
Being Thankful for Free Software Developers - ashitlerferad
https://fosspost.org/opinions/people-be-thankful-for-free-software-developers
======
jordigh
This is a starry-eyed blog post. I like it, and I miss not having more of
these. We need more starry-eyed dreamers because they get good things done.

I just spent some time with the Debian crew at the last Debconf here in Mtl.
I've always liked their attitude and I love their operating system -- and so
does everyone else who has ever created a Debian derivative. Others at Debconf
felt the same. Bradley Kuhn even said something like what a breath of fresh
air it was to not have to apologise for being a free software supporter. I
love how organic Debian is and how the conference was perfectly run with
livestreaming and IRC bots keeping us abreast of the next event. These
polychromatically-haired dreamers know how to get things done.

So, it's good to see that the starry-eyed blog posts haven't stopped.

~~~
fny
Why would someone have to apologize for being a free software supporter? I
consider my FSF membership a point of pride.

~~~
b4ux1t3
I'm all for free software. Really, I am. I just have a problem with the idea
that free software is absolutely the only way to go. I have no problem with
people who refuse to run non-free software. I have a problem when they insist
that I'm doing it wrong by running Windows.

Sent from my Fedora-running laptop.

~~~
mikegerwitz
Free software activists and advocates are often accused of "user shaming". And
they often do. Generally speaking, it's difficult to both consider and balance
others opinions when you have a hard-line stance on something. It's a sign of
experience and empathy when you can. Not everyone can.

With regards to software freedom: we wish that nobody would have to sacrifice
their four freedoms to use proprietary software, but if they wish to do so,
that is their choice. But we have an obligation to discourage it---not only
because we are opposed to it, but because others' use of proprietary software
in effect encourages others to use it as well. For example, the GNU operation
system would never prevent users from installing proprietary software.
(Actually, it can't, because someone would consider that to be an anti-feature
and simply remove it.) But GNU and the FSF would never endorse distributions
that encourage you to do so.

So you're not "doing it wrong" by running Windows in the sense that you're
free to do your computing however you wish, and me insisting that you do
otherwise would be disrespecting you as much as if someone insisted that I use
proprietary software. I may not respect proprietary software, but I respect
that you've given consideration and have decided to use it.

~~~
throwaway08320
> Free software activists and advocates are often accused of "user shaming".

