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submitted 10 months ago by petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml

From: Alejandro Colomar <alx-AT-kernel.org>

Hi all,

As you know, I've been maintaining the Linux man-pages project for the last 4 years as a voluntary. I've been doing it in my free time, and no company has sponsored that work at all. At the moment, I cannot sustain this work economically any more, and will temporarily and indefinitely stop working on this project. If any company has interests in the future of the project, I'd welcome an offer to sponsor my work here; if so, please let me know.

Have a lovely day! Alex

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[-] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 230 points 10 months ago
[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 166 points 10 months ago

This sounds like the sort of infrastructure project the Linux Foundation should be supporting.

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 152 points 10 months ago

In my opinion it's criminal just how often this happens. Big business making obscene profit off the back of volunteer work like yours and many others across the OSS community.

[-] leisesprecher@feddit.org 100 points 10 months ago

Germany has a Sovereign Tech Fund for exactly this, and while it's not perfect, it's one of the better uses of my tax euros.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Didn't they suspend, or greatly hinder, that recently?

[-] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

There was an EU-wide one that gota lot of its funding redirected to AI stuff recently that you might be thinking of.

[-] Ledivin@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

It's criminal to let someone do the thing he actively volunteers to do? It's criminal to use software that someone intentionally puts out into the world as free?

If you're willing yo do something for free, people are going to let you 🤷‍♂️

[-] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 19 points 10 months ago

It's criminal the propaganda that lead people like this developer to believe they should do the work for free, and not worry, because the corporate world always gives back :)

[-] superkret@feddit.org 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That "propaganda" is the very idea behind free software. Work on what interests you and is of use to you, and share it with others so they can do with it whatever they want, as long as it stays free software.
The idea that all that work must be paid for by whoever uses it is exactly the opposite of what free software is about.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not really. The problem with FOSS licensing is that it was too altruistic, with the belief that if enough users and corporations depended on the code, the community would collectively do the work necessary to maintain the project. Instead, capitalism chose to exploit FOSS as free labor most of the time, without any reciprocal investment. They raise an enormous amount of issues, and consume a large amount of FOSS developer time, without paying their own staff to fix the bugs they need resolved — in the software their products depend on. At that point the FOSS developer is no longer a FOSS developer, and instead is the unpaid slave labor of a corporation. Sure, FOSS devs could just ignore external inputs, but that's not easy to do when you've invested years of your life in a project. Exploiting kindness may be legal, but it should never be justified or tolerated.

Sure, FOSS licenses legally permit that kind of use, but just because homeless shelters allow anyone to eat their food, and sleep in their beds, that doesn't make the rich man who exploits that charity ethically or morally justified. The rich man who exploits that charity (i.e. free labor), and offers nothing in return, is a scummy dog cunt; there are no two ways about it. The presence of lecherous parasites can destroy the entire charity; they can mean the difference between sustainability and burnout.

FOSS should always be free for all personal, free, and non profit use, but once someone in the chain starts depending on FOSS to generate income and profit, some of that profit should always be reinvested in those dependencies. That's what FOSS is now learning; to reject the exploitation and greed of lecherous parasites.

[-] superkret@feddit.org 5 points 10 months ago

The point I don't get is: How can the corporation turn the Dev into a slave laborer when he isn't employed by them? He can just ignore their issues and say "deal with it, or pay me". It's not his problem the corporation depends on his software.

[-] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

Because not enough creative believe themaxisnm of "fuck you pay me".

[-] Ledivin@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

So then it kinda just sounds like they're doing things they want to do

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[-] socialmedia@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

The free software as a passion project idea became untenable long ago. It works for UNIX style utilities where the project stays small and changes can be managed by one person but breaks down on large projects.

As a user, try to get a feature added or bugfix merged. Its a weeks or sometimes months/years long back and forth trying to get the bikeshedding correct.

As a maintainer, spend time reading and responding to bug reports which are all unrelated to the project. Deal with a few pull requests that don't quite fit the project, but might with more polish. Take a month off and wait for the inevitable "is this being maintained?" Issues reports.

I contribute back changes because I want those features but don't want to maintain a longterm fork of the project. When they're rejected or ignored its demoralizing. I can tell myself "This is the way of open source" but sometimes I just search for another project that better fits my needs rather than trying to work on the one I submitted changes to.

