In my unasked-for opinion, he should absolutely give up on this project, and take a salaried job that'll let him support his family and not have to deal with the entitlement issues and lack of perspective the community evidently has. If half of what's in this post is true, he's shown admirable restraint: I'd have burned it all down the first time someone got pissy about a free thing I gave them.
Yes. But I think it also shows a common misunderstanding of "open source" (and even "free software").
What he did was incredibly valuable to a huge number of successful people and corporations. But no one owes him anything. That's the point of open source. If they did owe him something, they wouldn't have used it. They used it because it was great, it was established/known, it was available with no strings attached whatsoever. Again, that's the point, that's why it's popular.
But also, he owes them nothing. He doesn't have to keep maintaining the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and flexible package, as a full-time job, for free. He could could have just stopped after his first couple years where it was an inherently fulfilling passion project, he could just put in a couple hours a week, whatever. People would make do, it would still be quite valuable for a lot of people for a long time. Or those other projects and companies would come up with an more up-to-date alternative when really needed.
You really don't have to be a martyr, and we don't have to "give up on open source" or whatever. You can just make stuff available that you wanted to do anyway. Sometimes it leads to bigger opportunities, sometimes (usually?) not. Don't slave away and sacrifice your personal life because of what you think you deserve if you do, that's not going to materialize that way.
Remember this is all stuff just offered up with NO WARRANTY, NOT EVEN FITNESS FOR PURPOSE etc. And in practice it's super super valuable that way. Even without you sacrificing yourself. Let companies spend the big bucks on it, just work on what's fun in your free time.
I think the disagreement here will continue indefinitely because it is a question of (personal and professional) ethics. Ethics doesn't necessarily offer easy answers, just sometimes hard questions. In every discussion like this on HN you see the direct conflict of several competing Ethical Frameworks that people choose to live by which is why the discussion will likely always recur and it will always seem like two or more teams talking past each other.
"What do we owe to each other?" is a massive, hard ethical question. It's not just an easy economic question with an answer of "well he did the work for free, so obviously it is priced at free" though many ethical frameworks, especially on HN, happily stop there. Some ethical frameworks, on the other hand, don't believe there is any such thing as "free labor", just "exploited labor" and find guilt in every bit of open source usage, expect some amount "owed" in backpay to eventually pay back. Some of those same ethical frameworks still feel that "open source" is an ideal, a community good, but also think that for the health of the community as a whole, some support needs to be given to individuals in that community when/where/as they need it, for the good of the whole, and that both things can be true: "open source creates good software" and "open source sometimes creates the conditions to exploit labor (and we owe it to ourselves to mitigate that)".
I can't tell anyone what their ethical framework should be, just that this discussion will likely remain an impasse because it is about personal and professional ethics. How much I feel that I owe the most exploited of the workers in our industry, is something that keeps me up at night sometimes, and that guilt doesn't come from "nowhere" and I'm well aware of the economics and the license agreements in play: that guilt comes from the ethical frameworks that I hold dear and am unlikely to waver on.
It's the nature of most types of volunteering work. If you sign up to be the conductor of your local choir, you have the same thing. People start expecting you to do stuff. If you're going to be in that role, as ploxiln says, you need to be OK with that part of it. You have to be OK with the thanklessness of the task, and you have to seek your rewards elsewhere. Still, I feel very sorry for zloirock, and I hope that he gets some kind of compensation for his work, at least enough to get his life back together.
> You have to be OK with the thanklessness of the task, and you have to seek your rewards elsewhere.
Is this really how we want the world to be? Someone who is trying to help needs to be ok with being treated badly? I can understand not being put on a pedestal, but I think a "thank you" and a bit of gratefulness is warranted by people actively being helped.
I am not saying either party is better than another but I do not wish to live in a world that people are order of magnitude less willing to donate to FOSS developers than people posting sexy photos online.
Edit: maybe I used wrong comparison. Most of the income of the photo publishers should be from sales (to unlock paywall of exclusive content), not many will donation.
The best way to do open source work is to consult or be employed and release open source stuff as part of your work. Otherwise it turns into politics, competition for money and popularity contest rather than product of passion. If you are as proficient as this guy you will find employers that do not mind open source work
Did he look though? Maybe he is not aware this is a possibility. Even if he cannot leave Russia there are likely russian companies that would pay him and be even happy if he contributes to OSS. I know Qiwi, Yandex publish and maintain packages
Yeah but if the statement is a guy like this could find something like this, then the answer is no. I think mostly because it's not entirely clear how to get such a job and how to do that job without handing over the reigns of your project to the company.
