Why program without profit?

I am curious how those justify sustaining open source or doing programming 'for fun' when you can make a profit from it instead. I have a few open source libraries that I find mildly dumb in retrospect because there's no profit to be had in maintenance (beyond my use case). The only respectable open source development is paid dev-time by companies (as it is within each company's interest to combine forces rather than maintain their own bit-rot). So, why program without profit?

>>36736 I write Free Software, not open source, and I do it because there's software in which I want to breathe life, that's software which would not otherwise exist, and it exists to serve me and serve as a monument to me.

>>36736 If all you care about it profit, no matter the cost to humanity, proprietary software licensing is obviously want you want. "open source" is a shallow marketing campaign about a development model, attempting to convince businesses to sometimes not attack humanity when it makes business sense: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html rms does free software (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), not "open source", as free software is far superior to "open source": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html It is entirely possible to make a decent profit selling free software and support: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html But you won't become filthy rich by doing so (proprietary software developers only seem to find it "respectable" if there's a chance that they become filthy rich), as huge profits are only possible if you attack humanity by sabotaging the software, require rent payment to temporarily disable such sabotage and attract enough suckers willing to pay such ludicrous rent to be exploited (or strike a deal with a government to force such renting onto people by requiring the software). Beyond profit, there are plenty of motives for writing free software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-motives.en.html Now, before you start writing "FOSS": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html

>>36736 You can get paid to write free software (at corporations that contribute to Linux kernel for example) and you can accept donations (which has never been easier than with Patreon or Github Sponsors). You can even sell free software if you want to.

Ever heard of a gift economy? It's a concept in anthropology. Throughout the world "primitive" people exchange stuff, sometimes even seemingly useless objects, to strengthen a relationship. It's a cycle of giving, give and you shall receive. I give my Asian cousin a box of chocolates, he returns the favor, and the cycle repeats to strengthens our social bond as friends and kinsmen. I'd like to think free software programming works the same way. Someone with a skill makes something, shares it with people online, in return he can expect to receive other helpful goodies. The point I'm getting here is that free is not really free at all in terms of cost. Your putting effort into something and gifting it to others knowing they'll be obligated to give back to you in a way that's mutually beneficial. This only works if you don't charge people. Your not actually working for no cost, your getting something out of it in the end: community, access to knowledge and free stuff, and the friends you make along the way and your expected to put in as much as you can take. It's what anthropologists call reciprocal exchange.

>>36739 isn't free software open source by definition ?

>Why would anyone do anything without getting paid for it? lmao go do something you enjoy weirdo >People enjoy digital infrastructure >"omg why is red team so much better then us? it's like this is all they do every day, they need to get a life. I went to college, how is it possible they're better then me at my job? They're obviously government affiliated and massively funded to be this good." >'Red team' is a 17 year old that thought fuarrrking with your db would be funny

>>36742 >Someone with a skill makes something, shares it with people online, in return he can expect to receive other helpful goodies. The reality is people often give and not receive anything back, and it's often a thankless job. If you're writing FOSS thinking you'll always get anything in return you'll be quickly disappointed.

>>36743 I can sell it, you get the software and the source code. You don't buy it, you get nothing.

>>36740 I honestly think the biggest obstacle to the free software movement gaining ground over open source is the name. When you say "free software", normos typically think "software you don't have to pay for". "Open source" by comparison is a lot more self explanatory and also just sounds better.

>>36745 Exactly. Most people act entitled even if reminded that they got it all for free.

>>36736 Not everything in life is about money / is transactional. You’ll live a happier life when you realize this.

Because what else are you going to do, watch television? Go to the beach? Get real.

i contribute to an open source game engine. i do so because i want to make a game with it. others contribute because they have their own games. this arrangement is basically how most sustainable open source development works. unfortunately, it tends to rely on something down the chain being proprietary (not my game fwiw, it's a passion project that's going to be foss, but most people's games are proprietary). you see the same thing in the corporate world too. my day job is machine learning. we all use and maintain a few common frameworks because there's no point in us all building the same stuff from scratch. we make money from the stuff we build with those open source frameworks, not from the frameworks themselves. this isn't to suggest i think this sort of corporate open source is a good thing per se. it's just successful. im more ideologically committed to proper free/libre software because i think it represents a compelling and potentially beneficial departure from the ubiquitous rent-seeking that characterizes almost all "creative" industries (meaning industries where most of the labor is intellectual in nature and whose products are typically cheap or free to reproduce without introducing artificial scarcity).