That is the happy path. The sad path of this is how many people look at the aforementioned problems and never bother to submit a pull request because it's too much trouble? Git removed most of the technical friction of contributing, but there is still huge social friction.

Long story short: the man pages maintainer deserves something for all the "work" part of maintaining. He can continue to not be paid for the passion part.

[-] superkret@feddit.org 6 points 10 months ago

I don't get why the maintainer can't just ignore all the additional workload and say "I do this in my free time, if that isn't enough for your needs, pay me or find another solution."

[-] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

It's easy to get pressured into thinking it's your responsibility. There's also the risk that an unhappy company will make a non-copyleft clone of your project, pump resources into it until it's what everyone uses by default, and then add proprietary extensions so no one uses the open-source version anymore, which, if you believe in the ideals of Free Software, is a bad thing.

[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

Definitely agree, maybe it’s time to share Paul Ramsey’s talk on the subject again

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 18 points 10 months ago

Bruce Perens is currently working on a new licensing model called Post Open requiring that business with sufficient revenue to pay up.

https://postopen.org/

[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago
[-] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

I doubt it. It is basically equivalent to buying a proprietary software license for 1% of a revenue. I doubt any large business would be willing to spend that much on a single piece of software. And it would always be only one piece of software at a time.

[-] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 7 points 10 months ago

Still better than being exploited

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

to be quite honest I don't want to see any large business around my project unless they are paying. They are not my target audience, and I'm not writing to funnel money into their pockets

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[-] Findmysec@infosec.pub 40 points 10 months ago

Everything needs to be slapped with the AGPL. Fuck corporate America

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 months ago

Creative Commons-BY-NC would be better.

[-] Findmysec@infosec.pub 4 points 10 months ago

Alright we should use that then

[-] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 5 points 10 months ago

AGPL on documentation? What would that do?

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[-] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 32 points 10 months ago

Things like this make me wish I was a tech CEO. I'd totally be the guy ensuring we give back to projects if I was.

[-] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 68 points 10 months ago

That is part of why you're not a tech CEO. You're not supposed to have compassion! No investor would want that.

P.S. This is an attack on CEOs and investors, not on you :)

[-] cubism_pitta@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago

Nah, the investors don't see it as a benefit to your growth to pay people you don't have to

[-] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

10k for a company making millions annually is nothing, 1% or less. But split between some of these projects, especially the less appreciated or funded ones, can be life changing.

But you're unfortunately right

[-] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

The 10k can pay dividends in PR alone, and will attract more developers to apply for job openings.

[-] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 4 points 10 months ago

Exactly. Promote it as community outreach, it's more useful than feel-good Pictures at dog shelters.

[-] grandel@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately, people like this don't become CEOs.

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[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think its this site? https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

I don't see any option to give money. So he does not accept donations from users like you and me and only asks for sponsorship?

An alternate website can be found here: https://linux.die.net/man/ However, I don't know how much they differ.

Edit: What I don't like with both of these sites is, that they are powered by Google. I would like to see an alternative engine, at least an option to set it up. That's probably a reason why I never used it and actually wouldn't want to support it.

[-] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 21 points 10 months ago

You do realize that man pages don't live on the internet? The kernel.org one is the offical project website, as far as I know, but the project itself is very much not for the web presense, but for the vastly useful documentation included on your distribution.

[-] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago

The few times I've needed to man [app name] on a system without internet access or on an obscure utility, I've always been able to find what I need in the included docs

I hope the dev eventually gets sponsored, this is one of those utilities that you don't think you need until --help doesn't cut it

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

honestly I use the man command whenever I can. It gives distro-specific info, that documents the right version and any distro-specific patches

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[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

You do realize that man pages don’t live on the internet?

What part of my reply is this an answer to? I know we have our man pages offline. But the website here is online and they use Google as a search machine. My critique is using Google and not providing an alternative search machine setup.

[-] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 6 points 10 months ago

I mean that the product made in here is not the website and I can well understand that the developer has no interest of spending time for it as it's not beneficial to the actual project he's been working with. And I can also understand that he doesn't want to receive donations from individuals as that would bring in even more work to manage which is time spent off the project. A single sponsor with clearly agreed boundaries is far more simple to manage.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 3 points 10 months ago

I see, it was a reply to me why he isn't accepting donations from individuals. The given reason here makes sense.

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[-] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 8 points 10 months ago

He absolutely deserves it.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 10 months ago

Quick, print them all out now before they're gone!

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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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