> Yeah but if the statement is a guy like this could find something like this, then the answer is no.
What? Why?
> I think mostly because it's not entirely clear how to get such a job
Same as any other job, by looking. Even I do something like that and I am not even close to corejs maintainer level
> reins
If you do this while working as independent contributor (popular in Russia) then it's not even a question, the company will not have any reins on whatever you do outside the contract. If you are employed then company may have the reins, but you will publish OSS while getting money and recognition for it, which is 80% of the formula.
The part where he spent the year 2020 in a russian slave labour prison might help explain his difficulty getting a job. Plus as a russian national living in russia, FAANG is not exactly knocking at his door.
I used FAANG as a shorthand for "big international tech companies that pay a lot". Glad to hear though that there are lots opportunites for tech folk in Russia to make good money.
> I used FAANG as a shorthand for "big international tech companies that pay a lot".
Uhh… Yes and that's my point? He could earn 50-100 USD per hour, which would get him a more than decent lifestyle in Russia. Why would someone pick between Lots Of Money and begging and not accept an alternative between that would allow him to keep doing OSS while feeding his family? This whole plea just doesn't compute with me.
> Glad to hear though that there are lots opportunites for tech folk in Russia to make good money.
It's not good money, it's just money to live okay. And it's not in Russia, it's everywhere. Internet, it did wonders.
you can't really compare volunteering at a local choir / local homeless canteen to big corporations taking advantage of open source projects (which is perfectly legit) and never ever feel like they should contribute more to make open source financially sustainable. There is a reason why major open source projects are backed by companies selling products or services based on the open source project itself.
If you don't want big corporations using your software, change the license. They are not "taking advantage" of Free/open software, they are using it, and don't owe the maintainer for it. It feels very entitled to me (a Free software enthusiast who wishes more authors chose GPL over BSD/MIT). As G.W. Bush said "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I can't get fooled again"
For a while it was a trend for people to use userscripts to delete their old comments on various social media sites after a certain amount of time. I think this practice is unfair, because the user gets the benefits of participating in open conversation but tries not to pay the (IMO absolutely minuscule) costs in terms of privacy.
I see a lot of open source use the same way. Companies use open-source contributions but don't contribute back any of the value they receive. I'm strongly in favor of using strict GPL licensing or dual licensing for corporate and nonprofit use for every open source project. I know people like the MIT license so that people will use their projects, but fundamentally if you want open source to continue then open source contributions need to be enforced, because otherwise it doesn't happen
He's the maintainer of a major software library. Everyone who depends on his work does owe him gratitude and respect. They'd have to pay me big bucks to care enough to do what he did, so I respect him for doing it.
The open source community can be wild sometimes. Back when I was still maintainer and lead dev for Gaim (not Pidgin), I would occasionally get downright hateful people e-mailing me for not implementing whatever feature they thought needed to be implemented, or not getting it implemented quickly enough.
One guy managed to get ahold of my cell phone number somehow and called me at 4am to discuss "his ideas" with me for the project. I ended up having to change my number.
Thankfully 95% of the people I interacted with in the community were great and were great, but that other 5% was rough.
Old coworker of mine was/is(?) secretly the primary contributor to a a major console emulator. He revealed it to me only after working together for about 4 years.
He keeps it incognito because the vitriol his alias receives from impassioned members of the community makes him afraid of getting doxxed. He showed me some of them. I don't blame him.
Maintainers like Denis shouldn't be asking for donations, they should be sponsored the same way Nike sponsors athletes. If you're a burnt out open source maintainer or know someone who is, I'd love to talk to you. My job is to help create awareness about the issue with companies that depend on your package. I reached out to Denis because we all know he deserves better. Appreciate any leads you could additionally share with me.
Edit: I see you work for thanks.dev, which doesn't seem like it would cover the projects I mention below. I leave my original comment in case anyone else is interested in sponsoring the things I mention.
I'd like to find sponsors for a few non-web-related projects. In particular the Linux USB Gadgets userspace stack (libusbgx/gt/gadgetd/etc), a library for the Microsoft PST email format (libpst) and a tool for running linters/etc (check-all-the-things). Happy to chat about these over email.
Thanks Paul, yes I do work for thanks.dev & non-web-projects are on our roadmap. Let me know if you’d like to be a early pilot user when we’re ready for testing…
Your lack of empathy in favor of blind group hatred is a pretty solid example of one of humanity's worst traits.
However, I'm not going to return the favor by ignoring your personal context.
Is the reason you're denouncing core-js's maintainer because you, yourself, have been subject to particularly awful circumstances owing to Russia's war? Are you projecting on him because you've been hurt? What's your situation?
