and artists as we all know don't have to pay rent, and get all their food for free Words simply fail me Free means "devoid of restrictions", not "at no cost" in the Free Software Foundation definition. When Richard Stallman did his emacs thing, he sold it. For money. Lots of money. Oh the horror, this greedy guy wanted MONEY
You're right, in that developers are often underappreciated. Demands for support should simply be filed under the delete key. It costs nothing to simply ignore them. "If you have a problem, fix it yourself" is a cornerstone of open source.
Not really, that is suicidally stupid, and reminiscent of the 1337 attitude that reigns among people who don't really know all that much but like to pretend they do. Cooperation is the corner stone, nothing else
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Saturday 26 August 2006 20:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Ah yes, and artists as we all know don't have to pay rent, and get all their food for free
Words simply fail me
Perhaps we should all chip in and buy him some Jolt and cold pizza. ;-)
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Saturday 26 August 2006 20:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Ah yes, and artists as we all know don't have to pay rent, and get all their food for free
Words simply fail me
Thought seems to, aswell. If you want to code free software, and you believe that you should be compensated monetarily for your code (bricklayer model), you're doing something wrong. Have you ever worked on free software? Why did you do so? Was it because you thought you should get paid for it? Or was it because you had a burning need to right the software? The writing of free software comes from within, just as that of an artist.
Free means "devoid of restrictions", not "at no cost" in the Free Software Foundation definition. When Richard Stallman did his emacs thing, he sold it. For money. Lots of money. Oh the horror, this greedy guy wanted MONEY
But what did this guy really do? He fixed a couple of bugs and through a tantrum when most people clicked the free download versus the paypal button. His code was also built upon the shoulders of others: the hundreds of programmers who wrote the linux kernel and xorg server. Both of which he has gotten to use for free. Free software is also COMMUNITY software. Each person adds a bit and the software is better for all. If everyone who fixed a bug in the linux kernel or xorg demanded $5 every time, where would we end up?
You're right, in that developers are often underappreciated. Demands for support should simply be filed under the delete key. It costs nothing to simply ignore them. "If you have a problem, fix it yourself" is a cornerstone of open source.
Not really, that is suicidally stupid, and reminiscent of the 1337 attitude that reigns among people who don't really know all that much but like to pretend they do. Cooperation is the corner stone, nothing else
Quite the opposite. Free software is all about empowering the user. It starts when the programmer has a problem current software doesn't solve. So he goes and solves it to his own satisfaction. Someone else finds that software only fixes half his problem, so he expands the program. And so on. The cornerstone of Free Software is to give the user the right to fix problems themselves. I've never even heard of a free software coder who wasn't willing to help others use his software. However, there is no OBLIGATION to do so. If the author has every right to ignore people asking him to do things, if he so chooses. I don't think Free Software coders should never be compensated, but I read this guy's rant, and honestly, I smell a rat. He specifically set up a situation and criteria so that it would fail and allow him to throw a tantrum. There were a number of other avenues available to him, but he chose to throw a tantrum instead, and that's never classy.
On 2006-08-26 23:52:40 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
But what did this guy really do? He fixed a couple of bugs and through a tantrum when most people clicked the free download versus the paypal button. His code was also built upon the shoulders of others: the hundreds of programmers who wrote the linux kernel and xorg server. Both of which he has gotten to use for free.
WTF, please don't talk about things that you don't know about. He wrote a lot of code before he suffered Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. For example, he wrote the original version of GCC and the GNU version of Emacs among other things. Charles -- "Absolutely nothing should be concluded from these figures except that no conclusion can be drawn from them." (By Joseph L. Brothers, Linux/PowerPC Project)
Charles Philip Chan wrote:
On 2006-08-26 23:52:40 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
But what did this guy really do? He fixed a couple of bugs and through a tantrum when most people clicked the free download versus the paypal button. His code was also built upon the shoulders of others: the hundreds of programmers who wrote the linux kernel and xorg server. Both of which he has gotten to use for free.
WTF, please don't talk about things that you don't know about. He wrote a lot of code before he suffered Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. For example, he wrote the original version of GCC and the GNU version of Emacs among other things.
Wha? I think you're confused. You're thinking of Richard Stallman. The guy in question here is Paul Drain, whom I believe suffers from cerebral palsy, if I remember from reading the page this morning. Paul Drain is in his 20's. Are you saying he coded emacs from his crib? It will be a cold day in hell before Richard Stallman renounces free software because a bunch of people clicked on the free link instead of the paypal one. Nor is RMS in the habit of throwing public tantrums.
On 2006-08-27 00:42:37 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
Wha? I think you're confused. You're thinking of Richard Stallman. The guy in question here is Paul Drain, whom I believe suffers from cerebral palsy, if I remember from reading the page this morning.
