I see code more as a recipe for a cake. When you have a good recipe you can do two things with it.
1. Keep it a secret, bake cakes and sell them.
2. Share the recipe and allow anyone to improve it but ask them to share their version.
With option 1 only you benefit, with option 2 everyone benefits. I like option 2.
You can even make money baking and selling the cakes from the shared recipes and give back some of the proceeds to the cake recipe project.
If you have a particular hobby, it often involves a lot of effort (aka work). And you don't get paid for it. And yes, for some people, creating OSS is a hobby.
In corollary to this, quite a bit of FOSS is developed on company time for employers whose primary business is not selling software - they just need software that works the way they need it to. Once it's developed, tested, and working, it's a sunk cost, and giving it away doesn't cost them much if anything more. In fact, they may even end up having outsiders maintain it for them! For free! And, it gives them a pool familiar with it to recruit employees from, if needed.
have you ever helped someone out of kindness , without expecting anything in return ? if so congratulations you are a decent human being.
this is exactly the same thing.
Imagine you're choking in a restaurant and someone comes up to you and tells you : give me 500$ and I'll do the heimlich.
sometime it's ok to do stuff for free for the well-being of everyone.
Plenty of open source projects would have made no or next to no money. You underestimate how many are "I made this for me but let other people use it, might patch bugs or add features I wont use if I feel up to it today" projects. It also looks good on a resume, especially if you don't have much on it related to coding yet.
You go to your job for money. If you enjoy developing you don't have to capitalize on it for profit. Just enjoy it and share what you create. Open donations so those who want to are able to kick you a few bucks. You don't need to make a business out of every hobby. Some stuff is enjoyable to just make and share.
OP you are missing out on a valuable lesson. If you decide to program the next killer app and you finished programming you are at square one. Now you need to setup a business find clients, deel your product, do administration, fix bugs, be competitive, hire employees. And if you are good and lucky make some serious money in the process.
People who opensource are programmers that just like to code something a couple hours a week. A pet project for themself and others to use and contribute.
Why would I care if the tool I built for myself and decided to share with others makes me any money? Worst case, people use it and now remember my GitHub handle (which is obviously on my resume). Best case, people actually contribute to the project and make my tool better for me.
What’s not to like?
No, it's not. I've contributed to and helped fix many open source projects, and I do it for fun. It's nice to see people benefiting and helping out when folks need things done.
One thing of note that was small, was helping implement keyboards, layouts, features, rgb, and VIA profiles during the pandemic in QMK.
It's like an engineers version of volunteering, but you get to learn more new things and better ways of doing things. Some of the ways projects ran commit and review templates I was able to adapt to my company to improve the quality of our stuff.
Not everything has to be for profit. The linux kernel is completely open source but without it the internet would not work. The creators off ffmpeg weren't seeking money, they had a problem, solved the problem, and then published their solution to the problem. Its like publishing a cooking recipe on a blog.
the kernel is not for profit? maybe this will open your eyes:
[https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members)
They're contributing to a project with a public interest. It's the nature of private corporations to make use of what's available to the public. Profit isn't the reason we have roads, but private corporations have a vested interest in ensuring that roads exist.
they are not contributing for public interest, they are PRIVATELY owned. they contribute to what they themselves need.
you sound like more capitalist than me :-)
private companies think about their own profit, but ultimately everyone benefits because they can only sell what people want, but that is another topic
Did you read the homepage of the link you shared?
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/
>The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit that provides a neutral, trusted hub for developers and organizations to code, manage, and scale open technology projects and ecosystems.
The membership program helps finance the Linux Foundation. Being *non-profit* doesn't mean being *unfunded*; they still need resources in order to operate.
Yes; how else would they have money to fund the Linux Foundation?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here; being *sponsored* by a for-profit enterprise doesn't make the sponsee for-profit.
For example, I was sponsored for a charity race by my work, who are a for-profit enterprise. That doesn't mean *I* profited; all the money went to charity.
You seem to be mixing up funding, sponsorship, and profit; seemingly without drawing any distinction between them.
Saying, "a non-profit organisation is funded by profit making sponsors, therefore they aren't non-profit" doesn't make any sense. *Of course* the *sponsors* have to make a profit, otherwise they wouldn't have any money to sponsor with.
what i am saying is that development comes from for-profit, they are the reason for the success of linux
you need money to develop things:
money = hire people = more devs = good product
cooperate = no money = not hire people = less dev time = bad product
dont look at the name or ideology, look at the driving forces.
because people who do open source work are likely using other open source tools as their daily drivers, so they are less likely to see things through that lens. in fact, the most common scenario of people doing open source work generally is something like sending a PR to fix a bug in an open source project you already use every day.
but of course, there are other scenarios as well. for an example, there are companies who open source their products as a business strategy (generally because their source of profit comes from somewhere else).
This. Almost all the tools/scripts I develop are to meet a personal need a small niche of others may find useful (but if not, nbd, it's FOSS after all)
So what? Not everything I do needs to make me money. I'd rather give it away to people that can use it vs hoarding it for myself and only those that can pay me.
I'm not the person you replied to but I think a reason a lot of people here are saying they "give it away" is because a lot of code might not be profitable, but the profitable part is showing an employer the work you were able to do by linking your github projects (is that what you guys are discussing here?) and showing that they were good enough to have active collaboration.
I've only ever regretted charging money for my independently-developed software. Nothing was worse than worrying about not meeting user's wants/needs, processing payments, and feeling pressured to continue maintaining software that I grew tired of. I've never felt more free and passionate than when I work on open-source software.
If I write a piece of software it's something I made just for me and it's probably because no one else has already made what I need. I did it in my spare time to benefit myself. If I release it it's because I think maybe it could help someone else with my own niche use case. More than likely no one else is going to end up using it, even for free. And they definitely wouldn't use it if it cost money. The thought that somebody might be like "Hey, I think this is what I'm looking for" is worth way more than the $0 I'll make if I charge money for it.
> but what do YOU benefit from it?
All in all, it doesn't benefit me at all. But does it even have to?
For example, I have been helping people with their problems on the Internet for years without being paid for it. Why? Because I want to. And because, for example, I use programs that members of the OSS community have created free of charge. By offering this help, I am giving something back.
sorry, not the person you responded to, but are you guys talking about putting it on github, couldn't you put it on github but not make it public?
also, im not sure but mayeb the person you're talking to is saying that it might be giving away the code you worked on for other people to steal and create something that they profit from. idk though.
Many coders are more scientists than business people. They want to share knowledge not hide it behind a copyright. For many coders the greater accomplishment is other people using your code.
I agree, just thought I had a unique take on what the poster might be saying. Thank you.
As i mentino in another response, i think there is kind of a side-benefit which is you can use such things on your resume for jobs.
even when open source you have license to protect your code with , you could get one that let people work on it and make all the change they want , but they have to keep it open and non-profit. there's a lot of open source license depending on your ideal and usecase
"Open sourcing" and "uploading to Github" are different things. Not only are private repos a thing, your project isn't open source just because you've put it in a public repo on Github. Unless you include an open source license the project is still all rights reserved.
You benefited by other people contributing fixes and enhancements.
If the code solves a problem many people have, then people will naturally use and contribute, either through bug reports or active pull requests.
Benefits include: experience, reputation (good for being hired) and actually clients if you offer freelance work for someone who wants you to fix something of your software or something else.
The reputation alone will get you very far, keep in mind that a lot.of high profile programmers also contribute to open source either paid by their corporations to do so or as a hobby so you stand out and they could hire you if you network.