>>36745 Sure but when I put effort into something just to put it somewhere on the internet, I know that other people are doing the same. Even if nobody is directly giving me something in return, I know there are communities where people share stuff and I benefit from these things. It's not perfect but I like it.

the other thing to consider is that for most professional programmers it is quite literally not worth their time to try and extract revenue from their personal programming projects. any hour i spend trying to develop a business model or set up a payment processor or figure out how to prevent piracy, none of which i would actually enjoy doing, has to outweigh the opportunity cost of simply spending that time becoming a better programmer. im sure ill reach a point of diminishing returns eventually, but so far the benefits of simply getting a promotion or gaining skills that give me better leverage in the job market so drastically outweighs any benefits i could reasonably expect from a side hustle that it just doesn't make financial sense to allocate time for that.

>>36750 I don't see how this can be correct. Transaction is the basis of everything. You interact with things to extract value out of it, and sometimes you have to give value to extract value. No one would come to lainchan, for example, if they didn't have something they were seeking out of it. Self interest is what propels everything. It doesn't make sense to do things without the perceived (or unconscious) value waiting from the event. Why else reply to this thread? You got a transaction out of it. Ignoring the exchange of value–which is the essence of all relationships and experiences, food chains–doesn't make it disappear.

>>36756 Good point. Doing the Open Source Business Model is crippling one self from the get-go if you have no revenue. If you hope to make profit, it doesn't make sense to do open source. It make sense to use everything in your power to get a revenue going, then consider the open source as a marketing channel. Open Source, in most cases, is posturing/marketing fuel for a niche set of customers. Stroking people's idealism while being watched by five-eyes. Most Open Source business models cripple what it can do out-of-the-box >>36751 A valid point. A counterpoint would be to gather enough money so you are not - slaving away most of your days - gain access to more novel experiences and creative pursuits Though the road is arduous, how else are you going to spend the time? A state of dejected acceptance doesn't seem ideal.

>>36758 Not that lain, but value isn't neccessarily a quantifiable thing or zero-sum. To use lainchan as an example again- why choose to run an ad-less site? Why chose to contribute? Because community and discussion are valuable. Nothing is extracted by the average poster, it's a net communal gain if a decent thread exists. I wouldn't characterize that as transactional.

>>36748 This is something I don't understand. The entitlement that people show when dealing with free software is pretty remarkable. I was reading through this issue earlier today: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/6667 and it's shocking how some people behave. If I was the maintainer of that project, I wouldn't be able to remain as tolerant and polite with some of the people commenting on that issue. This behavior is pretty common on github specifically, I frequently come across issue threads like this when digging through bugtrackers. It's one thing if you're complaining about a redhat/google/microsoft project, but people treat solo/small team hobby developers like soykaf too. Entitlement seems to be particularly bad with Indians as well for some reason. I don't contribute to any free software projects btw.

>>36736 >I am curious how those justify sustaining open source or doing programming 'for fun' when you can make a profit from it instead. A sense of civic duty. Everyone benefits from the availability of high-quality free software. Also, one can often profit from producing free software. If your project is good enough you might get hired to develop specific features or provide support, and it can be a good way to advertise your skills. Some people, like the GnuPG guy, even make a tidy income purely from donations.

>>36760 Yes, there are leveraged transactions. A good blog post, or a YouTube video–only requiring the labour of one–results in a ripple that touches thousands. The Internet is embedded with leverage, but one must analyze the output. And so the "output" we have defined as "net communal gain". Which makes partial sense if there was a community. But there is none, because community requires sustained identity across multiple contexts, which is the antithesis of anonymity. One could cling onto an "abstract" ideal of community, but if all the community can provide me is an advanced Skinner's box where I read and write from faceless peoples, then that's a waste of time. Time which could be spent bettering one's own position in the world. "Net communal value" means nothing when there's not a community, just an abstract thought of one: the reality is that any poster is an individual here and will remain so for the foreseeable future. >>36763 I can somewhat see civic duty. But the question that burns in me is–naturally with a snicker of deluded grandeur–are those using your software the ones you want to help? Is Civic duty sincerely enough? Who are your enemies & friends? >the GnuPG guy The niche of software that sustains itself from donations seems few and far-between.