I'm just shocked at the reaction from the HN crowd in this post. The guy lives in the west but returns to Russia, then blames Ukraine for being invaded, actually kills a teen girl and writes shit about her in the very same post added to HN, and blames everyone around him for his situation. Yet HN loves him because he wrote a cool Javascript library. Blows my mind.
I didn't see any part of the post where he blamed Ukraine for being invaded. There was a passage where he stated he can't publicly support either side because he has friends (family?) on both sides, but that's all I read.
The manslaughter came as a shock, yes, and I think there's more to that story than he's telling us. He probably isn't a great human being.
None of that, however, is relevant to the fact that maintaining core-js in particular and FOSS in general is a thankless and awful job.
It's possible to support FOSS, and support remuneration for FOSS, without supporting specific individuals.
What's your reasoning for saying he's probably not a great human being? Assuming what he says is true. If he had no way of seeing that coming, how is that different from blaming / judging a train driver in any way for someone's suicide or going as far to as to say they killed them.
I'll admit it's conjecture based on limited data. However, the tone he takes when discussing the event seems accusatory towards the victims, rather than repentant or horrified, which is what I would expect.
I don't think it's particularly useful to expect that someone would react the same way you believe that you would, in all honesty.
This is like saying that you're not sad about your mother dying because you didn't immediately burst into tears. It's well understood that we all process grief differently and sometimes we even struggle or fail to process it.
So is it so unreasonable that one may process any notable or traumatic event differently? I can try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is sent to a gulag for 7 months under circumstances that appear to be unfair, and I can't imagine anything except how much it would fucking suck and how actually, I might have complicated feelings that range from anger to despair.
Whether I like this guy or not, or think he is a good guy or a bad guy, has absolutely no bearing on this. It's just not useful or helpful to police someone's reaction.
I agree that his tone could be better, but if this was really none of his fault (other than being at the wrong road at the wrong time), I could understand why he writes that way given the trouble it has caused him, significant time in prison, criminal record that he will never erase and debt that translated to US standards is way way higher than those 80k and it could end up way worse, too. Like of course, it's a tragedy what happened to the girl, I think a lot of people could relate to doing stupid things intoxicated when young, especially in countries where vodka consumption is high, I do not say that the tone is appropriate, but I could understand the place where he's coming from where the girls' irresponsible behaviour severely impacted his life, he is just quite angry. I wonder how many of the people in this comment section labeling him a killer (I don't say that you did) would speak with the same tone if they were put in the exact same situation given the lack of empathy with his situation.
He's Russian. He returned home, where he was born, where he has friends, multiple generations of family, decades of memories, and could hope to find some support when shrinking his life to fit in a smaller income. Moreover, he has stated that he'll leave if he can, if that's what is required to work on open-source.
While your argument is kinda bad, its also incorrect. They moved to russia before the current war. Also its their home country, the world isn't progressive enough that this isn't every immigrant's default choice.
Right, but it was after the invasion of Georgia, green men in Donetsk, and the annexation of Crimea? So 3 wars started in the span of 10 years and the guy returns because things are cheaper than in the west.
Well, I hope he enjoys his beloved home country now. He will have to stay there for quite a while.
Russia does so many bad things that by that argument all Russians should just move out. I dont know what point you are trying to make with the tweet, I have no context there.
The United States would have emptied itself out a long time ago if we followed the same rule, but somehow I don't think that's an outcome this guy feels is necessary, either.
What in that twitter thread makes you think he enjoys it? The fact that he does not share a certain political opinion? Is a political belief, or lack of it, enough to enjoy life in a country?
Ukraine. I can't leave, another country invaded mine unprovoked and they are killing my people so I kinda have to stay. I am looking forward to your argument why this makes me a bad person.
The point is that it DOESN’T make you a bad person. You’ve just argued the other side. A country is not its government, especially in oppressive undemocratic regimes like Russia. This is basic shit. I am utterly truly sorry for the unimaginable horrors which you are going through. I genuinely couldn’t begin to understand how this must be for you. I hope I never do. This doesn’t give you a blank cheque to jump online and foster divisiveness between two groups of people just because one of them has a fucked up government that can’t possibly be argued to be representing them.
Nike (or a more appropriate entity) wouldn't be able to sponsor him even if it wanted to, given how the ties with the Russian banks have now been severed. Another case for bitcoin, I guess?
> I'd have burned it all down the first time someone got pissy about a free thing I
Sadly this is the state of open source projects. People feeling entitled and doing nothing but complain. It's sad really because negative compacts often have a more lasting impact than positive ones.