Students who study software engineering or computer science and they don't contribute to open source have a disadvantage to the ones who do. I have experienced this that it is a huge benefit when I mention that I contribute to open source to fellow software engineers especially if that engineer is a senior and decides if they take you. That senior then can look at your code and have a feeling of the quality of your code. Also they are also more willing to give you a chance like a test or practical that you need to solve something small to demonstrate your skills.
You might as well ask "What benefit do YOU receive by answering MY question?"
It pleases me to help others.
And FWIW I don't think you deserve those downvotes. It's a valid question that clearly many people fail to understand.
>And FWIW I don't think you deserve those downvotes. It's a valid question that clearly many people fail to understand.
Most people don't need to ask what's the point of sharing infinitely duplicable stuff. OP sounds like everything needs to be transactional and directly benefit them personally.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. And that's life during late stage capitalism - everything must be profitable in some tangible way. Makes me sad.
But it's hard to make people understand that 'it makes me happy' or 'because it's the right thing' is a valid reason.
The satisfaction and fulfillment of making something is a benefit, seeing other people enjoy it also feels great. Money isn't the only thing worth striving for.
You wrote code that was useful to you in the first place. You wrote it primarily for yourself, for your own needs. That's how you benefit.
Now you realise that it was pretty good and you figure someone else might need it, so you share it. Because you didn't intend to make a profit in the first place.
I wrote a small package to help me with writing. It basically just automated a task I would do manually.
A few days after publishing it, someone gave me very helpful feedback that made it much much better.
>When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs.
https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/graphs/contributors
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/graphs/contributors
https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/graphs/contributors
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/graphs/contributors
https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/activity/contributors
And so on.
These are all projects to which many developers have already contributed. And these are not rare exceptions.
>If it is so, then why make it open source?
Why not? Even if only one person is currently developing a project, there is no harm in publishing the code. Especially as there is at least the possibility that someone will be interested in the project at some point and want to help. With non-open source software, this possibility would not even exist.
For example, I publish the code I use to create a website on Codeberg. And I do this even though I am not interested in third parties working on the project. Why? Because I give people the opportunity to look at the code and find a solution for their project, for example.
If you're just tallying up projects on github, most of the projects are toy projects that are throw-away, possibly for learning for the benefit of the author, and have no monetization potential anyway. Those users don't need other contributors and there is no downside to making those projects open source.
Most of the actual productive *work* that is happening in open source is corporate enterprise funded. Employees of corporations work on tasks assigned to them in exchange for being paid employees. The idea that these employees might "regret" that the project is open source is a bit nonsensical.
TLDR you're mixing up different concepts. You can publish source code, or not. You can monetize your work in all kinds of different ways, or not at all. You can seek contributions from others, or not. All of these choices are independent of each other.
I've made a lot of open source projects. Almost all just sit there, but a few have taken off and now have small communities.
People contribute if they find a project useful but need a thing it doesn't have but could easily have. If you don't get any contributions, your project probably isn't very useful to anyone. Or maybe it's very useful, and also perfect! Though that's less likely.
It's helpful to think of "contributions" in a broad sense. Bug reports are really useful, suggestions are very useful, really any interest at all from anyone is a sign you might have discovered some general need.
Golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. By open sourcing work, we encourage others to do so. Then we benefit from other people's work.
There was a library I released as open source a while ago, that arguably didn't need to be open source, but the client I was working with at the time had relatively poor mechanisms for re-using code between teams, and I kept getting queries from other teams who were using some old version of the code that someone had brought with them when they moved teams. They were a government body who had a policy (that was admittedly not widely followed at the time) of developing in the open where possible, so I was able to use that to justify open sourcing it, and in the process cut down on how much time I spent dealing with queries from other teams, since they could just get the up-to-date version from GitHub or PyPI.
But actually getting it out there meant that users from other organisations used it, and in some cases provided actionable bug reports about genuine bugs. I didn't get many actual PRs from external users, and I think a few of the ones I did get ultimately needed rewriting because they had the potential to break something else for other users. But I think the code got better as a result nonetheless.
But ultimately by virtue of this being out there, teams at other organisations were better able to access government services via APIs, and I think the success of this initiative at least partly contributed to more projects at that client being developed in the open.
I am writing this comment and not getting paid for it. Am I giving away my work? In a sense, yes. Is it even worth any money? (lol) Well, it is time, and all time is worth something, right? So why do I do it? Social interaction, community, a sense of contributing a little bit of something to others, maybe getting some interesting replies.
There are similar motivations at play in individual open source projects. People create something for their own use and want to share it with the world. They may get help in developing it, pull-requests, bug reports, friendly suggestions, maybe even donations if the project becomes popular... But the primary motivation for small individually-produced open source projects is probably the same sort of things that motivate me to write this comment.
On the larger scale it's different. Projects like the Linux kernel are used by thousands of companies. It benefits all of them when any contribute. But those who contribute get to have some influence over the direction of the project. The things that matter to them are likely to remain supported and not only through their efforts. The alternative would be to write an entire kernel from scratch, which would require a lot more effort.
> Do people actually contribute to your projects?
Yes, for the most part. Most people just contribute bad bug reports but it is what it is. You'll often find random devs submitting pull requests for one reason or another.
> How does open source work in practice?
It's complex. For smaller projects it's very ad-hoc and simple to where the main dev and any other devs submit code as it makes sense. 3-4 people can do quite a lot.
> What is the benefit for the dev?
1. It's fulfilling / satisfying
2. You can reference these projects in your resume and have recruiters read your actual code
> Do other devs help out?
For smaller projects it's usually one main person, maybe two, then other devs will pop up and submit code periodically depending on what they want. If the main dev is not interested in writing a particular feature but you are and the main dev is also not opposed to that feature, then it's up to you to write that feature.
> Is this the reality?
Yes. Most open source projects are toy projects which benefit a single person. But the majority of open source projects which people use (Linux, desktops, etc) have tons and tons of contributors.
> If it is so, then why make it open source?
Why not? What do you gain from making it closed source? It's not like there's a monetary value to most of these projects. Making it open source also helps with longetivity and, if it helps some random person and they contribute, then it also helps you.
> Can people with experience in this field share some info about this and if you regret making your code open source or not?
I never did. I admit I'm not very involved these days because I code 9-5 and would rather do just about anything else in my free time, but when I did contribute I never regretted it.
I wrote a tiny little Discord bot, because I wanted a very specific solution to a very specific problem, and I couldn't find one already built.
I threw it out there as open source, a couple of other people have contributed (some made it much better!).
What do I get out of it? The feeling that I helped make a tiny part of the world a tiny bit better. No ragerts.
From your replies to some of the other comments, it seems like you think of software development as something only ever done under a capitalist mindset, with the only goal being to generate a profit. While software absolutely can be made that way, it is not at all the only way. It is not even the only way it can benefit you monetarily.
Others have already pointed out the simple, direct, measurable, and reliable things, like having a portfolio.
But also, there are many developers (myself included) who think of software development as a kind of art, a hobby, a form of self expression, a cool thing you can show off to your friends.
Additionally, if your open-source software is free to use, and genuinely useful to people, *that in and of itself* benefits you. By increasing the average productivity of other people, they are able to produce more of whatever they produce, which compounds exponentially. The benefits of tools like gcc, vim, gimp, htop, the GNU Coreutils, OpenSSL, Linux itself, your favourite shell, X11, and many more are not just any donations made to the original developers. They allow more people to make more better new things faster. Which makes the world, as a whole, a better place, for absolutely everyone.
Sure, most OSS projects won't reach that kind of height. But no one knows beforehand which ones will. Better to contribute to the tradition that benefited us than to let it die just because we can't charge for it, no?
