So, what's next? #1179
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Hey, Denis! Just wanted to ask, which platform is taking less fee for donations? Patreon or OpenCollective? If I can pick either of them, which one will be more profitable for you? |
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Hi Igor! In both cases commission is significant. IIRC via Patreon, it's a little less. However, there are some reasons why now I'd prefer Open Collective. Anyway, both options are good. |
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hey @zloirock heartbreaking story. I feel you. I run a commercial open source company over at https://github.com/calcom/cal.com and have shared your post with colleagues of mine who might be hiring. maybe even vercel.com? could be a great fit |
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You're literally the embodiment of that XKCD and we didn't even know... Thank you for all your hard work on core-js, you've carried the whole modern Era of the web on your back this whole time. I'll do my best to share this around in hopes that people will read it and re-share it until opportunities arise. Will definitely want to support monthly to the best of my abilities. In hopes I can get a budget at work to support crucial FOSS like core-js |
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Set it adrift. Focus on family. The community at large will pick it up and maintain it. Your legacy is intact. Such is FOSS. |
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Patreon sub added. Thanks for all the hard work! No doubt you've saved me many thousands of hours over the years! |
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dude, i had no idea. been using this quite a lot for the past while now! open collective or bitcoin better for you? |
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The hate you got for this was really unjustified. |
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When I hear stories like this "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" always springs to mind |
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Thanks for taking such an extraordinary amount of time to write that up and explain everything. I had no idea, and I genuinely feel bad for you, especially since you're also a victim and collateral damage of the Ukraine conflict which makes supporting you unnecessarily more difficult than it already was. I found this link from kind souls who shared it on Reddit. I'll be sharing this across our company to see if something can be done. |
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What you built with core-js is amazing. Hope everything gets better for you. ❤️ |
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@zloirock, thank you for all your work on this project. Really heartbreaking story. |
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Thank you for writing this up and espousing your values. I think they're great, but yeah, like family & surviving is first, right? |
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Saving the "well-paid engineers'" time should be lower priority? |
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Your post is a great read thank you for taking your time out to write it. I see a lot of projects with multiple licensing; one for open source, and another for commercial. Given you have evidence (extremely) large companies are using your product, could you add tiered license structure? The businesses your project lives within are mandated by software laws and your project exists because the task is hard. Large corps such as a international shop know this - and it's cheaper to pay ~$2k rather than employ someone. As software licenses are bound to the product cost (where FOSS contributions are primarily optional) big companies have the option to pay ahead on their internal budgeting. It's evident you've paid forward (for many years) to those earning from you - It's fair to ask for like 0.002% in return. I understand easy for me to sit on my soap-box and yell foul, however it doesn't feel right that your product is used by large corporations, and you're barely surviving - when there are other lesser critical tools of which demand much more. |
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That's fucked up. The kind of hate you received is insane, that's actually heartbreaking. It sucks to live in a world with that kind of self-entitled morons. I really hope you'll get more recognition and donations after this post, and even if I've never used core-js directly myself, thanks for making the web a better place. |
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@zloirock Hey man. I'm sorry you had to go through of all that. Thank you for sharing your story. It was eye-opening. I'm sending $100 your way. I've never donated that much in one go -- but maybe I should start doing so. I have paid more for less useful things than |
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The FOSS community needs to find a solution for the kinds of people and projects like this. I’m sorry you went through so much and received so much hate. |
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never knew I'm grateful for your dedication and I'll be monthly backing you with what I can over OpenCollective. |
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It's not great that github sponsors isn't available for you. But for other open source devs who are able to use it, imo they should stop with the 'if you can chip in with a dollar' words. Instead, ask for decent amounts of money; you only need a few large sponsors to make a big difference - here are the words I use: https://gist.github.com/Danack/f99f417a43fc8258babc26704b28f72f And this is the type of project that AWS should be sponsoring imo. Maybe people could chime in, respectfully of course, here: https://twitter.com/MrDanack/status/1625278550667587584 ? |
There are solutions, but for "bigger" software than this; the RHEL subscription model, the open core model, etc. idk how it would apply to core-js though. |
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You have to be compensated. I'm thankful for you sharing your story which is super illuminating to people that don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Many many great projects are open source and they are the fundamentals of modern web development. I suggest to create a common fund and support projects that clearly deserve it. Actual grants by people using it. |
