Notices by smxi (smxi@fosstodon.org)

@BeAware I hope mastodon devs resist this small confused minority that is using the wrong tool for what they want. Interaction is the point. I suspect they want a blog but don't know they want a blog. Wordpress has all those controls and filters built in. I will probably stop following people who keep complaining about the tool doing what its supposed to.

@ppb1701 @BeAware exactly. Facebook users do the same thing. They want a blog but know nobody will read it. Building up a blog type audience just takes patience and perseverance. Plus having something to say people want to read.

@BeAware there's been recent mastodon threads from people complaining about getting responses. I didn't respond but made a mental note wondering why or how people can so fundamentally misunderstand the open web discussion formats. I think some people are looking for blogging tools with members only comments. Or something. Hint: when you post on public resource that is designed to drive engagement and you get engagement that's the point.

@Di4na @neil I suspect the issue is people don't want to waste their free time writing code for corporate consumption aka Open Source but judging from the almost endless creation of new wayland compositors there's no shortage of coders eager to scratch their personal itches. I have a hard time keeping up with those for #inxi. USA getting harder to live in, but mostly the tech areas. Definite decline in young in some areas though, the culture of real hackers is waning. Smart phones make us dumb.

@Di4na @neil the thrust of the article seems to be about conferences. I've never been to a tech conference nor have I ever wanted to go to one. And that's living in an area where they happen routinely. I have spent up on 2 decades doing Free Software and never felt I would benefit in any way from conferences. It makes sense they are graying because that's similar to going on a cruise to me. Except for geeks. I can see no reason to write "Open Source" code for young people. Get paid. "Free", yes.

@blogdiva @Di4na @neil I view those slabs as simply: a corporation owns the os and updates it. They own the app stores. This is the primary way kids interact with computing today. Totally passive and powerless. The opposite of PCs. Apple product users even more so because walled garden. If passively consuming remote content is how you learn tech this makes hacker mindset less likely. Also less likely kids grow up doing real things, tools, etc. Mindset becomes: someone (else) should do it.

@clacke @Di4na Basically, if you want me to deal with boring problems that I'd never ever dream of touching in my free time, then yes, pay me, and I'll get those working for you, wincing at the stupidity of the problem in terms of the bigger world. But if it's for me, I am going to write it the way I want, to solve the problems I (and positive people I respect from experience) want, and make the code as good as I can make it, which can take up to 10x longer to do than with commercial code.

@nicemicro it's corporations who want to avoid gpl code because that imposes obligations. Developers not in #OpenBSD who care about survival of #FreeSoftware should use licences that enforce code survival and growth. There's a reason bsds are now a blip of a percent of total os now and linux is in and on everything. You have to force sharing and giving back when dealing with the sociopathic corporate sector. Anything else is naive. Except for special cases like openssh, libressl etc.

@nicemicro to me the core mindbug is open source. Vs #FreeSoftware. If you fall for that trap then one license is as good as another so you'll burn out once reality sets in. I make free software to help the bits of free software ecosystem I can. Free software of course is open source by definition but as ibm-redhat recently showed us the contrary is not necessarily true. Since I've never had any interest in doing unpaid work for billion dollar corporations I used gpl from first day I found it.

@nicemicro Any company that avoids #gpl is openly admitting they want to take without giving back. Those are not desirable partners long term as has been proved over and over. Nor are they reliable or trustworthy. Every gpl project has a possible long term future builtin and every non enforced sharing license project can go like a poof of smoke because it has no true code permanence protection beyond last public commit. Like rhel is trying to do while stealing our code to use their stupid word

@clacke @Di4na In terms of hiring, I think I follow with Thomas D, I am NOT a supplier. I have zero interest in damaging my code to make it work around bugs created by a billion dollar corporation (yes, looking at ibm-redhat). Nor am I interested in their problem set unless it directly matches what I want the software to do for its users. And no, corporations are NOT users, they are legal fictions assembled to funnel capital, and generate profit. And I don't volunteer for that, at any price.

@nicemicro valid use cases for bsd type licenses: single project (apache,nginx,openssh) where priority is get that tech into everything. Outside those you are working for free for corporations who will never give back. Truly freed code survives because you can't steal it without obligation. This stopped being a debate years ago:
#Gpl: linux,libreoffice,khtml>applewebkit>blink
Bsd/mit: Bsds,openoffice,mozilla

It's funny to see people pretend this is a debate when success of gpl transparent.

Excellent article: I am NOT A SUPPLIER!
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier

You are all on the hobbiest maintainers turf now
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/open-source-hobbyists-turf

This guy nails it. If you want me to be your supplier then pay me. Period. Most of this comes from a pathological corporate mindset where sociopathic greed is considered normal. Plus a failure to read the licenses in first place: #gpl: software supplied with no warranty of fitness, not even implicit.

Focus more on #FreeSoftware and less on Open.

@aral That's why I specifically excluded those. That constitutes I'd guess a tiny fraction of 1% of real world desktop installs. But IBM's Redhat division probably uses 99% code that they did not write, despite their absurd complaints about people using their code for free.

The closest you'll come to significant numbers of realworld RHEL users are Fedora users, who pay nothing.

In #FreeSoftware, real question is what have I done? Not they, or you, or someone else, but I. Confuses consumers.

@aral Standard desktop #Linux just broke 3% global market-share. Almost nobody pays a cent for their non-commercial Linux. There is a constant theme I find that "oh they should do this or that", as if there were thousands of developers just itching to donate time worth often north of $200 an hour for a lifetime payback of often 0, or very close to 0.

Because of this reality, free desktops (free as in liberty) remain largely engineer built and oriented. Not right choice for everyone. Can't be.

@aral when I was doing active #linux forum and IRC distro support, there was a specific type of user, who never stayed, never contributed anything, yet was the most loudly vocal in demanding x or y feature, with a certain sense of entitlement that could only come from using apple or MS products their whole lives, never realizing the true cost they were paying. Chromebook similar issue re google.

I no longer do that type of support, thankfully. Ask yourself: what did you pay? who did the work?

@aral Every Apple and MS user pays for the base OS install, usually as part of a hardware bundle, always in the case of Apple. This is what pays for the features and development. You have to wrap your heads around the fact you are NOT comparing apples to apples, I have never paid more than 0 for any Linux or desktop or window manager. So I contribute what I can back to the larger free software ecosystem as my way of doing my part. Free desktops don't have the luxury of dropping millions on x, y

@aral vast bulk of funding goes to server #linux kernel features, which is why the kernel is incredibly robust compared to in particular OSX's kernel. Right now, for example, #Pop_OS is building their new #Cosmic desktop/compositor, with a team of 7 developers. MS, Apple, Google field 10s of thousands, and can assign any group of them to any feature, that's their job.

I'd say if you interact with Linux, desktops, compositors, tools, and go YES!, it's for you. If not, maybe not best fit.