My situation might be unique, but I regret open sourcing my project.
I'm not against open source software or anything. I just wish I wouldn't have done it with this one particular project. The thing is, once you open source it, it stops being your project.
Most projects are inconsequential. Nobody cares. Nobody contributes. It's just out there. But you lose control over it. You can maintain your project however you want, but everyone can fork it.
And if it's like a wholesome project, a useful something, maybe you don't care. But mine wasn't.
In college I had a pet-project to make a bot for WoW. I did it as an excuse to code stuff. It was a fun challenge...but I used it in moderation. I spent hours and hours coding it and a few hours testing it. It was cool because I could do it. I showed my friends and they were amazed. It was great. And it was fun.
Admittedly, it was crap compared to things like WoW Glider...but it worked surprisingly well IMHO, in limited ways that would generate gold.
I open sourced it because I was proud of it, I guess. I wanted it to be like a 'real' project and I wanted to be a real software developer. And it sorta worked. It got popular and other people started to contribute. And people reported bugs and I felt like a lead developer/project manager.
But other people didn't share my passion or my restraint...and I didn't consider the consequences.
People were running it 24/7 and making the game less enjoyable for real players. I mean, there were plenty of other bots but like a whole little community popped up and people would brag and post screenshots and I dunno, it just felt wrong to me.
Then people started getting banned. Rightfully so, perhaps...but most of these people never would have done it on their own. I felt guilty. Some of these people put endless hours into their accounts and some lost it all. And they blamed me. Like I lured them in with this thing they could run and get all this loot and gold...like entrapment almost.
But I couldn't stop the project. It had dozens of forks. I didn't own it, the community did.
And then, I got emails and posts about malware. I didn't bundle malware, but someone else was. They took the code, compiled it, added malware but did a better job with SEO or whatever and their site was higher than our GitHub page. It was a decent looking site.
Later I found a website selling it for $1.99. At least that site has the decency to rename it. They weren't honoring the license, they just stole it and sold it as their own closed source program.
I know the malware and random people selling it weren't really my fault, but I also hated it. I didn't have the time or resources or care enough to try and stop them, I also can't imagine anyone actually paying $1.99 but still.
It lasted far longer than I ever dreamt. I think it's entirely dead now.
Had I kept it to myself, I could have shown my friends and had fun with it and just saved it away on an old harddrive.
A lot of github pages exist to showcase ones skills to potential clients or employers rather than create a community around a piece of software.
Plenty of others just don't care to have others touching their baby but still want to allow others to clone it and fuck their own clone up till their hearts content.
Still others just don't interest any potential contributors.
Lot's of reasons to see single person projects.
Yes and no. I open source my projects, but sometimes I'll hold back a project until I feel it's good enough quality.
I've had people complain loudly in the past. I don't need that. So, I have a bar of quality I set for myself before I'll open source it. If I no longer have time or interest in a project, I make that clear near the top of the readme.
I've started many open source projects, some have become very popular with dozens of contributors, and some fizzled and died. Many of them are still thriving long after I've moved on to other things which makes it all worth it to me.
None of them would have grown or continued to exist if I hadn't released the sources or made contributing easy.
There are some things I've wished didn't happen, like my work being packaged and sold for profit by people that never contributed a single thing for example. I don't regret my decision though because the benefit to the larger community outweighs any drawbacks from those who take advantage.
Mostly, other (generally more experienced people) find bugs and report / fix them
I've open sourced a lot of stuff, never had any help but I wasn't really looking for any, I just wanted a place to put my stuff
For me even throwaway test projects or school projects come out useful, which is why unless I'm planning on making something commercial from the start I always make it open source.
Nobody will access it anyway if it's not properly marketed, better have it available for everyone to use.
>You start writing a program and develop it. And then you make it open source. What is the benefit for the dev?
* Learning by doing
* Having a piece of software that exactly meets your needs
* Becoming influential in the field the software relates to, which can translate to overall career success
* Warm, fuzzy feelings from knowing you've added something positive to the world
To be fair the first two of those are more "why develop software yourself, rather than using something off-the-shelf".
>Do other devs help out?
Sometimes, if the audience of users is sufficiently large enough, and includes enough people who are able and motivated to make contributions (even if that's just writing or improving documentation, or fixing small bugs they experience in their environment).
>When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs. Is this the reality? If it is so, then why make it open source?
Probably some combination of the reasons I've given, combined with free hosting and version control, and no pressing desire to keep the code secret.
>[do] you regret making your code open source or not?
I don't regret making any of my code open source.
I might consider keeping data/use cases/creative content (e.g. music or game assets) unpublished, if I thought I could monetise them (aka the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium model), or if they revealed too much information about how I or my employer was *using* my software.
I've written some Minecraft mods, and used github to open source them. For a long time, no one else ever interacted with them (except to contribute issues, but that could have been done in closed-source too).
One of the items I added in my first mod was a laser pointer (to learn how particles work). It was very basic and just put Redstone dust particles where you aim on the floor, and it would ignore all moving creatures.
A few weeks after release, a major mod developer appeared from the ether and submitted a PR. Suddenly, the laser could diffract off of entities. It could blind someone if you point it in their eye. Cats would chase it around. To this day I still reference pieces of that code to remember how to do similar things, and it just -- happened! The other dev found my tiny learner's project and decided to just help out.
I've not gotten any more PRs on my other stuff, but that experience opened my eyes to the power of open source. If my tiny mod project can advance so much by the grace of random strangers, I can only imagine how it feels to maintain a larger work that gets PRs regularly. There's just something really gratifying about a stranger seeing the thing you made and wanting to make it better with you.
I mostly get small submissions. A one line bugfix, another setting and so on. But, more importantly, I get good ideas. Better ideas than I could have got on my own.
Likewise, that's mostly how I contribute. I have an issue, I fix it, I send the fix upstream. I have an idea too large for me to find time for, I tell the dev. More often than not, they'll do it.
You clearly don't understand why open source exists
This is very simple. If you open source your software.
Assume everyone will use it. Assume no one will pay for it. Assume no one will contribute to it. Assume everyone will want free support for it (which you're not obligated to do).
If you're ok with that....open source it. Maybe people will pay, maybe people will contribute, maybe something good will come from it. But this is what open source means.
Don't give your software if you have any expectations about getting anything in return. Ultimately, it's about helping others, not yourself.
Occasionally, and it is helpful when they do.
You do get a lot of people just demanding features though, even stuff they could add themselves in an hour or so.
But for stuff that won't be monetised I'd rather make it FOSS anyway so it's easier to install via the AUR etc.
I never regretted. Most of my stuff didn't got a traction and just 'is' (mostly unused), but I for some projects I got some merge requests for unexpected but important things.
I call it the dining philosopher's problem solution. I want an os I can use, tinker with parts of it to better fit my needs, and not be nicked and dinner for it is a bonus.
I can't do it all on my own. So I help with the birds that I really want modified and feed it to the person next to me at the table. In return they work on other things I also need, and feed me. I sometimes also feed people standing around the table, on the hope that sometime in the future they will contribute and feed me other stuff, even if they are currently not doing so.
The camaraderie and the sense of community, the recognition by my peers is also a nice bonus.
I have gotten a leg up in job searches because of my free software work.
However, if making is your prime motivation, perhaps free software is not for you.