What do you mean with "shaming"? I've been at many DebConfs and I have never
heard any other DD calling people names just for using some closed source
software.

~~~
mikegerwitz
> What do you mean with "shaming"?

Making users feel put down in some manner for using proprietary software, even
when they might not be aware of the issues surrounding it. Users might be made
to feel like they're hurting themselves and others in doing so. While being
made to feel personally responsible (intentionally or not), they might then be
exposed to a barrage of statements about how proprietary software is bad/evil
and all of the problems surrounding it, which might make them feel even worse
about their position.

This can have mixed results. If a user _didn't_ feel personally attached to
those problems, then he/she might find it informative and a good illustration
of the problem. Otherwise, users might become defensive or angry. Some might
feel ashamed or bullied.

rms can come off that way, for example, even though he legitimately doesn't
intend for that to happen. He has to balance his writing style with other
concerns. One of his articles[0] was the topic of discussion on an internal
GNU list where I and others provided some feedback to reduce the sense I just
described. He makes strong, important points in the article, but it can be
off-putting to people who aren't a part of the free software community. So for
free software advocates reading it, it might seem informative and an excellent
example of the issues, whereas someone not familiar with software freedom
might experience the issues I mentioned above. It can be difficult to convey
that using proprietary software is doing harm by encouraging others to use it,
for example.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-
prog...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-program.html)
(compare with earlier versions on archive sites)

------
AlisdairO
I really liked this post. Obviously everyone has different motivations, but at
its heart FOSS is an enormous collection of cooperative and/or charitable
work, and the industry as a whole should be really, really proud of it.

One other option for giving back - just send an email saying thanks, and that
you love the project. I get such an email once or twice each week for my open
source project, and it really brightens up my day. I'm lucky enough to not
really need any donations, but everybody needs their spirits lifted from time
to time.

Knowing that your contribution has made a positive impact on someone else's
life is a powerful thing, and from the user's perspective costs very little to
do.

------
firmgently
I love that open source exists and am very grateful that people have given
their time to make stuff that I get so much pleasure out of using for free. I
feel like the article suggests that programmers are the only people who ever
produce work on a voluntary basis though.

"If you ask an engineer, a doctor, a professor, a teacher or a farmer to give
you one of the products they do for free, probably they will just refuse. You
won’t find a professor working full time in a university for free. You won’t
find a civil engineer working on building houses for free. You won’t find a
farmer giving you vegetables for free."

If you ask Adobe to give you Photoshop or someone who makes a piece of $10
software to give it to you for free they will probably refuse. There's a
difference between offering something voluntarily and offering something for
sale then being asked to provide it for free. Engineers do sometimes work for
free eg. on charity projects as do many other types of business. Even ad
agencies I've worked at did a certain number of free projects for charity. A
farmer does regularly give me vegetables for free. I've made software for free
but I've also spent a lot of time making props, art and other things for free.
A friend runs a small charity, she works long full-time hours unpaid and often
has trouble getting her own bills paid. I've also known more than a few
selfish coders...

I'm certainly not arguing against the premise of being thankful for free
software ( _thank you programmers_ \- I really mean that, I've sent messages
of gratitude to devs in the past and am reminding myself to do it more in
future) but let's not start thinking that software developers are inherently
better human beings than anyone else. Feels a bit myopic :)

~~~
tokai
Doctors do provide their services for free. Doctors without Borders is a prime
example of this. Professors give research, their primary product, away for
free as well (Other actors do still profit from their work though. Movements
such as Open Access tries to address this problem).

------
scandox
Inspired by this I went over to donate money to Arch Linux, since I've just
been getting nothing but joy from using it for the last 2 years.

They use Click2Pledge which, frankly, is a UX which is a tad frightening, but
I'm not a snob so I carry on.

And then I find that of all the countries in the world they seem to have left
Ireland out (Eire, Republic of Ireland, no, nothing). I mean they have the
Isle of Man - but not Ireland. So, I cannot complete their payment form.

So what all these guys need is a separate FOSS organisation exclusively
dedicated to fund-raising.

~~~
VLM
Careful with re-invention. I was going to suggest SPI, but funny enough
they're already on the list at:

[https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/](https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/)

I see the arch linux web page links to "click to pledge" service as reported,
which apparently is extremely limited in legal coverage area, but the SPI Inc
web page for arch links to a paypal link, and paypal seems to "work" in most
countries on the planet.

Back when it took 5000 bitcoins to buy a pizza and my 486 software miner was
generating about 100 coins per week, I donated 5 BTC to the FSF who promptly
wanted no part of the accounting and legal problems so they got rid of my 5
BTC. At the time that 5 BTC was worth like 50 cents but now would fund
somewhere around 2 or 3 gradstudent-years of development, Oh Well. Anyway BTC
should be a viable transfer mechanism.

~~~
scandox
Oh that's great. I'll do it there now. They really should link straight to
that page instead of the Click2Pledge...

