Write some software, give it away for free
nonogra.ph257 points by nohell 12 hours ago
257 points by nohell 12 hours ago
Or don't. I've done both, published OSS projects and sold some software. The level of entitlement in some comments I received on the OSS side was pretty crazy at times. While with the paid software, all of the interactions I had were so much more constructive. YMMV, but willingness to pay is a great filter.
I’ve also done both, and I found both kinds of users in both situations. There have been cases on the commercial front where I just felt like giving customers their money back, even after years of having used the software, and told them to not come back. There’s a lot of entitlement and craziness from paying users too, and those are harder to ignore. With open-source it’s much simpler to drive a hard line.
My “favourites” are the ones threatening to abandon the tool, despite having never made a single positive contribution. On open-source that’s an easy laugh and a “good riddance”. On commercial cases it’s more frustrating and nuanced.
I disagree willingness to pay is that meaningful of a filter, in the cases I experienced. And it’s getting worse; many people are getting too impatient and act like everyone works for them specifically and only their needs matter.
> it’s much simpler to drive a hard line.
But driving that line is a cost: to you, your volunteers, or your tokens(?).
There’s no cost to me to stop an entitled disruptive user with zero positive contributions from destabilising the project. No cost to my volunteers either. The opposite is true in both cases; removing that user is a net benefit and I’ve done so in the past specifically to protect the experience of the volunteers.
As for tokens, there have been exactly zero cases where someone has submitted LLM code to one of my repos that has been up to my standards and I have accepted it. Yes, I can say that with certainty. If I wanted LLM code I’d ask for it myself, having an intermediary in that process is worse than useless.
> There’s no cost to me to stop an entitled disruptive user with zero positive contributions from destabilising the project.
Having to spend time reviewing a PR or issue is “no cost”?
I’m not convinced yet.
> As for tokens
I did not mean LLM contributions…I meant using AI tools to automate the reviews of contributions and users you seem to think cost no time or attention, but I do..
Why would you have to “review a pr or issue”?
You can choose to
Or you can choose to ignore them
All of them?
Why are you on a platform open to accepting them in the first place?
Are we talking about the same thing?
Yes, all of them if you want to. It's 100% up to you whether and how you deal with other people and their contributions, and it's completely orthogonal to being FLOSS or using a git hosting.
Then the thread feels a little tangential,
because you don’t have to “drive a hard line”, to do that,
you just draw it once (publish a no PR policy, don’t host on GH, etc),
and you shouldn’t be hearing from users.