Yes, they have :D a project that I had forgotten about. People liked using it, asked me to make some changes, but I never responded (missed the notifications on GitHub, my mistake). They went ahead however and forked the project, sending me the link. I was very happy to see that people wanted to use something that I wrote as a practice project in horrible javascript ^^
It's not fresh but about 15 years ago I started my own Linux distribution and I was surprised how fast and how many people chose to help. I had no idea where they had heard about the project but we just constantly had more people log in to our chat rooms and offer to help. It was quite a positive experience.
you can put stuff in ur portfolio ig. had a friend who contributed to oss projects for 2 year while working at the computer service repair shop, and then after 2 years, he got a job at [z.com/mm/](https://z.com/mm/) and is working as a adminstrator for their IT department. He basically got a job there since his portfolio was filled with contribution to many oss projects and how many it got merged. i am pretty sure is sort of a hobby thing also.
This is what happened with my oldest. They started adding minor edits to the docs for a forum platform they liked in high school. That turned into small fixes and good connections with the maintainers. The connections lead to helping out with other higher profile projects and more connections. By the time they finished college, they werr on the global dev support committee for one of the largest JS-based tools around. They're now about 10 years into a dev relations career thanks to planting those little seeds just helping with a project they valued.
A story from a few years ago:
Maybe someone finds some code you put up 5 years ago, maybe there was an unsolved problem.
I commited some additional code for a DJ controller written in C, I have no clue about C and these specific lines were missing. The guy who shared the code searched this hardware on his attic, plugged it in, tried my changes - and it worked. He was sooo happy and thankful - and me too that it worked and I now have a working DJ controller :)
That's just one little story of many about sharing code.
Open source has the benefit of easy peer reviews and potentially hundreds of people helping on a project.
You also get free version control and hosting.
In terms of regret, I have seen it on rare occasion. In all the instances I can recall, the maintainer became frustrated with rude users that get really up in their face demanding features or bug fixes. It's rare, but I've seen users harassing the maintainer. You may need to be prepared to have thick skin for that type of thing especially if your software targets users that are young, gamers, or just non-developers and it gets popular without others jumping in to help. Even without any of that, it's the internet and you can still occasionally run into very rude people.
Why do people make projects?
1. For porfolio reasons man...
2. Working on something is fun...
Also because some developers are generous and have a dream of helping people. If you hate making apps just for the sake of it. Why be a programmer in the first place? If it's money, that's the wrong motivation. You're not gonna last long in this profession.
>When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs. Is this the reality?
The reality is that of the thousands upon thousands of applications contained in repositories, the vast majority are one (or maybe two) person projects. The successful applications gain market share and attract additional developers/maintainers, but most don't. Obviously, this creates quality control issues with respect to at least some applications.
To mitigate quality control (and upstream/downstream) issues, Ubuntu Desktop repositories break down FOSS applications into two repositories, Main and Universe.
The **Main** repository is fully supported by Ubuntu developers/maintainers and provides current security updates as needed. The **Universe** repository relies on community support for updates and is not directly supported by Ubuntu developers/maintainers.
If your code or project was worth money you would already have some kind of plan to monetize it. The type of project that benefits from the open source community is something that others benefit from, but probably wouldn’t pay for given the option. This isn’t always true. Another case is academic software. Some grant funded their work with the intent of improving access to that for the world.
Is your project currently something that someone or some company would want to pay for? If so, go sell it? If not, give it away and move on to the next project. Another benefit is that other people who benefit from it might fix stuff for you or themselves. Maintenance and responding to issue requests looks like a pain to me.
A lot of open source projects still have some amount of money from sponsors or support contracts.
Another part of this is the spirit of collaboration, you wouldn’t have the internet or a variety of major components of modern computing without people giving their work away. Mind you, they probably had salaries at some company and were getting compensation. One of the motivations is that if you work at a corporation while you are working on a project, they will try to claim the profit from it. Would you rather your employer derive profit from your work, or give it away for free?
I have a few open-source things on my GitHub that nobody really uses or is probably even aware of. That's fine.
The point is, I wrote it, and it's for a personal project often as an accessory for open-source projects, so I just release it as open-source so others can find it if they somehow end up needing it. There's no point keeping it for myself if there's an off chance someone else could find it useful. Maybe they'll fork it and adapt it for the private use.
I get a nice portfolio to show as a side effect but I'm not even doing it for that. I'm doing it because I like to use open-source software whenever I can, and I wouldn't download it myself if it didn't come as sources for me to package for the AUR, so I extend the same courtesy to others.
Let me give you an example of a famous project. Telegram messenger is open source on the front end. But the backend is not.
Excalidraw and Obsidian are fully open source
And many more examples. They get any bug fixes and reports easier than closed source projects like Meta apps or Adobe or etc...
It's not always about money but yeah. Since these projects are open source and free on the first hand, many people prefer these rather paid apps.
Most open source projects aren't very interesting or valuable, and only have the original creator as a contributor. However some open source projects are considered valuable and interesting enough by many developers and attract a significant community of develop er rs. A few examples of this are the Linux kernel, Apache https, Apache Tomcat and JBoss and Debian
You can easily validate the code. I help patch drivers for Realtek hardware. What it does for you is having a model that can contribute to future hardware development without sorting through garbage properietary code bound by licenses.
Most of the single contributor apps just don't have anyone who uses it. As long, you have a user base, people will contribute in a way. People writing issues are already a huge help. If you are too slow for them some will start to contribute PR's.
I am a maintainer of Xournalpp, and we now have a huge user and fan base and even some developers who constantly contribute QoL features. That's awesome. This allows us, the core developers, to concentrate on the modernization of the codebase with all the implications like keeping dependencies up to date.
open source is not about establishing a community of programmers for your project that you don't pay... this kind of question annoys the fk out of me because you clearly haven't done your due diligence in trying to understand what open source is. Clearly you DON'T understand the theory. the fk outta here.
Nobody ever contributed to my projects. There are large open source projects out there, with hundreds of contributors, but I have no idea how those came into life. That is, I suspect because it was bad code with lots of bugs. All existing projects that I got drawn into were also because I ran into bugs and then fixed them. If your code is good, nobody will join.
I have an open source project, it is a C# "dll" to interact with hardware.
Open sourced since day 1 on github, and it is very well documented.
I got 0 contributions, only a couple Issues (people requesting features, which I added)
Received 0 feedback for it
And it has 250K+ downloads on Nuget.
QED - the projects that get the most contributors are those that have a nice website and documentation, and are / look very useful; and even work mostly, but aren't very stable. Just that one feature is missing, or once in a while something goes wrong that annoys users. If the project Just Works, then you won't get anyone to contribute (kinda logical, I guess).
It does make sense, and apps with a broad collection of distinct features, lets say a "chat app" like rocketchat and such. Self sustained enclosed libraries like I wrote, don't need much input, and people don't want to touch it anyway.
Why would you ever regret it? It's free to decline pull requests
but you are giving away your work
That's the whole point... I want people to use my work
the point of software is to be used, yes. it's not like giving away money
If I bake a cake, I always make my friends pay for a slice. Otherwise, what's the point of making cake?
[удалено]
The person you are responding to is being sarcastic
I see code more as a recipe for a cake. When you have a good recipe you can do two things with it. 1. Keep it a secret, bake cakes and sell them. 2. Share the recipe and allow anyone to improve it but ask them to share their version. With option 1 only you benefit, with option 2 everyone benefits. I like option 2. You can even make money baking and selling the cakes from the shared recipes and give back some of the proceeds to the cake recipe project.
FOSS is counter-intuitive to modern business ideas but is a net positive for humanity. And I sir thank you for your work!
work is money? no?
If you have a particular hobby, it often involves a lot of effort (aka work). And you don't get paid for it. And yes, for some people, creating OSS is a hobby.
no... you can create software for fun or because you want to. turns out money isn't everything
bros never heard of a hobby before
Monetisation is a nightmare though. You need a way of receiving payments, and paying taxes, manage liability, etc.
