<story><title>NPM Bans Terminal Ads</title><url>https://www.zdnet.com/article/npm-bans-terminal-ads/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zelon88</author><text>I release a ton of my work with open source licensing and I&amp;#x27;ve never thought of it as a revenue stream.&lt;p&gt;If people are financially burdened by making their project open-source; then don&amp;#x27;t make it open source. Donating something to the community and then getting offended when nobody reciprocates is disingenuous. It&amp;#x27;s part of the problem with &amp;quot;freemium&amp;quot; software these days where developers think I should be indebted to them for eternity because they did something with no ROI in sight. That&amp;#x27;s not my problem! There were 100,000,000 developers before you who had to write the ISA, the compiler&amp;#x2F;interpreter, the OS, the firmware in every device... If I gave each one a nickle I&amp;#x27;d be in worse shape than you are.&lt;p&gt;Sure, it&amp;#x27;s possible to turn a profit making open-source software. If that&amp;#x27;s a goal you have then buckle up because it&amp;#x27;s not a smooth ride. I liken it to being a starving artist. It&amp;#x27;s not for everyone, so if you already bitch about being hungry all the time maybe you should just look into a day job instead.</text></item><item><author>cj</author><text>While I don&amp;#x27;t particularly like the idea of stuffing ads into npm logs, I don&amp;#x27;t have the same visceral negative reaction that many people have in these HN threads on this topic.&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of the people complaining about this are well-paid tech workers writing code for well-funded companies that profit off of open source code without providing any reciprocal value to the open source projects in return. (Of course, that statement isn&amp;#x27;t true for 100% of companies, but I&amp;#x27;d guess that less than 10% of companies using open source code donate back to the open source projects they use)&lt;p&gt;Something about this whole debate makes me a bit uneasy.&lt;p&gt;You have people working mostly for free, developing open-source, FREE code that provides incredible value to the for-profit companies that use the open source code to generate (sometimes) massive amounts of revenue.&lt;p&gt;Given the amount of value open source provides to for-profit companies (with the open source maintainers rarely getting any reciprocal value from the companies that profit off them), why is it so alarming to think that these maintainers might think of a clever idea like this to make a couple thousand bucks?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn&amp;#x27;t).&lt;p&gt;But instead of attacking the guy for trying, I really wish the discussion were focussed on how the community of open-source consumers can contribute back to the open source ecosystem in a way that promotes the sustainability of the projects and community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kyledrake</author><text>&amp;gt; I release a ton of my work with open source licensing and I&amp;#x27;ve never thought of it as a revenue stream.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the problem - nobody treats being an independent OSS dev as a possible career, so we either get 1) extremely privileged people that have the significant amount of time and resources required to contribute substantially for no payment, 2) open source that serves to promote a corporate goal, and 3) less and lower quality hobby contributions because the rational people realize they&amp;#x27;re doing free work to get treated by garbage by people that feel entitled to free-as-in-beer software and choose not to do that.&lt;p&gt;Imagine how much worse any industry would be if nobody got paid for doing it. Now imagine how much better the OSS ecosystem would be if more people could make a living doing nothing but OSS on their terms. That&amp;#x27;s the goal here. We want to transform OSS from a starving artists realm for privileged people to a place where people can make careers. I&amp;#x27;d be totally cool to see some dev-focused ads to make that happen.</text></comment>
<story><title>NPM Bans Terminal Ads</title><url>https://www.zdnet.com/article/npm-bans-terminal-ads/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zelon88</author><text>I release a ton of my work with open source licensing and I&amp;#x27;ve never thought of it as a revenue stream.&lt;p&gt;If people are financially burdened by making their project open-source; then don&amp;#x27;t make it open source. Donating something to the community and then getting offended when nobody reciprocates is disingenuous. It&amp;#x27;s part of the problem with &amp;quot;freemium&amp;quot; software these days where developers think I should be indebted to them for eternity because they did something with no ROI in sight. That&amp;#x27;s not my problem! There were 100,000,000 developers before you who had to write the ISA, the compiler&amp;#x2F;interpreter, the OS, the firmware in every device... If I gave each one a nickle I&amp;#x27;d be in worse shape than you are.&lt;p&gt;Sure, it&amp;#x27;s possible to turn a profit making open-source software. If that&amp;#x27;s a goal you have then buckle up because it&amp;#x27;s not a smooth ride. I liken it to being a starving artist. It&amp;#x27;s not for everyone, so if you already bitch about being hungry all the time maybe you should just look into a day job instead.</text></item><item><author>cj</author><text>While I don&amp;#x27;t particularly like the idea of stuffing ads into npm logs, I don&amp;#x27;t have the same visceral negative reaction that many people have in these HN threads on this topic.&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of the people complaining about this are well-paid tech workers writing code for well-funded companies that profit off of open source code without providing any reciprocal value to the open source projects in return. (Of course, that statement isn&amp;#x27;t true for 100% of companies, but I&amp;#x27;d guess that less than 10% of companies using open source code donate back to the open source projects they use)&lt;p&gt;Something about this whole debate makes me a bit uneasy.&lt;p&gt;You have people working mostly for free, developing open-source, FREE code that provides incredible value to the for-profit companies that use the open source code to generate (sometimes) massive amounts of revenue.&lt;p&gt;Given the amount of value open source provides to for-profit companies (with the open source maintainers rarely getting any reciprocal value from the companies that profit off them), why is it so alarming to think that these maintainers might think of a clever idea like this to make a couple thousand bucks?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not arguing that npm install logs should be packed full of ads (it shouldn&amp;#x27;t).&lt;p&gt;But instead of attacking the guy for trying, I really wish the discussion were focussed on how the community of open-source consumers can contribute back to the open source ecosystem in a way that promotes the sustainability of the projects and community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pixelbath</author><text>&amp;gt;If people are financially burdened by making their project open-source; then don&amp;#x27;t make it open source.&lt;p&gt;This is largely my position. I view contributing code to open source projects almost as altruism. I don&amp;#x27;t expect compensation or reward, and I do it out of a general feeling of wanting to contribute something unselfish to the world. The fact that some open source projects &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; important is a secondary concern; I know I don&amp;#x27;t consider any of my FOSS code to be important to many people other than myself.&lt;p&gt;That said, my primary income comes from working on proprietary closed-source software. I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever interviewed for a position with a company that contributes most of its code to FOSS, so I&amp;#x27;ve really never seen that model work in-person.</text></comment>