>>36764 >deluded grandeur Note: this is referring to myself, not you

>>36764 I don't believe that that anonymized community is a Skinner's box, because there is value in the collective knowledge, and the interactions themselves. A conversation that brings new synthesis or insight doesn't require individuals to be identified to be useful to any and all of them; simply being created is enough. In addition (although this is essentially what you're hearing from other posters) I think you're undervaluing fuzzy, less-quantifiable outputs. Do you really place so little stock in the joy of learning and creation? Or in the natural human need to interact with and benefit others? Ultimately, profit is a tool for your own benefit- it may just be that you get less out of these than people more inclined to become open-source programmers. If this is the case I'd like to ask, as someone who places a high personal value on these, what you ultimately hope to gain by "bettering your position in the world" - it's an interesting mindset to me.

>>36767 >there is value in the collective knowledge, and the interactions themselves Yes–though I don't think the value is worth the squeeze in 99% of cases (which I why I no longer contribute) >you're undervaluing fuzzy, less-quantifiable outputs. That's correct, as fuzzy outputs usually fit into a larger schematic. There's usually an underlying motivation satiated through these fuzzy outputs. And it's due to a fuzzy understanding of what the larger schematic can be–namely, interacting with others yields validation or soothes other insecurities. >Do you really place so little stock in the joy of learning and creation? Of learning and creation–if one discounts creating an anonymous post–there's little to be found here. Learning and creation with a goal in mind is certainly valuable, though I don't see how one can learn and create within a forum. That is, unless one counts posting as creation, which I wouldn't value at all, because posting results in little change. One usually stays the same (at least in my experience). >Or in the natural human need to interact with and benefit others? It certainly can be a need in the context of survival. But beyond that it's not that enjoyable to be around others where you don't have vested interest in a shared outcome. There's no point having a vested interest in benefiting others when, at the end of the day, you are still in the same position. Wouldn't one rather have a wider range of experiences, which is unlocked by moving up in economic class? >what you ultimately hope to gain by "bettering your position in the world" With a better position, with a few more resources, one can choose to engage or disengage as they wish. I would claim that many resort to imageboards, or programming and other technological pursuits, because, as >>36751 states, what else CAN you do? Not much, depending on your position, and whether you have to report to someone else. When you no longer have to report to someone else, then one lives freely and in earnest, rather than shoveling because shoveling is what keeps your house warm.

>>36736 Midwits failing to comprehend free software for the thousandth time, free software is commerical, open source software is simply to brag that you're smarter than everyone.

>>36759 >- gain access to more novel experiences and creative pursuits And what is software if not a creative pursuit? When married with a knowledge of other kinds of engineering, it develops novel experiences, novel modes of experience. I get where you're coming from, certainly, money and making it is very important. But so is Art, so is The Good. Make Good Things, Think Good Thoughts. If it makes sense to commercialize them, do so. And if it doesn't, publish them for free instead.

>>36770 >>36768 Like, I don't think that any high-functioning engineer (think John Carmack) does what they do merely because they're well paid. Indeed, Carmack has thrown millions away on aerospace projects that never went anywhere. It's more like being well-paid, as a "creative engineer", is merely a potential side effect of producing good soykaf that people want/need/like. Friend, frankly, you sound plainly like you're under a lot of stress, and I understand that makes it hard to understand why anyone would do anything that isn't working to pay off their various debts. I've been there. But observe the contradiction in your being here while denouncing your being here. One of these sides of you has to be wrong. I submit that it is the side which is trying to keep you alive against the stress you face now. But eventually, you grow up, your kids will leave the house to start their own lives, and what will you be left doing? Spending money on tube-fed prostitute-experiences in a foreign country? The stuff of life is creation and it's not even that expensive to engage in. Worth noting that 25% of C-suite executives in tech are on SSRIs because of the high stress. My great-grandfather kept at his electronics until he died at 102. He lived freely and in earnest. Goals in mind? Goals beget goals beget goals. There is an underlying drive in the functional human organism towards the creation of structure. People have died for art. This is a phenomenon which, if you believe in simple primitive thought through-and-through, you cannot explain.

>>36764 >are those using your software the ones you want to help? It doesn't matter. The nature of civic duty is that you are contributing to the betterment of society as a whole, not any specific person or group of people. What you get out of it is a society that continues to function, in small or large part due to your contribution to the software commons. I suppose if you hate society or don't see any benefit from it (common in third-world soykafholes like America) then you would not understand.

>>36736 to change the world lol

>>36773 >common in third-world soykafholes like America) then you would not understand. I've never understood this meme. The US has its fair share of fairly obvious problems, but it isn't fuarrrking Afghanistan.