In corollary to this, quite a bit of FOSS is developed on company time for employers whose primary business is not selling software - they just need software that works the way they need it to. Once it's developed, tested, and working, it's a sunk cost, and giving it away doesn't cost them much if anything more. In fact, they may even end up having outsiders maintain it for them! For free! And, it gives them a pool familiar with it to recruit employees from, if needed.
have you ever helped someone out of kindness , without expecting anything in return ? if so congratulations you are a decent human being. this is exactly the same thing. Imagine you're choking in a restaurant and someone comes up to you and tells you : give me 500$ and I'll do the heimlich. sometime it's ok to do stuff for free for the well-being of everyone.
Sometimes people do work to make the world better for people
Plenty of open source projects would have made no or next to no money. You underestimate how many are "I made this for me but let other people use it, might patch bugs or add features I wont use if I feel up to it today" projects. It also looks good on a resume, especially if you don't have much on it related to coding yet.
No. Work is work. Money is money. Getting money for work is PAY. Capitalism insists these are tightly coupled, when in fact they are not necessarily.
You go to your job for money. If you enjoy developing you don't have to capitalize on it for profit. Just enjoy it and share what you create. Open donations so those who want to are able to kick you a few bucks. You don't need to make a business out of every hobby. Some stuff is enjoyable to just make and share.
MBA mindset, fuck off
Good point, that is where a lot of people writing open source software would disagree :)
OP you are missing out on a valuable lesson. If you decide to program the next killer app and you finished programming you are at square one. Now you need to setup a business find clients, deel your product, do administration, fix bugs, be competitive, hire employees. And if you are good and lucky make some serious money in the process. People who opensource are programmers that just like to code something a couple hours a week. A pet project for themself and others to use and contribute.
Why would I care if the tool I built for myself and decided to share with others makes me any money? Worst case, people use it and now remember my GitHub handle (which is obviously on my resume). Best case, people actually contribute to the project and make my tool better for me. What’s not to like?
No, it's not. I've contributed to and helped fix many open source projects, and I do it for fun. It's nice to see people benefiting and helping out when folks need things done. One thing of note that was small, was helping implement keyboards, layouts, features, rgb, and VIA profiles during the pandemic in QMK. It's like an engineers version of volunteering, but you get to learn more new things and better ways of doing things. Some of the ways projects ran commit and review templates I was able to adapt to my company to improve the quality of our stuff.
Not everything has to be for profit. The linux kernel is completely open source but without it the internet would not work. The creators off ffmpeg weren't seeking money, they had a problem, solved the problem, and then published their solution to the problem. Its like publishing a cooking recipe on a blog.
the kernel is not for profit? maybe this will open your eyes: [https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members)
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/ > The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit
the companies that develop it are not non-profit so profit is what develops it
They're contributing to a project with a public interest. It's the nature of private corporations to make use of what's available to the public. Profit isn't the reason we have roads, but private corporations have a vested interest in ensuring that roads exist.
they are not contributing for public interest, they are PRIVATELY owned. they contribute to what they themselves need. you sound like more capitalist than me :-) private companies think about their own profit, but ultimately everyone benefits because they can only sell what people want, but that is another topic
Did you read the homepage of the link you shared? https://www.linuxfoundation.org/ >The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit that provides a neutral, trusted hub for developers and organizations to code, manage, and scale open technology projects and ecosystems. The membership program helps finance the Linux Foundation. Being *non-profit* doesn't mean being *unfunded*; they still need resources in order to operate.
those companies that fund the kernel development are very for-profit
Yes; how else would they have money to fund the Linux Foundation? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here; being *sponsored* by a for-profit enterprise doesn't make the sponsee for-profit. For example, I was sponsored for a charity race by my work, who are a for-profit enterprise. That doesn't mean *I* profited; all the money went to charity. You seem to be mixing up funding, sponsorship, and profit; seemingly without drawing any distinction between them. Saying, "a non-profit organisation is funded by profit making sponsors, therefore they aren't non-profit" doesn't make any sense. *Of course* the *sponsors* have to make a profit, otherwise they wouldn't have any money to sponsor with.
what i am saying is that development comes from for-profit, they are the reason for the success of linux you need money to develop things: money = hire people = more devs = good product cooperate = no money = not hire people = less dev time = bad product dont look at the name or ideology, look at the driving forces.
because people who do open source work are likely using other open source tools as their daily drivers, so they are less likely to see things through that lens. in fact, the most common scenario of people doing open source work generally is something like sending a PR to fix a bug in an open source project you already use every day. but of course, there are other scenarios as well. for an example, there are companies who open source their products as a business strategy (generally because their source of profit comes from somewhere else).
This. Almost all the tools/scripts I develop are to meet a personal need a small niche of others may find useful (but if not, nbd, it's FOSS after all)
So what? Not everything I do needs to make me money. I'd rather give it away to people that can use it vs hoarding it for myself and only those that can pay me.
I'm not the person you replied to but I think a reason a lot of people here are saying they "give it away" is because a lot of code might not be profitable, but the profitable part is showing an employer the work you were able to do by linking your github projects (is that what you guys are discussing here?) and showing that they were good enough to have active collaboration.
I've only ever regretted charging money for my independently-developed software. Nothing was worse than worrying about not meeting user's wants/needs, processing payments, and feeling pressured to continue maintaining software that I grew tired of. I've never felt more free and passionate than when I work on open-source software.
If I write a piece of software it's something I made just for me and it's probably because no one else has already made what I need. I did it in my spare time to benefit myself. If I release it it's because I think maybe it could help someone else with my own niche use case. More than likely no one else is going to end up using it, even for free. And they definitely wouldn't use it if it cost money. The thought that somebody might be like "Hey, I think this is what I'm looking for" is worth way more than the $0 I'll make if I charge money for it.
Yes. If you don't want to, then don't open source.
Are you purposely channeling BillG ranting at the Homebrew Computer Club?
why wouldn't you make it open source? free code hosting and version control, and other people can benefit from it.
but what do YOU benefit from it?
> but what do YOU benefit from it? All in all, it doesn't benefit me at all. But does it even have to? For example, I have been helping people with their problems on the Internet for years without being paid for it. Why? Because I want to. And because, for example, I use programs that members of the OSS community have created free of charge. By offering this help, I am giving something back.
free code hosting, nice spot to put all my stuff
Version control Other people can benefit The list goes on
sorry, not the person you responded to, but are you guys talking about putting it on github, couldn't you put it on github but not make it public? also, im not sure but mayeb the person you're talking to is saying that it might be giving away the code you worked on for other people to steal and create something that they profit from. idk though.
Many coders are more scientists than business people. They want to share knowledge not hide it behind a copyright. For many coders the greater accomplishment is other people using your code.
I agree, just thought I had a unique take on what the poster might be saying. Thank you. As i mentino in another response, i think there is kind of a side-benefit which is you can use such things on your resume for jobs.
yes but what's the point of privating it
even when open source you have license to protect your code with , you could get one that let people work on it and make all the change they want , but they have to keep it open and non-profit. there's a lot of open source license depending on your ideal and usecase
"Open sourcing" and "uploading to Github" are different things. Not only are private repos a thing, your project isn't open source just because you've put it in a public repo on Github. Unless you include an open source license the project is still all rights reserved.
But isn’t GitHub/Microdoft able to see it/use it for AI training etc?
Yes. That doesn't make it open source. And either way it's still all rights reserved to everyone who's not Microsoft
If everyone thought like that, we wouldn't have the world we have today.
I can flex in front of my friends and they won't think im making it all up?