------
geff82
I always like to think Free/Open source Software is the only known occurrnce
where socialism works. You give 100% of what you have for free as a
programmer, but in that very same moment you make everyone, including
yourself, richer and more free. As software does not get consumed, everyone's
assets rise.

~~~
scarygliders
Tikhon Jelvis, Lead Data Scientist at Target (2016-present) has a very good
answer to "Is free software socialism?" at [https://www.quora.com/Is-the-open-
source-movement-socialism](https://www.quora.com/Is-the-open-source-movement-
socialism) \- I will quote the answer in its entirety for the benefit of this
thread...

No. The two are not related in any useful or meaningful ways.

The first thing to note is that there are actually two core ways of thinking
about open source software: the "open source" movement and the "free software"
movement. While the two work together perfectly well—and most people probably
share some of the views from both camps—they are philosophically distinct.

The open source movement is pragmatic at heart: the main idea is that
developing software in the open leads to better software. More eyes and more
diverse opinions on your codebase is a strength that often overshadows the
commercial benefits of keeping software proprietary. This is the camp more
often associated with more "permissive" licenses like MIT and BSD, and mirrors
the philosophy I've seen at most companies that release and maintain
significant open source projects (often based on their own internal tools).

This movement has no parallels to socialism whatsoever. It believes in open
source collaboration as a strong model for software development but doesn't
opine at all about property rights.

The free software movement, spearheaded by the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
and Richard Stallman, is more ideological at heart. It originally started from
the idea that you, as a consumer, have the right to understand and modify the
software that runs on your machines. This is codified in the four freedoms
that Free Software aims to protect:

* The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

These freedoms are often enacted with "copyleft" licenses like the GNU Public
License (GPL). The idea is that you have the right to read, modify and
distribute software under the GPL (including selling it commercially) as long
as you distribute it under the same license. You can do more or less whatever
you like as long as you provide all your users with the modified source to
your software and give them the same rights.

The motivation behind the movement is to protect the rights that you have over
your own devices and software, which is not significantly related to socialism
at all. If anything, it's a way to strengthen what you can do with your own
property!

There is one way you could see the Free Software movement in a way that
parallels socialism: it's a collective effort and stands against "intellectual
property".

However, this view misses some important details. Unlike socialism, Free
Software is not concerned with property and how it is distributed in society;
rather, it simply does not view "intellectual property" as property at all. In
fact, many people in the movement don't regard "intellectual property" as
property at all; instead, they view the term as a misleading way to group
together several fundamentally unrelated laws into a single concept.

Richard Stallman wrote an interesting essay on this topic: Did You Say
“Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage. His style is not for
everyone—he comes off as very certain, almost fanatical, about his views—but
it makes the idea eminently clear. The core idea is that copyrights, patents
and trademarks are all fundamentally different from each other and
fundamentally different from physical property; the term "intellectual
property" is misleading because it groups these three disparate concerns
together and implies they are variants on physical property.

There is nothing socialist about that view whatsoever. Trying to reform the
laws and cultural norms around "intellectual property"—especially when you
realize it's fundamentally distinct from other notions of property—is entirely
orthogonal to socialism.

Both the Open Source and the Free Software movements are fundamentally
unrelated to socialism.

~~~
phkahler
I find your argument that OSS and FLOSS are "fundamentally unrelated to
socialism" rather strange. So much so that I had to google definitions of
socialism:

1)a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that
the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or
regulated by the community as a whole.

2)(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of
capitalism and the realization of communism.

Regarding OSS you wrote: "This movement has no parallels to socialism
whatsoever. It believes in open source collaboration as a strong model for
software development but doesn't opine at all about property rights." That
seems to fit the part of definition 1 about means of production quite well.
Actually I'm talking about design rather than the traditional means of
production you might call replication.

As for Free Software, yes they are against the notion of intellectual
property. But it is for pragmatic reasons actually. If you buy/obtain some
software under traditional IP rules you are not allowed to modify it. That is
in contrast to regular property laws - you can buy a car and modify it in all
kinds of ways and resell it.

Where things get interesting is in the means of production in the traditional
sense - producing copies. Software has the odd property that it can be
replicated at nearly zero cost. In traditional industries from farming to
manufacturing, production is a big deal and is where a lot of the costs are.
You have resources and then you have utilization of those resources. People
like to stake claims on either the resources, the means of production, or when
that isn't enough, the design (IP) of the product. In contrast, communism want
to take individual ownership of the resources and production away and claim it
as community property. Free software also aims to strip that proprietary
nature away from software and make it more of a community asset.