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I want to express my sincere gratitude for the tireless and dedicated work you have done in the field of open source. Your project is a true testament to your passion and commitment to improving people's lives through technology. Unfortunately, it is a shame that you have not received proper financial support to continue your work. I hope you soon find the necessary funding to continue improving and developing your project. Furthermore, I would like to suggest that you share your progress on platforms such as Twitter. This way, the developer community can see what you are doing and support your efforts. I also apologize on behalf of all other developers. It is not that they do not want to help, I believe many of them simply take for granted that the project is being maintained and are not aware of the importance of your work. Asking for help openly and sharing your roadmap with the community would be the best option to receive the necessary support to continue your efforts. I am sure that many developers would be willing to help if they knew how they could do so. And please ignore any negative comments, those kind of people just need to be reformed in some way. |
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The story was eye-opening and heartbreaking. I admire your resilience in developing All these big-co's bragging about how they support open-source and whatnot, yet it's all mostly smoke screen. In the end, all that matters for them is profit. The behavior of TC39 members is also just... pathetic. I wish you all the best. Pay off debt, leave Russia with your family, and safely get to the civilized world. |
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Thank you, seriously. I hope your family is okay, it must be hard for them to see their husband and father be abused in this manner. |
This is great I suggest OP to use this model so that big companies see the value. Meaning paying monthly = higher priority to their requests. Plus a premium model where you personally help companies save that extra few seconds that are worth billions to companies like Amazon. You have such knowledge and experience to make it happen. Sometimes it's enough to show how little changes can make big impacts like your story. |
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You are a hero. An underpaid, shit upon, taken for granted hero, but you wear a cape nonetheless and your tireless (and unpaid) work has enabled millions of us to better build applications that help us feed our families and make our customers happy. Thank you for all that you do. I'll talk to my CTO about making a donation as we're already a supporter for a few projects on github that we use. Thanks for taking the time to write up this comprehensive post sharing how the sausage gets made and a big 'fuck you' to all the people shitting on your work or you having the gall to ask to not be impoverished for this thankless work that you do. You're an excellent developer and I hope you are rewarded richly for your work as you deserve to be. |
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The amount of hate you received, while working so tirelessly and for so little money is just horrible. I want to thank you the insurmountable amount of work you have done for us all, so we can all build better apps with less to worry about. I'll try making a donation and I encourage everyone else to do so. Spread the word! |
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@Asday Just FO bro. Denis has already explained everything you need to know. You have no idea why free software is important to be free. It doesn't mean the author has do all this work for free and never ask to support him. |
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@Overdozed you're conflating free as in beer, and free as in freedom. If it's so important that it MUST remain free as in freedom, then surely people would pay for it, (would you pay for core-js?) If the author requires payment to work on it, then he should paywall it. If the author requires payment to work on it, but it's not important enough to remain free as in freedom, then he has no foot to stand on when his charity case is ignored. |
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@Asday no, I don't want to pay for core-js, why should I pay for it? Do you know what this library do at all? It is used by thousands of packages I used for my work, like Angular. And it saved many authors a lot of effort to develop their software. I don't want to pay for all this packages which uses core-js under the hood too. But I do support some open source library authors because I make money using their work. Open Source helped me a lot to become a professional too. |
And this is exactly why I'm saying Zloirock should paywall his work. It's not valued by its audience nearly as highly as he thinks it should be. You're proving my point. |
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Yes, of course. You give something back to the author because it has no value for you,. Such I weird thinking. I'm out of arguments. |
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@Asday nobody owes you anything. Author can do anything he/she wants and you have right to fork it and maintain it in your free time. You can suggest improvements, but to demand anything is just pure entitlement and shows no character and no respect. It’s not your software so stop pretending it should behave how would you like. Waiting for your fork that will remove these messages and which will you maintain |
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I see you're a connoisseur of steaming piles of horse crap. I would expect a programmer to be able to use critical thinking skills better than this. |
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I'm too petty for this... If I was in this position I would've shut things down and as a last hurrah made the script delete itself next time it runs on each device Sort of like a self-destruct :D |
In reality don't attempt this. Even though your software comes AS IS, it may and will have legal repercussions. |
