
A leap of faith: Committing to open source - theBashShell
https://github.com/readme/henry-zhu
======
hardwaresofton
I don't know if I've had my head under a rock, but Github's README[0] is the
bigger news to me -- Are we going to finally see the end of technical posting
on Medium in ~5 years? I never even knew README existed until seeing this
post.

[0]: [https://github.com/readme](https://github.com/readme)

~~~
vin047
It doesn't look like an alternative to Medium to me – its a collection of
posts by _nominated_ open source developers, as opposed to a technical
blogging platform

~~~
hardwaresofton
Yeah you're right -- this is very much a curated selection, but the amount of
social-ish features that github has taken on lately like the customizable
profile pages[0][1] suggests that they might want to occupy this space...

Adding an offering of developer blogging seems like a slam dunk if they want
to continue being a fixture of developers world wide. Arguably it's not so
great for other alternatives (GitLab, BitBucket, etc) and more lock-in is
probably not great, even if the garden aren't locked around us right now.

[0]: [https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-
yo...](https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-
profile/managing-your-profile-readme)

[1]: [https://oddblogger.com/personalizing-github-
profile](https://oddblogger.com/personalizing-github-profile)

~~~
Thorentis
I fully expect Github to go down the dangerous path of becoming a walled
garden. Big companies like Microsoft just can't help themselves. Give it 10
years absolutely max. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, but don't expect
it to last forever. Google Code, Sourceforge, etc. Been there done that. These
things rise and fall constantly.

~~~
hardwaresofton
Yeah I agree, but can you blame them? They've almost single-handedly borne the
cost of supporting open source in the most tangible way you can (hosting the
code, supporting "remixing" and innovation) for so long. As you say, these
things never last, but this is what happens when you don't have a Stallman-
esque BDFL/figure involved in some product. People (myself included) might
under-estimate how insane the free software movement was/is -- it just isn't
normal to find something that is free and _stays_ free.

Whether I/we can blame them or not, it does feel good that there are some
other business models in the space, I personally am a huge fan of GitLab[0] (I
pay for an upgrade membership though it's nothing crazy), and on the more
home-brewed front there's HN darling sourcehut[1]. Honestly if I was a GitLab
project manager that browses HN... I might try and shark this idea -- you
already "pay" for Gitlab Pages, why not streamline it, offer a netlify-like
experience on top of it and try to get there ahead of Github?

[EDIT] - the "them" in "can you blame them" is intended to be the early Github
team and/or their Microsoft equivalents. People like to put out good PR
releases, but selling means something. The people who sold are aware of the
the risks of selling and the loss of control/vision. Along with that
realization/knowledge I think it's expected for them to have felt some
fatigue/been expectant of some recompense for supporting open source as much
as they have over the years.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)

[1]: [https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

------
ColinEberhardt
A great article - and lines like this really resonate with me "More than
project management skills or technical expertise, empathy is the most
important skill in open source."

However, the article doesn't address the most obvious question, how does Henry
fund this activity?

~~~
jgilias
Well, the article mentions his Patreon, as well as features a GitHub Sponsors
button at the end of it.

~~~
ColinEberhardt
True, both were mentioned in passing - but it would be good to hear about how
sustainable this is?

If an open source maintainer relies on GH sponsors, Patreon, Open Collective
then they are going to have to invest time in marketing themselves to the
community. It's an odd dynamic.

~~~
edoceo
Gotta have some hustle if you wanna get paid.

~~~
fsewe20
..which is a real shame, as there are very talented people working on public
goods who don't have that "hustle" and could do with the support.

Open source / Free software has been valued over $400 billion, and supports
our entire economy, funding developers shouldn't be a problem.

Open source / Free software is a public goods issue, and we should be looking
for the best ways to support them.

Quadratic funding could be a useful mechanism for this:

[https://wtfisqf.com/](https://wtfisqf.com/)

------
smabie
Man I hate emojis. But that's probably because they make me feel old. When I
was a teen I was :p'ing and :)'ing on IRC. How times have changed

~~~
marvy
Here's a question I've vaguely wondered but never mustered the effort to
actually look up: how does IRC work? Like, if two people want to talk to each
other over IRC, do they need to be connected to the same same IRC server at
the same time?

If so, does that mean that IRC is basically like instant messaging along the
lines of AOL Instant Messanger, or Google chat? Or is there something that
makes IRC very different?

~~~
techsupporter
For standalone IRC servers, yes. But many IRC servers are collected together
into networks (Undernet, Freenode, EFnet, and so on) and in that case all you
need to be is in the same channel on the same network.

IRC is "very different" in the sense that it's more open and more freewheeling
than, say, Slack. Slack is basically IRC with a slicker coat of paint and more
monetization.

~~~
marvy
Never tried Slack, so that comparison doesn't help too much :)

But I think I'm getting the idea now. It's a similar idea to a typical instant
messenger, except that since the protocol is standard, you have federation
that actually works, much like someone who uses gmail can email someone else
who uses yahoo.

Plus you have the concept of a channel, which seems to have no direct analog
in a typical instant messenger, but seems to be essentially a persistent
chatroom that doesn't vanish even if nobody is in the channel at the moment.

Is that about right?

~~~
rabidrat
Most of IRC is on those 'channels' (#whatever). and most channels (at least
back in the day) were public, so you could just go to #books or whatever. For
example, I spent my formative years on #uiuc, where there was a healthy
community of 50-100 people from the university I was at. Newcomers would stop
by on a regular basis and ask a question or just start chatting or troll or
even grief--there were kickbans and scripts and bots to help manage larger
communities.

Also these persistent channels are created just by joining the channel with
that name; they disappear when the last person leaves. Notably, the first
person to join a chatroom gets "operator" status, and thus the rights to
change channel settings and kick/ban people etc. So there evolved a culture of
bots, who would sit in channels with op status and 'occupy' it in case someone
came along; these bots had op status themselves, and were programmed to auto-
ban certain users or even domains, and auto-op their owners and their owners'
friends. slap me summa dat +o.

And of course, there were the bot wars and the attempts at deliberate
netsplits to try and steal op status, which were fun games for the script
kiddies, but would really take the piss out of your evening chat when they
would come by.

~~~
shifto
Totally forgot about the slap command. Thought of it because you said to 'slap
you some of that +O'.

shifto slaps rabidrat around a bit with a large trout

~~~
senko
Fun fact: slap was a client command that just sent "action" over the
channel/privmsg, which would get rendered as something like:

* <nick> <action text>

More generally, on most clients you could use "/me <text" command to do the
same thing. And on the protocol level, it was done by a mini-protocol on top
of IRC, called DCC (direct client-connection), that would look like:

PRIVMSG #channel :^AACTION text^A

(where "PRIVMSG #channel :text" was a way to send a normal message, and ^A is
Ctrl-A).

DCC was also used as signalling for file transfer. Clients wishing to send
files would open a high-end port on their machine and send a DCC message with
the file name, IP and port to connect to (similar to active FTP).

(yes, I spent an inordinate amount on time on IRC...)

~~~
shifto
Fun fact indeed! I knew all these things but never how they actually worked.
When I was deep into IRC I was a bit too young to understand the technical
side of it but I sure knew how to download a lot of warez over DCC!