It may not be a perfect analogy, but to say it's fundamentally unrelated seems
really strange to me.

------
emerged
Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest
of the developers. In terms of networking with other developers and building a
resume which leads to real jobs with real pay. Not to mention the value of
real world developer experience.

Be thankful, yep - but as someone with a background in OSS, I'm quite happy
with the intangible dividends it's already paid.

~~~
josteink
> Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest
> of the developers.

While I know that is true first hand, I think that's largely due to network
effects.

You've most likely _built_ your own open-source project on top of other
existing open-source projects, an existing free platform. That means that
there's a big bootstrapping cost you didn't have to pay for in terms of
commercial software or developer-time (if you'd instead had chosen to make
that platform yourself).

And since you got off so lightly, it's easy to think "I'll just give this away
too". What if making that first release had cost you 10x more effort, or
hundreds of dollars?

But now your project is FOSS and you get the benefits in the terms of people
using your software and submitting patches back. Do you think you'd have
something equally compelling to offer if you had to make it all from scratch?
Or do you think you'd get contributors if using your product depended on a
wide range of other commercial software?

Basically, your open-source project "works out" because of other open-source
software. Even as a developer, you should be thankful for free software
developers.

Just how much free software do you depend on? A text-editor? A programming-
language runtime and toolchain? A operating system for that to run on? A
platform SDK for the developers of that platform? A kernel surely?

And for each of those "high level" concepts there, you probably need to
account for the very same thing recursively and more: server-software running
their project's webpages and mailing-lists and other developer infrastructure.
Plus whatever _that_ recursively depends on.

The amount of free effort involved seems to defy enumeration. I guess it _is_
turtles all the way down.

I think open-source today has come a long way compared to where it was a
couple decades ago, and can't imagine how much perseverance and persistence
this has required from how just many people. It's an enormous achievement.

My hats off and thanks to all of you, everywhere :)

~~~
maccard
I agree, however: > Just how much free software do you depend on? A text-
editor? A programming-language runtime and toolchain? A operating system for
that to run on? A platform SDK for the developers of that platform? A kernel
surely?

there are many people who use closed source editors (sublime/VS), on a nonfree
tool chain (VC++) on a nonfree OS (windows) with a closed source SDK And
kernel.

~~~
josteink
What about the servers you deploy to? What about the toolchain used by the
upstream platform developers you depend on? What about the software powering
their CI-systems?

Whatever free software they depend on, you indirectly depend on too.

~~~
maccard
Not everyone works on web applications, and I don't claim to have any
knowledge of the platform that they develop with.

My point wasn't that I don't depend on free software (I absolutely do, and I
do donate to the software I use every year), but that it is possible to be a
developer and have very little interaction with free software.

~~~
josteink
But the projects you do depend on probably have web-pages, even if none of you
are into web-development primarily.

And thus more open source dependencies unravel :)

------
twii
I hope crypto currencies will eventually enable people and companies to more
easily donate with micro payments to free software developers without the need
for the greedy/stealing paypal or other banks.

I have dozens of free/open-source projects that make me 0 dollars while some
of them are being used quite a bit. I currently cannot find spare time to
improve on those projects because I need to work for a company to pay the
bills..

I would love to have some income out of it, but I refuse to use paypal. First
they take a proportional part of the sum as fee, second they take another
proportional part by making up their own exchange rates for converting
currencies. I refuse to support those companies and I truly hope crypto
currencies will nullify them.

~~~
aerique
Obligatory post asking for links to your projects.

(But I truly am curious.)

------
neya
Cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P1Yw34...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P1Yw346ZwAoJ:https://fosspost.org/opinions/people-
be-thankful-for-free-software-developers+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

------
throw2016
It's a huge generational gift, and people should now be concerned about how to
sustain the free software movement. There is clearly an ongoing shift from a
generation of 'starry eyed' ideologues to hired open source developers.