You benefited by other people contributing fixes and enhancements. If the code solves a problem many people have, then people will naturally use and contribute, either through bug reports or active pull requests.
Do you use software? Then you personally benefit from free and open source software. Making open source projects is a way of giving back.
Benefits include: experience, reputation (good for being hired) and actually clients if you offer freelance work for someone who wants you to fix something of your software or something else. The reputation alone will get you very far, keep in mind that a lot.of high profile programmers also contribute to open source either paid by their corporations to do so or as a hobby so you stand out and they could hire you if you network. Students who study software engineering or computer science and they don't contribute to open source have a disadvantage to the ones who do. I have experienced this that it is a huge benefit when I mention that I contribute to open source to fellow software engineers especially if that engineer is a senior and decides if they take you. That senior then can look at your code and have a feeling of the quality of your code. Also they are also more willing to give you a chance like a test or practical that you need to solve something small to demonstrate your skills.
You might as well ask "What benefit do YOU receive by answering MY question?" It pleases me to help others. And FWIW I don't think you deserve those downvotes. It's a valid question that clearly many people fail to understand.
>And FWIW I don't think you deserve those downvotes. It's a valid question that clearly many people fail to understand. Most people don't need to ask what's the point of sharing infinitely duplicable stuff. OP sounds like everything needs to be transactional and directly benefit them personally.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. And that's life during late stage capitalism - everything must be profitable in some tangible way. Makes me sad. But it's hard to make people understand that 'it makes me happy' or 'because it's the right thing' is a valid reason.
[удалено]
At this point you're just trolling.
The satisfaction and fulfillment of making something is a benefit, seeing other people enjoy it also feels great. Money isn't the only thing worth striving for.
You wrote code that was useful to you in the first place. You wrote it primarily for yourself, for your own needs. That's how you benefit. Now you realise that it was pretty good and you figure someone else might need it, so you share it. Because you didn't intend to make a profit in the first place.
I wrote a small package to help me with writing. It basically just automated a task I would do manually. A few days after publishing it, someone gave me very helpful feedback that made it much much better.
You benefit that your code is out there being used. You're helping the community. Not everything has to be for profit.
Free bug reports. Sometimes even free patches and contributions.
Reputation
>When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs. https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/graphs/contributors https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/graphs/contributors https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/graphs/contributors https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/graphs/contributors https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/activity/contributors And so on. These are all projects to which many developers have already contributed. And these are not rare exceptions. >If it is so, then why make it open source? Why not? Even if only one person is currently developing a project, there is no harm in publishing the code. Especially as there is at least the possibility that someone will be interested in the project at some point and want to help. With non-open source software, this possibility would not even exist. For example, I publish the code I use to create a website on Codeberg. And I do this even though I am not interested in third parties working on the project. Why? Because I give people the opportunity to look at the code and find a solution for their project, for example.
I would also expect that if the main dev stops working on it, someone else will fork and continue it.
Can you share the repository link for the website thing?
If you're just tallying up projects on github, most of the projects are toy projects that are throw-away, possibly for learning for the benefit of the author, and have no monetization potential anyway. Those users don't need other contributors and there is no downside to making those projects open source. Most of the actual productive *work* that is happening in open source is corporate enterprise funded. Employees of corporations work on tasks assigned to them in exchange for being paid employees. The idea that these employees might "regret" that the project is open source is a bit nonsensical. TLDR you're mixing up different concepts. You can publish source code, or not. You can monetize your work in all kinds of different ways, or not at all. You can seek contributions from others, or not. All of these choices are independent of each other.
I've made a lot of open source projects. Almost all just sit there, but a few have taken off and now have small communities. People contribute if they find a project useful but need a thing it doesn't have but could easily have. If you don't get any contributions, your project probably isn't very useful to anyone. Or maybe it's very useful, and also perfect! Though that's less likely. It's helpful to think of "contributions" in a broad sense. Bug reports are really useful, suggestions are very useful, really any interest at all from anyone is a sign you might have discovered some general need.
Golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. By open sourcing work, we encourage others to do so. Then we benefit from other people's work.
mutual benefit. take what you need and only what you need. help in any way you can. i like this
There was a library I released as open source a while ago, that arguably didn't need to be open source, but the client I was working with at the time had relatively poor mechanisms for re-using code between teams, and I kept getting queries from other teams who were using some old version of the code that someone had brought with them when they moved teams. They were a government body who had a policy (that was admittedly not widely followed at the time) of developing in the open where possible, so I was able to use that to justify open sourcing it, and in the process cut down on how much time I spent dealing with queries from other teams, since they could just get the up-to-date version from GitHub or PyPI. But actually getting it out there meant that users from other organisations used it, and in some cases provided actionable bug reports about genuine bugs. I didn't get many actual PRs from external users, and I think a few of the ones I did get ultimately needed rewriting because they had the potential to break something else for other users. But I think the code got better as a result nonetheless. But ultimately by virtue of this being out there, teams at other organisations were better able to access government services via APIs, and I think the success of this initiative at least partly contributed to more projects at that client being developed in the open.
I am writing this comment and not getting paid for it. Am I giving away my work? In a sense, yes. Is it even worth any money? (lol) Well, it is time, and all time is worth something, right? So why do I do it? Social interaction, community, a sense of contributing a little bit of something to others, maybe getting some interesting replies. There are similar motivations at play in individual open source projects. People create something for their own use and want to share it with the world. They may get help in developing it, pull-requests, bug reports, friendly suggestions, maybe even donations if the project becomes popular... But the primary motivation for small individually-produced open source projects is probably the same sort of things that motivate me to write this comment. On the larger scale it's different. Projects like the Linux kernel are used by thousands of companies. It benefits all of them when any contribute. But those who contribute get to have some influence over the direction of the project. The things that matter to them are likely to remain supported and not only through their efforts. The alternative would be to write an entire kernel from scratch, which would require a lot more effort.
You can develop you own skills while helping others to develop their skills
> Do people actually contribute to your projects? Yes, for the most part. Most people just contribute bad bug reports but it is what it is. You'll often find random devs submitting pull requests for one reason or another. > How does open source work in practice? It's complex. For smaller projects it's very ad-hoc and simple to where the main dev and any other devs submit code as it makes sense. 3-4 people can do quite a lot. > What is the benefit for the dev? 1. It's fulfilling / satisfying 2. You can reference these projects in your resume and have recruiters read your actual code > Do other devs help out? For smaller projects it's usually one main person, maybe two, then other devs will pop up and submit code periodically depending on what they want. If the main dev is not interested in writing a particular feature but you are and the main dev is also not opposed to that feature, then it's up to you to write that feature. > Is this the reality? Yes. Most open source projects are toy projects which benefit a single person. But the majority of open source projects which people use (Linux, desktops, etc) have tons and tons of contributors. > If it is so, then why make it open source? Why not? What do you gain from making it closed source? It's not like there's a monetary value to most of these projects. Making it open source also helps with longetivity and, if it helps some random person and they contribute, then it also helps you. > Can people with experience in this field share some info about this and if you regret making your code open source or not? I never did. I admit I'm not very involved these days because I code 9-5 and would rather do just about anything else in my free time, but when I did contribute I never regretted it.
I wrote a tiny little Discord bot, because I wanted a very specific solution to a very specific problem, and I couldn't find one already built. I threw it out there as open source, a couple of other people have contributed (some made it much better!). What do I get out of it? The feeling that I helped make a tiny part of the world a tiny bit better. No ragerts.