>>36736 >So, why program without profit? To be nice with others. Why do you recycle? To help the world. Why do you respect the laws? To help the world. If you believe in equality, open source and free software are your friends. How can you help someone on africa? Let them have some income, open source helped a lot of people from 3rd world countries to have access to information and systems. back in the day, compilers would cost soykaf tons of money, paid docs and courses were the only way to learn to code. Gladly those days are gone.

>>36787 It's easy to forget how good we have it because of how bad we have it. The idea of paying for a compiler nowadays is laughable, but there was a time in living memory when it was not only acceptable but normal.

>>36736 This amazing poem by Will Allen Dromgoole explain the reason quite well: An old man, going a lone highway, Came, at the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide, Through which was flowing a sullen tide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim; The sullen stream had no fears for him; But he turned, when safe on the other side, And built a bridge to span the tide. "Old man", said a fellow pilgrim, near, "You are wasting strength with building here; Your journey will end with the ending day; You never again will pass this way; You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide, — Why build you this bridge at the eventide?" The builder lifted his old gray head: "Good friend, in the path I have come", he said, "There followeth after me to-day A youth, whose feet must pass this way. This chasm, that has been naught to me, To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be. He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

>>36736 It really is because it's fun. When I'm writing software as a hobby I get to make my own rules, and I find that a lot more satisfying than doing what some suit tells me to do. >>36811 Poetry's gay.

for computer scientists, we write things to solve problems and then, since someone else might need to solve that problem now or in the future, we give away the source code freely to expand the corpus of solutions for other computer scientists. if you want to make money, provide a genuine service. once your code is made it is made and costs nothing to reproduce.

>>36747 >When you say "free software", normos typically think "software you don't have to pay for". "Open source" by comparison is a lot more self explanatory and also just sounds better. Although "open source" is a nice buzzword, it's extremely confusing as people always assume the natural meaning - that the source code is publicly available. Every "open source" supporter I've spoken to hasn't heard of the "osd" (opensource.org/osd - yes, there's proprietary JavaScript on that page) and I expect that all of those supporters have forgotten what I told them and gone back to the source available definition. It's a sad fact that normal people always fall for marketing and think that free can only possibly mean zero cost (businesses love baiting with a promise of freedom by offering something free of charge and then switching for something that takes freedom and isn't actually gratis and normal people don't even notice). Even the rare normal person that uses free to describe unrestricted states regularly always refuses to accept that just because something is gratis doesn't necessarily result in that thing being free. You pretty much have to drive the point home that you're talking about freedom and not price 10 times and normal people finally will understand what free software is and won't make the same mistake again, but as for "open source", getting normal people to understand what it is by describing the 10 requirements takes a 10+ minute explanation and they'll forget the osd exists soon afterwards as a result.

>>36829 Computer scientists also write some library/language, praise it as the best, then drop it and move on to something else to release a paper on it, leaving the original library/language to die.

>>36758 wassup ayn rand, wanna shrug my atlas?

>>36787 I really want to dig this ideal. As much as I love free stuff, specially when the free stuff isn't supposed to be attained for free, it seems like popularizing software and computing in general have only made things worst in general. >how so? Look at back then and look at nowadays. Making something popular is making it banal, so institutions will make money out of data, content and psyopping, rather than by licensing soykaf. IMO, this is far worse. In a world full of mercs charging for petty stuff, it's easier to make some money out of things that matters or requires some artistic expertise. Now, a connoisseur is obligated to be born with a heritage in order to be able to do something with his underappreciated creation, or keep giving gold for free and for fun while starving. Why? Because content has been vulgarized to it's maximum. No, giving it all for free and for fun is not positive and not helpful IRL.

>>37512 >In a world full of mercs charging for petty stuff, it's easier to make some money out of things Maybe but then there is massive waste with reinventing the wheel over and over and artificial scarcity reducing the total wealth of humanity because everything informational is stuck behind a paywall. It isn't like we really have a choice between going back to the world economy of decades ago and free-with-a-catch services anyway. We are in a period of history that is an explosive transition, the only thing to do is point it in a general direction, and amplifying the reach and benefit of the work everyone does seems like a good general direction, even if the part where everybody keeps getting fed still needs figuring out. This is not actually a complicated or expensive problem, it's just one that people don't want solved without jobs because of unnecessary moral hangups.