Some may argue that's moving forward but it's diminished in many ways by
losing its core essence and 'motivation' to exist.

Companies can contribute by open source by supporting developers and projects
without seeking influence by hiring or acquiring them. But then many don't
even bother doing that.

We need to find a way to develop a ecosystem that has sustenance from
businesses and especially individuals and yet leaves the developers and
projects 'independent'. Leaving it to sort itself out has already led to a
sort of centralization and will eventually lead to loss of control and
accountability.

------
thingamarobert
As much as the introduction and the first two sections motivate the post, I
think the last "Don't Just Feel Pleasure, Show It" section is the one that
contains the main take-home message in my opinion. If one has benefited by
using FOSS, one must acknowledge that it cannot get better and magically
sustain itself without support from those who use it or appreciate the
principles underlying the movement. The level of transparency and freedom of
choice that FOSS offers to users, the DIY ethic and a sense of community it
encourages is indeed something to be grateful for, and deserves a generous
(subjective) contribution!

If one does not contribute directly by submitting bugs or developing FOSS
itself, supporting organisations such as...

* The Free Software Foundation ([http://fsf.org](http://fsf.org))

* Software in the Public Interest ([http://www.spi-inc.org](http://www.spi-inc.org))

* Electronic Frontier Foundation ([https://www.eff.org](https://www.eff.org))

* Let's Encrypt ([http://letsencrypt.org](http://letsencrypt.org))

... I believe can go a long way. I'm sure there are more - when one feels
grateful for the service the software has rendered them, one just needs to
make the effort to find out who has written the software and whether there's a
"Donate" button somewhere through which this can be expressed, however small
the actual amount.

~~~
tajen
\- Is LE worth contributing for, given it's a joint Google initiative?

\- FOSS really need to send out proper invoices, donations are a corporate
risk and I have to spend time to my accountant to justify the necessity of
donations, every year.

~~~
thingamarobert
I didn't realise that LE was a Google initiative. I know that it's supported
by the Chrome project (and thus Google), but also by Mozilla, EFF and a lot of
other supporters. Could you please point me to any article that discusses its
Google affiliation? Thanks!

------
jasonkester
I like to think of Free Software Developers as rational actors. So while they
certainly deserve my gratitude, I disagree that we owe them any other
compensation that they didn't specifically ask for.

As the author notes, developers, doctors, lawyers, etc. know their value and
charge accordingly. A developer who charges $0 for his work product must,
therefore, be making up that value elsewhere. Most major Open Source projects
certainly are.

Chrome, Linux, MySQL, and lots of other big names all have corporate backing.
Large companies paying people to build software to advance their agenda.
Commoditize the Operating System to sell more servers. Control the Browser to
keep the rug un-pulled from your web empire. There's really not a lot of pure
charity to be found.

True, you do find the occasional artiste working away for no money, living the
officially sanctioned stereotype for what an open source developer is supposed
to look like. But I tend to hope that he knows the score and is therefore
looking out for his own interests.

