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Open Source

Developing and maintaining open source software.

Open source is great and important in making computers general purpose. Computers are useful because you can command it to do whatever you can. The ability to modify the source code is important in supporting that. But maintaining open source is challenging.

Resources​

  • Uncurled | Daniel Stenberg
    • On maintaining and contributing to open sources, written by the creator of curl
    • On dealing with people, managing the project, handling money, maintaining the code, etc.
  • Professional Maintainers: A Wake-up Call | Filippo
    • Open-source maintainers are either volunteer or big company employees, neither is healthy
    • Companies need to improve their supply chain security, while maintainers need to professionalize the open-source ecosystem
    • Professionalize: invoices, business accounts, contracts, processes to set up and approve payments, etc.
  • The Asymmetry of Open Source | Matt Holt
    • The asymmetry is users need open-source projects but open-source projects do not need users
    • This asymmetry leads to mismatched expectations. The proposed solution is to set up boundaries and get paid.
    • Boundaries to manage expectations. Boundaries for both the maintainers and the users/companies.
    • Money can come from consumers, but require time and diligence for it to be appealing
    • Money can come from businesses, depending on company size, legal requirements and other negotiations
    • Money in open source: private support, custom development, prioritized feature requests, etc.
  • YouTube: The Hard Parts of Open Source | Evan Czaplicki (worth watching, hard to summarize)
    • Community developers are feeling hurt and getting tired. Having a friendly community is difficult
    • How communities are shaped is discussed from three perspectives: freedom, engagement, and community:
      • The freedom approach: we are gods and the hierarchy has filed us, we are free to do whatever we want. But having people that are just expressing themselves is not solving the problem.
      • The engagement approach: putting mix extremes and decontextualising discussions by design nudge viral content. Carefully designed systems to nudge the community for particular goals are also not solving the problem.
      • The community approach: contextual and intentional communication, maintaining healthy conversational flows. Designing other healthy choice architecture is a way to build a better community.
  • Temptations of an open-source browser extension developer | Github @extesy
    • Author and maintainer of the Chrome extension HoverZoom
    • A collection of temptations received, including offers like collecting and selling user data for targetted advertisements
    • Some developers are fortunate to have a stable job to voluntarily maintain open-source software, but some are likely to fall into these temptations that deviate from the purpose of the software
  • A Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projects
    • A email thread in the xz/liblzma mail list
    • Consumers need to stop demanding OSS maintainers
  • How contributing to open source helped you | lobste.rs
    • To be a better developer or landed you a job
  • The messy WordPress drama, explained
    • WP Engine v.s. WordPress.com v.s. WordPress.org
    • Trademarks, licenses, open source, is there an obligation to contribute back?
  • Being raised by the Internet
    • Partially why open computing is important
  • Open source business model struggles at WordPress
    • The problem of "freeriding" on opens source, similar problem like Redis → Valkey