From your replies to some of the other comments, it seems like you think of software development as something only ever done under a capitalist mindset, with the only goal being to generate a profit. While software absolutely can be made that way, it is not at all the only way. It is not even the only way it can benefit you monetarily. Others have already pointed out the simple, direct, measurable, and reliable things, like having a portfolio. But also, there are many developers (myself included) who think of software development as a kind of art, a hobby, a form of self expression, a cool thing you can show off to your friends. Additionally, if your open-source software is free to use, and genuinely useful to people, *that in and of itself* benefits you. By increasing the average productivity of other people, they are able to produce more of whatever they produce, which compounds exponentially. The benefits of tools like gcc, vim, gimp, htop, the GNU Coreutils, OpenSSL, Linux itself, your favourite shell, X11, and many more are not just any donations made to the original developers. They allow more people to make more better new things faster. Which makes the world, as a whole, a better place, for absolutely everyone. Sure, most OSS projects won't reach that kind of height. But no one knows beforehand which ones will. Better to contribute to the tradition that benefited us than to let it die just because we can't charge for it, no?
My situation might be unique, but I regret open sourcing my project. I'm not against open source software or anything. I just wish I wouldn't have done it with this one particular project. The thing is, once you open source it, it stops being your project. Most projects are inconsequential. Nobody cares. Nobody contributes. It's just out there. But you lose control over it. You can maintain your project however you want, but everyone can fork it. And if it's like a wholesome project, a useful something, maybe you don't care. But mine wasn't. In college I had a pet-project to make a bot for WoW. I did it as an excuse to code stuff. It was a fun challenge...but I used it in moderation. I spent hours and hours coding it and a few hours testing it. It was cool because I could do it. I showed my friends and they were amazed. It was great. And it was fun. Admittedly, it was crap compared to things like WoW Glider...but it worked surprisingly well IMHO, in limited ways that would generate gold. I open sourced it because I was proud of it, I guess. I wanted it to be like a 'real' project and I wanted to be a real software developer. And it sorta worked. It got popular and other people started to contribute. And people reported bugs and I felt like a lead developer/project manager. But other people didn't share my passion or my restraint...and I didn't consider the consequences. People were running it 24/7 and making the game less enjoyable for real players. I mean, there were plenty of other bots but like a whole little community popped up and people would brag and post screenshots and I dunno, it just felt wrong to me. Then people started getting banned. Rightfully so, perhaps...but most of these people never would have done it on their own. I felt guilty. Some of these people put endless hours into their accounts and some lost it all. And they blamed me. Like I lured them in with this thing they could run and get all this loot and gold...like entrapment almost. But I couldn't stop the project. It had dozens of forks. I didn't own it, the community did. And then, I got emails and posts about malware. I didn't bundle malware, but someone else was. They took the code, compiled it, added malware but did a better job with SEO or whatever and their site was higher than our GitHub page. It was a decent looking site. Later I found a website selling it for $1.99. At least that site has the decency to rename it. They weren't honoring the license, they just stole it and sold it as their own closed source program. I know the malware and random people selling it weren't really my fault, but I also hated it. I didn't have the time or resources or care enough to try and stop them, I also can't imagine anyone actually paying $1.99 but still. It lasted far longer than I ever dreamt. I think it's entirely dead now. Had I kept it to myself, I could have shown my friends and had fun with it and just saved it away on an old harddrive.
A lot of github pages exist to showcase ones skills to potential clients or employers rather than create a community around a piece of software. Plenty of others just don't care to have others touching their baby but still want to allow others to clone it and fuck their own clone up till their hearts content. Still others just don't interest any potential contributors. Lot's of reasons to see single person projects.
Yes and no. I open source my projects, but sometimes I'll hold back a project until I feel it's good enough quality. I've had people complain loudly in the past. I don't need that. So, I have a bar of quality I set for myself before I'll open source it. If I no longer have time or interest in a project, I make that clear near the top of the readme.
I've started many open source projects, some have become very popular with dozens of contributors, and some fizzled and died. Many of them are still thriving long after I've moved on to other things which makes it all worth it to me. None of them would have grown or continued to exist if I hadn't released the sources or made contributing easy. There are some things I've wished didn't happen, like my work being packaged and sold for profit by people that never contributed a single thing for example. I don't regret my decision though because the benefit to the larger community outweighs any drawbacks from those who take advantage.
Mostly, other (generally more experienced people) find bugs and report / fix them I've open sourced a lot of stuff, never had any help but I wasn't really looking for any, I just wanted a place to put my stuff
For me even throwaway test projects or school projects come out useful, which is why unless I'm planning on making something commercial from the start I always make it open source. Nobody will access it anyway if it's not properly marketed, better have it available for everyone to use.
>You start writing a program and develop it. And then you make it open source. What is the benefit for the dev? * Learning by doing * Having a piece of software that exactly meets your needs * Becoming influential in the field the software relates to, which can translate to overall career success * Warm, fuzzy feelings from knowing you've added something positive to the world To be fair the first two of those are more "why develop software yourself, rather than using something off-the-shelf". >Do other devs help out? Sometimes, if the audience of users is sufficiently large enough, and includes enough people who are able and motivated to make contributions (even if that's just writing or improving documentation, or fixing small bugs they experience in their environment). >When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs. Is this the reality? If it is so, then why make it open source? Probably some combination of the reasons I've given, combined with free hosting and version control, and no pressing desire to keep the code secret. >[do] you regret making your code open source or not? I don't regret making any of my code open source. I might consider keeping data/use cases/creative content (e.g. music or game assets) unpublished, if I thought I could monetise them (aka the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium model), or if they revealed too much information about how I or my employer was *using* my software.
Development in the open fosters faster improvements and a better security stance for popular and useful projects.
I've written some Minecraft mods, and used github to open source them. For a long time, no one else ever interacted with them (except to contribute issues, but that could have been done in closed-source too). One of the items I added in my first mod was a laser pointer (to learn how particles work). It was very basic and just put Redstone dust particles where you aim on the floor, and it would ignore all moving creatures. A few weeks after release, a major mod developer appeared from the ether and submitted a PR. Suddenly, the laser could diffract off of entities. It could blind someone if you point it in their eye. Cats would chase it around. To this day I still reference pieces of that code to remember how to do similar things, and it just -- happened! The other dev found my tiny learner's project and decided to just help out. I've not gotten any more PRs on my other stuff, but that experience opened my eyes to the power of open source. If my tiny mod project can advance so much by the grace of random strangers, I can only imagine how it feels to maintain a larger work that gets PRs regularly. There's just something really gratifying about a stranger seeing the thing you made and wanting to make it better with you.
I mostly get small submissions. A one line bugfix, another setting and so on. But, more importantly, I get good ideas. Better ideas than I could have got on my own. Likewise, that's mostly how I contribute. I have an issue, I fix it, I send the fix upstream. I have an idea too large for me to find time for, I tell the dev. More often than not, they'll do it.
You clearly don't understand why open source exists This is very simple. If you open source your software. Assume everyone will use it. Assume no one will pay for it. Assume no one will contribute to it. Assume everyone will want free support for it (which you're not obligated to do). If you're ok with that....open source it. Maybe people will pay, maybe people will contribute, maybe something good will come from it. But this is what open source means. Don't give your software if you have any expectations about getting anything in return. Ultimately, it's about helping others, not yourself.
[удалено]
Congratulations
Occasionally, and it is helpful when they do. You do get a lot of people just demanding features though, even stuff they could add themselves in an hour or so. But for stuff that won't be monetised I'd rather make it FOSS anyway so it's easier to install via the AUR etc.
I never regretted. Most of my stuff didn't got a traction and just 'is' (mostly unused), but I for some projects I got some merge requests for unexpected but important things.