There are lots of good reasons to develop open source. But I don't consider
"charity to big companies" to be one of them.

~~~
foldr
> A developer who charges $0 for his work product must, therefore, be making
> up that value elsewhere._

No, even assuming that they're "rational", they must _have expected to_ make
up that value elsewhere. It's entirely possible to write something useful, in
the expectation of some amount of praise and recognition, and get nothing but
a lot of whining in return for it.

------
denisehilton
People often underestimate the effort and motivation behind open source
software. They download it and never come back again. We should be thankful to
those developers who are working just to facilitate us without any monetary
benefits. We should always donate even if it's $1.

------
pbreit
I get the sentiment but the request is awkward. IF OSS developers don't want
to code for free then there's an easy, fool-proof solution.

If you're going to try to argue Debian is worth $30 billion then I'll try to
argue that it's generated $30 billion in free publicity.

------
atomlib
I wish it was that attractive to just switch from “expensive and evil
proprietary software” as the author suggests.

1\. The article claims that Microsoft Office 365 is $100 a year. In reality
it's about $70, home license for up to 5 users is $80.

2\. The article does not mention that every Office 365 user gets bunch of
additional services. For example, a tebibyte of space in Microsoft OneDrive
for each user, 60 Skype minutes per month, etc.

3\. Each Office 365 user can install Office apps on 3 devices: his phone,
tablet, and computer. Office apps are available on Android and iOS as part of
the package. $70—$80 a year price tag includes not only Windows apps, they
work perfectly fine on smartphones. Personally I make grocery lists in Excel,
open them on my phone, fill my shopping cart with items, and track how much
I'm going to pay or if I'm eligible for coupons.

4\. I'm not aware of any decent OneNote alternatives. I researched it some
time ago because I desired to self-host my notes. There are pretty much no
comparable open source or free cross-platform apps which can work with notes
in cloud or on a remote server from your mobile device. With OneNote all of my
notes are available on my mobile devices. I strongly believe that OneNote is
one of the best apps Microsoft came up with in recent years.

If you look around, you can see that 1 TiB of cloud storage alone costs $100
(Google Drive) or $120 (Dropbox). Office 365 offers not only that but also
quite possibly the best office suite on the market for $70 for 1 or $80 for 5
people.

Note that so far I have not touched the question of quality of software at all
— only the most basic functionality and packages. Microsoft Office is the most
popular office software package for a reason. My exposure to open-source
office packages is limited but here is at least one dealbreaking example. I
tried recreating my spreadsheet for tracking caloric intake in LibreOffice
Calc. It was extremely painful — among many other features Calc does not even
support tables like Excel does.

I use another software package mentioned in the article — Kaspersky. I'm going
to assume the author is talking about the package I'm using — Kaspersky
Internet Security — since the price is stated to be $40.

Like with Office 365, KIS is not only an antivirus. It's also a firewall,
parental control tool with a list of inappropriate websites, an adblocker,
etc. It provides quite a lot of functionality, some of which, frankly
speaking, should be in Windows itself. For example, KIS can autoupdate
software.

Like with Office 365, article does not mention that $40 buys you a license for
up to 3 devices. KIS is also available for Android and macOS.

But overall, an antivirus is not necessary in modern Windows system, so you
may skip on these $40.

~~~
skgoa
And when you start looking at professional level software (e.g. CAD), very
often you will find that there is literally no FOSS alternative in existance.
If it exists, it will most likely be a buggy mess that has far fewer features
and a horrible interface. LibreOffice is a great example. I tried writing my
masters thesis in it and it was a complete disaster. I don't regret going back
to office.

~~~
markvdb
> And when you start looking at professional level software (e.g. CAD), very
> often you will find that there is literally no FOSS alternative in
> existance. If it exists, it will most likely be a buggy mess that has far
> fewer features and a horrible interface.

We wanted to help FreeCAD[0] grow as a leading FOSS CAD application, to help
it reach out to other developers. That is why we invited Yorik van Havre[1],
one of its main developers, as a main track speaker to FOSDEM 2015 [2].

I'm not asking you to do something similarly constructive, but... Next time
you state your opinion about "professional level FOSS software (eg. CAD)",
please think first if it is necessary or even useful to gratuitously throw
around negativity. Even if the tools are not useful at all (yet?) for your
task, why discourage its users and developers? Chances are, the FOSS app
_will_ be useful and even the only option for some.

[0] [https://freecad.io](https://freecad.io) [1]
[https://github.com/yorikvanhavre](https://github.com/yorikvanhavre) [2]
[https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/freecad/](https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/freecad/)

------
shmerl
As a user of Debian, Firefox, LibreOffice and etc. I agree :)

------
RachelF
The should be thankful, but they do not know. FOSS doesn't spend money on PR.

Few know that free Linux lurks under Android, and OS/X an iOS have large parts
of BSD in them.