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Zloirock, As long as you continue to provide the maintenance that you do for free, you will not be paid for it in the way that you deserve to. Hands down. I say this as someone who will gladly pay 10 dollars for a coffee but will rarely ever donate money for any software. Asking the community to fund your work will never be sustainable as the largest users of your product are not individual developers that care enough to go in their wallets. Sure you may find a user here or there that's willing to donate money for your project but in reality most people will not Opt-in to pay you. (This is actually a psychological phenomenon) If you really want to work on this project full time you will need to take your next major release and put commercialize licensing on it. Add tiers based upon company size and charge for access to the library. It may take some time for adoption but like you said, eventually the current version of core-JS will begin to fail and large corporate entities will have to make a decision. Is it worth attempting to hire a developer/developers or devote development resources to update and maintain core-JS. OR would it be more cost effective to simply pay the licensing fee. Most will chose the licensing fee as hiring developers to maintaining a code base that most of the world does not understand is extremely difficult. If you want examples of this: Look at oracle. They changed their licensing agreement this past year and I'm sure they've made millions off it. It's sad that you have to do this but you're a individual with a very unique skill set, and you're giving away for free. Capitalist companies (The largest users of your product) love anything free and if it's free, they will never donate money or pay for it, unless they have to. |
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@Asday just so happens that yesterday, I was talking with a friend about how entitled some people are, when it comes to open source related stuff. I'll use your posts as an example to validate my point. |
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@RatserX you might be embarrassed to do so, because I'm quite clearly saying the author should demand pay if he wants to be paid. How could me saying "you should charge me" be me being entitled? |
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How about a dual GPL license? With a license fee for commercial usage? |
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@Asday you literally barged in and told him "Your options suck, here's what you should do because I say so". How's that for not being entitled? Do you even read yourself? |
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Do you know what "entitled" means? Better yet, look up "advice". Would you agree that his options suck? What's your better plan for him? How would you go about getting paid fairly, if you were in Zloirock's situation? |
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I’m a law professor (adjunct) of international business transactions at US law schools (Georgetown, Northwestern, UVA, W&L), and a corporate and commercial lawyer with 20+ years’ experience across Asia and the US. Rather than choosing Many of the most poignant issues discussed in this thread can be largely resolved by the Keep in mind, B$B don’t want the Updated to prevent breaking dependent free-software licensesA concern voiced in this thread (including by Denis @zloirock) is when a permissively-licensed program moves to OS.Cash (or OS$), such a move may cause problems for packages that depend on the just re-licensed program.
Take a look at the edits made to In brief, with this new edit, an OS$-licensed program will remain free to use by everyone, including B$Bs, so long as the OS$-licensed program is being used as a dependency for publicly available free-software.
Example, for illustrative purposes only.Let's consider some popular For our example, let's assume
Most importantly:
Everyone is welcome to use the licenses for your own project and, most especially of course, Denis. Additionally, for anyone interested, we deliver a turn-key service to operate the back-office admin entailed in this, while you focus on writing great code. If you prefer to do it yourself but have questions, not a problem; happy to take your calls and offer free support as best we can. OS$ licenses are not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines because OS.Cash-licensed software is not unconditionally free-software for Billion Dollar Businesses. os.cash Free License 2024-Apr-05.pdf |
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I once maintained an OS project which enjoyed some recognition. It never received any contribution, though. When I decided that I wanted to pay my bills and switched to a proprietary license I started getting hate emails from multiple members of the 'community'. Some wanted to 'sue' us 'with the FSF'. Some went just plain agressive, some started flame wars in public forums, claiming that the project had 'stolen from the community' and needed punishment. In the OS community you find a lot of buzz about freedom but there is also a lot of imperatives and false expectations. One popular expectation is that 'recognition' and saying 'thank you' is enough of a compensation for a significant number of life hours and expertise of the creator of software. Another expectation is that there will be compensation for offerings to be abused. Some connect ideas of 'honor' and moral with the obligation to continue taking care of a project they had started - just because it is already being used by so many companies. IMO it is either plain stupid or ideology (which are somehow similar, too). If Zloirock is stuck in latter so be it. If you are serious about serving the kindergarden, -- ehm: 'community' slavishly: so be it! If you are serious about getting money back for your year long investment, then find other ways! The one presented by @ngounaris might be a start. |
Because telling people they must change their work paradigm, otherwise their work is not important, is definitely "good advice". Now you're just trolling. Why do you have to assume that I currently want anything different than what zloirock has posted? Do you seriously think that someone, with the capacity to endure what he has gone through, take care of a family, and maintain one of the biggest libraries of the internet, cannot think of a solid plan? I think his current options are valid and I am currently supporting him with whatever I can. I am also in the process of requesting help from my company. Whether they remove the package or start supporting him doesn't matter (hopefully they go with the latter). I am doing my part in looking to help a very important contributor to the OSS sphere. What have you done in the meantime? |
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@Dangerouscookie @btakita @hokb I explained that many times, for example, some comments above #1179 (comment) |
This is why I suspect that you are stuck in assumed obligation to keep problems away from "many people". Even though those people will never bother to do the same to you. Btw. you are the license holder! If projects follow the switch and use your then non-compatible license without care they will only infringe your license. And it is up to you to decide to assign another license to them. I.e.: removing their license 'problems' for appropriate compensation. |