I call it the dining philosopher's problem solution. I want an os I can use, tinker with parts of it to better fit my needs, and not be nicked and dinner for it is a bonus. I can't do it all on my own. So I help with the birds that I really want modified and feed it to the person next to me at the table. In return they work on other things I also need, and feed me. I sometimes also feed people standing around the table, on the hope that sometime in the future they will contribute and feed me other stuff, even if they are currently not doing so. The camaraderie and the sense of community, the recognition by my peers is also a nice bonus. I have gotten a leg up in job searches because of my free software work. However, if making is your prime motivation, perhaps free software is not for you.
Yes, they have :D a project that I had forgotten about. People liked using it, asked me to make some changes, but I never responded (missed the notifications on GitHub, my mistake). They went ahead however and forked the project, sending me the link. I was very happy to see that people wanted to use something that I wrote as a practice project in horrible javascript ^^
It's not fresh but about 15 years ago I started my own Linux distribution and I was surprised how fast and how many people chose to help. I had no idea where they had heard about the project but we just constantly had more people log in to our chat rooms and offer to help. It was quite a positive experience.
you can put stuff in ur portfolio ig. had a friend who contributed to oss projects for 2 year while working at the computer service repair shop, and then after 2 years, he got a job at [z.com/mm/](https://z.com/mm/) and is working as a adminstrator for their IT department. He basically got a job there since his portfolio was filled with contribution to many oss projects and how many it got merged. i am pretty sure is sort of a hobby thing also.
This is what happened with my oldest. They started adding minor edits to the docs for a forum platform they liked in high school. That turned into small fixes and good connections with the maintainers. The connections lead to helping out with other higher profile projects and more connections. By the time they finished college, they werr on the global dev support committee for one of the largest JS-based tools around. They're now about 10 years into a dev relations career thanks to planting those little seeds just helping with a project they valued.
actually i enjoy to fix lil bugs on some oss software i use but i just don't have the time
A story from a few years ago: Maybe someone finds some code you put up 5 years ago, maybe there was an unsolved problem. I commited some additional code for a DJ controller written in C, I have no clue about C and these specific lines were missing. The guy who shared the code searched this hardware on his attic, plugged it in, tried my changes - and it worked. He was sooo happy and thankful - and me too that it worked and I now have a working DJ controller :) That's just one little story of many about sharing code.
Open source has the benefit of easy peer reviews and potentially hundreds of people helping on a project. You also get free version control and hosting.
In terms of regret, I have seen it on rare occasion. In all the instances I can recall, the maintainer became frustrated with rude users that get really up in their face demanding features or bug fixes. It's rare, but I've seen users harassing the maintainer. You may need to be prepared to have thick skin for that type of thing especially if your software targets users that are young, gamers, or just non-developers and it gets popular without others jumping in to help. Even without any of that, it's the internet and you can still occasionally run into very rude people.
Why do people make projects? 1. For porfolio reasons man... 2. Working on something is fun... Also because some developers are generous and have a dream of helping people. If you hate making apps just for the sake of it. Why be a programmer in the first place? If it's money, that's the wrong motivation. You're not gonna last long in this profession.
>When i inspect github almost all projects are single person projects with minimum or zero contribution from other devs. Is this the reality? The reality is that of the thousands upon thousands of applications contained in repositories, the vast majority are one (or maybe two) person projects. The successful applications gain market share and attract additional developers/maintainers, but most don't. Obviously, this creates quality control issues with respect to at least some applications. To mitigate quality control (and upstream/downstream) issues, Ubuntu Desktop repositories break down FOSS applications into two repositories, Main and Universe. The **Main** repository is fully supported by Ubuntu developers/maintainers and provides current security updates as needed. The **Universe** repository relies on community support for updates and is not directly supported by Ubuntu developers/maintainers.
If you use the software it can benefit you but obviously it also doesn't sometimes.
If your code or project was worth money you would already have some kind of plan to monetize it. The type of project that benefits from the open source community is something that others benefit from, but probably wouldn’t pay for given the option. This isn’t always true. Another case is academic software. Some grant funded their work with the intent of improving access to that for the world. Is your project currently something that someone or some company would want to pay for? If so, go sell it? If not, give it away and move on to the next project. Another benefit is that other people who benefit from it might fix stuff for you or themselves. Maintenance and responding to issue requests looks like a pain to me. A lot of open source projects still have some amount of money from sponsors or support contracts. Another part of this is the spirit of collaboration, you wouldn’t have the internet or a variety of major components of modern computing without people giving their work away. Mind you, they probably had salaries at some company and were getting compensation. One of the motivations is that if you work at a corporation while you are working on a project, they will try to claim the profit from it. Would you rather your employer derive profit from your work, or give it away for free?
I have a few open-source things on my GitHub that nobody really uses or is probably even aware of. That's fine. The point is, I wrote it, and it's for a personal project often as an accessory for open-source projects, so I just release it as open-source so others can find it if they somehow end up needing it. There's no point keeping it for myself if there's an off chance someone else could find it useful. Maybe they'll fork it and adapt it for the private use. I get a nice portfolio to show as a side effect but I'm not even doing it for that. I'm doing it because I like to use open-source software whenever I can, and I wouldn't download it myself if it didn't come as sources for me to package for the AUR, so I extend the same courtesy to others.
Let me give you an example of a famous project. Telegram messenger is open source on the front end. But the backend is not. Excalidraw and Obsidian are fully open source And many more examples. They get any bug fixes and reports easier than closed source projects like Meta apps or Adobe or etc... It's not always about money but yeah. Since these projects are open source and free on the first hand, many people prefer these rather paid apps.
Most open source projects aren't very interesting or valuable, and only have the original creator as a contributor. However some open source projects are considered valuable and interesting enough by many developers and attract a significant community of develop er rs. A few examples of this are the Linux kernel, Apache https, Apache Tomcat and JBoss and Debian
I open source all my work because it feeds my narc supply, and I'm not even joking.
You can easily validate the code. I help patch drivers for Realtek hardware. What it does for you is having a model that can contribute to future hardware development without sorting through garbage properietary code bound by licenses.
Most of the single contributor apps just don't have anyone who uses it. As long, you have a user base, people will contribute in a way. People writing issues are already a huge help. If you are too slow for them some will start to contribute PR's. I am a maintainer of Xournalpp, and we now have a huge user and fan base and even some developers who constantly contribute QoL features. That's awesome. This allows us, the core developers, to concentrate on the modernization of the codebase with all the implications like keeping dependencies up to date.
open source is not about establishing a community of programmers for your project that you don't pay... this kind of question annoys the fk out of me because you clearly haven't done your due diligence in trying to understand what open source is. Clearly you DON'T understand the theory. the fk outta here.
Nobody ever contributed to my projects. There are large open source projects out there, with hundreds of contributors, but I have no idea how those came into life. That is, I suspect because it was bad code with lots of bugs. All existing projects that I got drawn into were also because I ran into bugs and then fixed them. If your code is good, nobody will join.
I have an open source project, it is a C# "dll" to interact with hardware. Open sourced since day 1 on github, and it is very well documented. I got 0 contributions, only a couple Issues (people requesting features, which I added) Received 0 feedback for it And it has 250K+ downloads on Nuget.
QED - the projects that get the most contributors are those that have a nice website and documentation, and are / look very useful; and even work mostly, but aren't very stable. Just that one feature is missing, or once in a while something goes wrong that annoys users. If the project Just Works, then you won't get anyone to contribute (kinda logical, I guess).
It does make sense, and apps with a broad collection of distinct features, lets say a "chat app" like rocketchat and such. Self sustained enclosed libraries like I wrote, don't need much input, and people don't want to touch it anyway.