~~~
jhasse
> free Linux lurks under Android

Not only that, but the GUI is also FOSS:
[https://source.android.com/](https://source.android.com/)

> OS/X an iOS have large parts of BSD in them.

I think this gives the wrong impression. The interesting parts of macOS and
iOS are GUI and drivers, which are proprietary.

~~~
contingencies
_The interesting parts of macOS and iOS are GUI and drivers, which are
proprietary._

The best parts of OSX are brew, iTerm2, and FileMerge.

 _(Edit in reply to below: Yes, that 's my point. brew and iTerm2 are FOSS,
FileMerge is part of XCode)_

~~~
jhasse
Those aren't part of OSX though.

------
sandov
Apparently the source got hugged to death.

------
Windson
This is why I built www.thankyouopensource.com At least you can write a thank
you note to the maintainer.

------
azuajef
Also on being thankful for Free (Scientific) Software Developers:
[https://stactivist.com/2016/12/10/code-of-
gratitude/](https://stactivist.com/2016/12/10/code-of-gratitude/)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I love the list of ways you can help at the bottom - each of these is
tremendously valuable but most people think "well, I can't help if I can't
code". Another thing that's super helpful: volunteer to triage tickets on the
bug tracker.

------
amelius
It would be nice if big repository services such as Github offered a simple
way to donate.

------
ldom22
companies too.

------
Clubber
Just to put it out there, Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you
purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as
well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they
are well made.

There are a few asterisks though, most notably support life for the OS. My
2009 MacPro won't run the latest OS for no other reason than Apple decided it
couldn't (end of life). The 2010 model is allowed to run it and there is no
discernible difference in the hardware.

Having said that FOSS was truly paradigm changing. I lived in a world before
Linux and everything was prohibitively expensive on the PC. There was a lot of
freeware and public domain software available, but most of it wasn't very good
or niche stuff. It's quite amazing that the FOSS movement it was able to
happen, let alone gain so much traction with such great software. I mean
today, you don't have to buy a damn thing except the hardware.

~~~
azrazalea
> Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware.
> This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage
> Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made.

Most of that is not "free software" in the way this blog post is talking about
(FOSS). XCode has FOSS components, parts of the OS are FOSS, etc. However,
much of it is not.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, I was mainly talking about the free as in beer. Not as much free as in
freedom regarding Apple's stuff.

Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing
that. I think Lion was the first free OS upgrade. I credit FOSS for Microsoft
giving a real copy of Visual Studio away for free. They've done it in the
past, IIRC, but it was so hobbled, it was useless.

~~~
simonh
>Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing
that.

I give the credit to Microsoft's market share. The fact is ~99% of Mac
switchers like me previously owned Windows boxes and ran mostly proprietary
Windows software. The free applications you get with a Mac are a way to
cushion the blow of giving those up and in some cases offer features you just
can't get direct equivalents for on Windows. Offering Time Machine, Photos,
iMovie, Pages, etc for free has nothing to do with the existence of Libre
software and everything to do with marketing the platform to switchers from
Windows.

Clearly Libre software has had a huge effect on OSX, in fact the OS itself is
based on free software and large swathes of its base components, tools and
services are free software of one sort or another to this day. But none of
those are name check features marketable to consumers other than just as
MacOS.