Got it. I generally avoid wanting such liabilities without some form of compensation. Income doesn't have to come directly from the people using the code. The nature of open source compensation is people are going to avoid increasing their costs. I will use or make my own solution to avoid costs. If someone is making money from your solutions, then it is in their incentive to fund the project. However, you have the free-rider problem. And as soon as costs are involved, some people look elsewhere. I like the value add approach you mention. core-js generates some revenue. But it's bigger value is it gets your name out there. That gives you leverage in value add solutions that you can charge money for. At a premium due to your notoriety. Edit: Other income you can leverage with your notoriety:
Crafting a positive public image is important for this work. So my take is to avoid tough battles that don't have enough payoff. Solving the free-rider problem requires social engineering to change human nature. Or some form of legal structure. Instead, you can use the good grace & publicity from this library as a foundation for derivative forms of income. I'm interested in following your progress. Since I also make open source libraries...with a much smaller audience. |
I would do this only if this is going to be the primary revenue generator for you. It would cause a kerfuffle. Yet it could be lucrative in the short term. Dwindling over the long term. But you may receive more revenue than you are now going forward. I imagine that you have other ways of delivering value. With even more long term revenue potential than licensing. It will be hard work. But the ecosystem will derive more value. Question is how much of this value can you capture? |
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It would certainly destroy the picture 'Oh, what a great project, how useful! And it's MIT! Awesome! Let's go for it!'. If this picture is the compensation Zloirock actually wants then I would also discourage from a license switch. My suggestion was meant for the case that Zloirock wants to bring this project from "I do this mainly for recognition and I just love to serve the 'community'" to "I do this for money". I personally would see it as a decision for the one or the other. There might be other fuzzy options in between, though. |
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Everytime I executed |
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Hello Denis, I just wanna thank you for your work, even I am not a real programmer and my knowledge about this domain is very limited. Once again, thank you for your great work and all the best for you and for your family! Respect, |
@ngounaris Nothing prevents one from dual-licensing their work using both OS.Cash and AGPL-3.0 right? |
Note: I've posted an update so that OS.Cash Licenses do not break dependent free-software licenses
In my view, the underlying value underneath In the case of the AGPL, forever-access to the code is value provided in exchange for the software; such that, anyone and everyone can enjoy future improvements and derivatives. In the case of OS.Cash, wealthy organizations (specifically, Billion Dollar Businesses) need to pay for use of the software (in order that the developer is supported). To answer you specific question, whether dual-licensing a program under both OS.Cash and AGPL-3.0 can work, it certainly can work. For the AGPL-3 projects that you already have, as long as you hold the copyright to all of the non permissively licensed code in the project, then yes, absolutely, you may dual-license under both the AGPL-3 and OS.Cash. Then you can give your users the choice of which license they use, allowing user's to select AGPL terms or OS.Cash terms. Note that in section 10 of the AGPL-3 (and GPL-3), you are explicitly prohibited from charging any form of license fee, while the point of OS.Cash is that independently developed free-software should is not unconditionally free for Billion Dollar Businesses. Let me know if you would like to discuss further? |
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This is not communism, if you want to get paid for something you did, you need to sell it. That's the key for your problem. Stop putting dumb messages on npm and start selling your project. If you're not interested in that, there is nothing nobody can do for you. If your work turns out to be essential to someone with a lot of money and this person feels like it is worth to pay you for you to keep maintaining and improving your project (Linus Torvalds had this opportunity, but not before he sold the project) then the person will do. Now, I really don't know how the library is worth for the software industry in general, but I feel like this discussion has become too personal. That's not good for business. Again, it isn't communism. What they have in hands is already definite. It's open-source if you stop maintaining, someone has a clone of the repository and will do it for you, when there is the NEED. So, if you have to ask for money, your life will be very hard. It's not shameful to say that we picked the wrong path for making great money. The shame is in ignoring the signs that it isn't working, and not changing our approach to something else. To give you more perspective, WinRAR shows an actual window to ask for money, stdout messages aren't as annoying as you may think.
Many companies changed their way of selling their products to make money, have you tried that? Try thinking about this version of You might need to deal with the fact that maybe That whole portfolio you built here, is good. But you're ruining it with all this. |
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Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist world and businesses will continue extracting an immense amount of value from free and open-time donators as the OS community. Only in a socialist country, OS have a sustainable place without begging for money OR building a business around it. Too much appreciated for the work this community has given for free, but you should sell hard on it. Suggestion (to try not to piss off contributors as well):
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and others
https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/blob/master/docs/2023-02-14-so-whats-next.md
Politics = ban.
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