Sorry, I misread your post. When you said "he" I thought you were refering to RMS. :-( Charles -- "...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero outside" (By Linus Torvalds)
Charles Philip Chan wrote:
On 2006-08-27 00:42:37 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
Wha? I think you're confused. You're thinking of Richard Stallman. The guy in question here is Paul Drain, whom I believe suffers from cerebral palsy, if I remember from reading the page this morning.
Sorry, I misread your post. When you said "he" I thought you were refering to RMS. :-(
Sorry, too many pronouns, I guess... BTW: Does RMS have carpal tunnel? I know he doesn't code as much anymore, but I always thought that was because he shifted to a more full-time advocacy role and running the FSF...
On 2006-08-27 00:56:19 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
BTW: Does RMS have carpal tunnel? I know he doesn't code as much anymore, but I always thought that was because he shifted to a more full-time advocacy role and running the FSF...
I just found out that he thought he did, but it turned out to be something else. Please refer to: http://www.networkworld.com/news/0111stallman.html and search for carpal tunnel. Charles -- DPRINTK("strange things happen ...\n"); linux-2.6.6/drivers/atm/eni.c
suse@rio.vg wrote:
Charles Philip Chan wrote:
On 2006-08-27 00:42:37 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
Wha? I think you're confused. You're thinking of Richard Stallman. The guy in question here is Paul Drain, whom I believe suffers from cerebral palsy, if I remember from reading the page this morning. Sorry, I misread your post. When you said "he" I thought you were refering to RMS. :-(
Sorry, too many pronouns, I guess...
BTW: Does RMS have carpal tunnel? I know he doesn't code as much anymore, but I always thought that was because he shifted to a more full-time advocacy role and running the FSF...
According to what I read about him, he does have some problem, though I don't recall if it's CTS. He has to get someone to do his typing for him.
On Sunday 27 August 2006 00:42, suse@rio.vg wrote:
Charles Philip Chan wrote:
On 2006-08-26 23:52:40 -0400 suse@rio.vg wrote:
But what did this guy really do? He fixed a couple of bugs and through a tantrum when most people clicked the free download versus the paypal button. [...]
WTF, please don't talk about things that you don't know about. He wrote a lot of code before he suffered Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. For example, he wrote the original version of GCC and the GNU version of Emacs among other things.
Wha? I think you're confused. You're thinking of Richard Stallman. The guy in question here is Paul Drain, whom I believe suffers from cerebral palsy, if I remember from reading the page this morning.
Paul Drain is in his 20's. Are you saying he coded emacs from his crib?
I thought he (chan) was being humorously sarcastic. Was he serious? (Then now its even funnier.)
On Sunday 27 August 2006 05:52, suse@rio.vg wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Saturday 26 August 2006 20:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Ah yes, and artists as we all know don't have to pay rent, and get all their food for free
Words simply fail me
Thought seems to, aswell. If you want to code free software, and you believe that you should be compensated monetarily for your code (bricklayer model), you're doing something wrong.
Have you ever worked on free software? Why did you do so? Was it because you thought you should get paid for it? Or was it because you had a burning need to right the software? The writing of free software comes from within, just as that of an artist.
Sorry, but this is Microsoft propaganda. I won't have it
stephan beal wrote:
This is a bit off topic, so feel free to tap Delete now, but i think everyone who uses and writes Free/Open Source Software should take a look at this:
http://64.71.152.24/index.html
i post it here mainly because of the number of "why won't you answer my question!?!?!" posts, and related immature and unappreciative behaviour which so often pops up here on this list. Reading that page, and the "background" page for that page:
http://64.71.152.24/original.html
might imbue some appreciation from the non-developers out there who so often DEMAND, without so much as a please or thank you, that FOSS developers solve the users' problems. It will certainly draw some sympathy from fellow FOSS developers who, like Paul, pay for domains and bandwidth out of their own pockets, and offer free support on their own time.
:)
That is one side of the story that has many (about 43,900) echoes on the web. Here are some: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15620 http://mjg59.livejournal.com/65927.html http://www.mepis.org/node/10965 http://freshmeat.net/projects/fnk/ http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=242077 etc. This story really has to be on OT list. His business model wasn't successful and now the problem is GPL, users and everything else. The public answer wasn't a good move for many reasons, but with some good business adviser cipherfunk.org can be back with financially happy him, adviser, bank and Ubuntu/Mepis users. Companies made fortune with GPL-ed code so GPL isn't that bad. Obviously asking for donations didn't work very well, or didn't work the way he asked, but there is a plenty examples that seems to work. -- Regards, Rajko.
participants (8)
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Anders Johansson -
Charles Philip Chan -
James Knott -
Ken Jennings -
Rajko M -
rich -
stephan beal -
suse＠rio.vg