In the dev tool arena yes, free software has had a huge effect. Specifically I
think making very capable versions of VS available free was a response to the
existence of high quality free .NET development tools. MS want people to
develop on Windows using their own tool chains and if roughly equivalent free
tools exist and become popular, there's really no cost to offering an
equivalent for free any more given VS has to exist anyway.

~~~
psy-q
> The fact is ~99% of Mac switchers like me previously owned Windows boxes and
> ran mostly proprietary Windows software

And now it's mostly proprietary macOS software. As you mention, the hard
hitters in Apple's lineup are proprietary (Time Machine, Photos, iTunes, etc.)
and the average user doesn't care that they can use BSD utilities on the
command line. It's not dissimilar to the PS4, Switch etc. not being OSS
consoles despite running a BSD kernel. Just because they use some FOSS parts
for their OS, a FOSS ecosystem doesn't automatically appear.

I also think there's very little to no real community around Apple's FOSS, at
least for their homegrown projects, not counting e.g. CUPS or KHTML/WebKit
where they got the community for free when they took over or adopted the
project. Note that even that didn't go without problems (e.g. with the KDE
project) and Apple first had to learn how to behave as a good FOSS citizen.

Other community bits weren't as successful. OpenDarwin for example has shut
down and PureDarwin needs a release still. Swift might be an exception and
maybe we'll see more of that. I may also be very wrong here, I don't follow
their projects too closely.

To even develop on macOS "officially", you need Xcode, thus an Apple ID, thus
there is forced registration. You're transmitting your personal details to a
US company and you agree to their terms and conditions, which can already be a
problem. Are Iranian developers excluded? Cuban ones? Oh, it depends on the
whims of the current US administration, you say? The GPL for example does not
tolerate such limitations.

I don't know, but I think the atmosphere on macOS today is more like FOSS is
present, but not really encouraged by the platform owner, and that's
important. It's not like it was when macOS was still OS X and everyone was all
"ooo, look, Ruby comes preinstalled!". Now that they managed to attract some
critical mass of developers for macOS to be viable, they don't seem to care
that much about FOSS anymore.

------
peterwwillis
Free non-commercial and non-free commercial software are both wildly different
products in practice.

I installed some package recently that fucked with my X config, or my kernel
modules, I don't know. But my hybrid graphics is now fucked and I have crazy
artifacts all over my screen. The default install of this distro does not
result in a working config, and I had to spend three days to figure out the
insane set of software and configuration I needed to make it work last time.
(Also, I added extra RAM, and now hibernating doesn't work)

There is no commercial support for this laptop running this distro. My free
software has no "revert to a last known good working system state" button,
like some non-free software. Doing all the work to fix the graphics again may
literally be more expensive than buying a new Windows laptop.

Thanks, Free Software.

~~~
michaelmrose
Windows support is provided by the manufacturer of the laptop. Linux support
is provided by a finite supply of free labor.

Instead of whining that not enough volunteers provided free labor to make
whatever laptop you already invested in work better perhaps buy machines that
are well supported or even better ones which come with Linux.

This approach has worked well for me for 14 years.

~~~
peterwwillis
Or I can buy a machine which is not only supported, but actually works, with
basic features and quality testing baked in. But that's not the point.

The point is that free software devs asking for a thank-you is like a dog
owner asking for a thank-you when you don't step in their dog poop on the
sidewalk. They weren't walking the dog for my benefit, and I'm not going to
thank them for getting to walk around their crap.

~~~
michaelmrose
What is wrong with your skewed perspective

------
jancsika
> It means that someone has just donated hundreds of hours of work for you.
> Free of charge!

I think that misses something of the ethos of free software. It's not like
somebody donating their valuable time to work in a soup kitchen. It's much
more like somebody too lazy to spend thirty seconds doing a menial task like
everyone else, so they instead spend three months creating a program that
automates that thirty second task-- with the side effect that the rest of
computer-using humanity gets out of doing that menial task, too.

So in a way it does require a thank you. But in another way releasing it as
free software is the least they could do given all the time they wasted just
to get out of doing work.

~~~
makecheck
I for one have spent over 20 years continually expanding my application, as
free GPL software, and I stopped counting the hours long ago.

It is a gigantic amount of effort to design non-trivial software. Heck, just
keeping everything stable and up-to-date is a project in itself (periodically
having to adopt modern platform APIs, for instance).

And usually I receive very little feedback. I can see downloads in the
thousands and I doubt I've had more than a few E-mails a year.

You might be misled by the tendency for people to hack random things together
and dump them on GitHub, never to be touched again.