>"for fun" You got it all wrong. Programming can be fun, and most often people who do it for free usually do it for fun, but there is higher idea behind things like programming. Not to imply you can't have fun and profit at the same time, but to imply that monetary gain (exclusive) OR "having fun" is the only two things that motivate someone is absurd, and you know that to be true. Could we argue that some projects might never see light of day if there wasn't some enthusiast out there trying out new sorting algorithms or modes of thinking? That whole new industries wouldn't have formed if there weren't enthusiasts who "did it for fun"? I couldn't answer those questions for you, but I do know that you can combine fun and profit, and most often the best people in their own respected fields do that.

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/cypherpunk-manifesto/ Anyone here even read this? HIlarious that the first 2 decent results of it found it are now found on sites dedicated to the bitcoin surveillance system

since you used a picture of stallman, i suppose you are really asking about free software and not open source, which are completely different things. it really only takes a glimpse of fsf site, a stallman video or even a wikipedia article to understand the whole thing. so it really makes me wonder if these kinds of posts and questions are just trolling or what? free software was never about "for free" or "for fun" programming, its about ethics, its about users rights, right to modify and examine the software you acquire or purchase. to some extent it could be compared to "right to repair" movement. (to some extent) now you could argue against both with the same argument that companies are supposed to make money, and that they can make more money by using anti-customer practices, like making a product hard or almost impossible to repair without using services or parts only they provide. so the question is purely ethical: should user or consumer have a right to modify, repair, examine, and so on, the product he or she uses. since you mentioned whats respectful, i want you to consider, is it respectful to promote anti-user or anti-customer practices and act clueless about it?

the kinds of software that are fun to write are often not marketable the kinds of software that are marketable are often not fun to write getting the best of both is very hard and requires taking the risk that you might end up with the worst of both i think a lot of the quirks around software development make more sense if you see the field as less like engineering and more like art

Why post on this board if you could go write blogposts for profit?

>>37664 There are people that still read blogs? What platforms even pay you?

>>37665 Yes lots of people do, and Substack.

>>37516 sure thing, this was my 1st post here back then: https://niv.dev/post/2016-08-16-cypherpunks_manifesto/

>I am curious how those justify sustaining open source or doing programming 'for fun' when you can make a profit from it instead I am curious how economically illiterate you have to be to think these three things are mutually exclusive.

>>36736 I think it makes sense if it a hobby thing and you want to do/make something that benefits other people, too. Bonus points if you release the source code under some free software license. >>36743 Free (libre) Software is also open-source but open-source is not always free software. Freeware is completely unrelated thing.

>>36736 Because programing shouldn't be "for profit" it should be for utility. For example, say a firm uses a large free software library in their product or service that they use. And now suppose they want to add some functionality to this library, they have a dev in their employ to add this functionality to this free library. The feature is then contributed to the project. Now the that wanted the feature has their feature, and the rest of the library's userbase can benefit from that feature. This work does not need to be redundantly performed again by some other developer, and this frees man-hours of other devs at other contributing firms that may wish to have this functionality in the future, potentially allowing them to work on other features. Organizations should not create software so they can monopolize the rights and seek rent for its use. Software should be created when an organization needs it to perform a useful task.

Social value contributing to a greater good is more valuable than pieces of paper or plastic. Though there are plenty of people who do make money off it in ways that can be considered fair to users, since after all it does take time and all devs likely live in a society that requires money. One way is through donations, other way is making it free but the binaries only have more limited functions without paying for the more feature rich version. That way poorer people and more technical people all have access to what they need while people who can afford more can pay. Donations for development including a certain percentage toward personal use are another option.

>>36736 ☝️ erm... just fyi, the "free" in "free software" actually refers to "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer"...

>>39452 It's free as in freedom to distribute, audit and modify. Trying to make that sound related to free speech is just a bad analogy and worse if you meant it literally as being a form of free speech in the form of code.

I contribute to free software because I use that software and I don't want to wait for someone else to fix the issues or add the feature I want for me. That said idgaf about licenses, I'd sell someone's "free software" if it was worth it just as I'd hack and pirate proprietary software against any "EULA" or warranty they want to throw at me.

>>39453 >it's just a bad analogy It's disambiguating the double meaning of 'free' in the English language. Many other languages don't have this problem at all.

>>39452 so adobe photoshop is free software, because you're free to pirate it as long as it doesn't piss people off. once it does, you face the consequences of wrongpiracy like you do with wrongspeech

>>39456 Yeah I got the intent, just I felt it made it only more confusing to phrase it that way. >>39457 You arent legally free to do so, so no.

>>39457 "You can steal as long as you don't get caught" is a painfully empty statement.

Programming my own things is fun and I like to share them with the world.