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Why FOSS projects are using proprietary, privacy invasive infrastructure? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don't we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You misunderstood me. My reason isn't "get more users". My reason is "my day only has 24h and maintenance itself is a full time job, without adding on hosting, administration, etc for code repository or communication infrastructure".

I have to choose my fights if I don't want to burn out. I've been a full time maintainer for 10 years now, 8 of those self employed.

That being said, I do in fact self host a web forum for my project (which I can only do because I have a volunteer admin taking care of the day to day and a whole ton of mods helping with moderation), and I do have a nightly mirror of everything on the project's GitHub org to my private NAS just in case.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@foosel But why do you feel like you "have to" do those things? Are you paid for it? Are you trying to sell the project? Are you looking for VC funding? Is someone threatening you if you stop fighting those fights? Those are all things from the commercial mindset, or things exploited by Jia Tan. Of course everybody likes when a project is maintained, good quality, free, but that should come from the cooperation and from the freedoms in the license and platform, not from your personal sacrifice

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Welcome to the real world, where open source maintenance should be a lot of things but instead boils down to a whole lot of personal sacrifices by maintainers. I don't like this either, and do what I can to improve it, but that's a slow process. Idealism is nice, but it doesn't help here.

And why do I do this to myself? Because I believe in open source and because I want people to have free access to good tooling. Currently I can afford to do this thanks to crowd funding of my work. I would never accept VC funding.

Kindly stop insinuating that I'm a turbo capitalist corporate drone, it's insulting and absolutely ridiculous.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@foosel So you want to continue sacrificing yourself? Your choice 🤷‍♂️

Now you are back to believing in open-source, so let's stop sending users to walled gardens, shall we?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I don't see this discussion going anywhere given that you are doing your best to misunderstand me, turn my words around on me and just can't move even one step away from your idealism and instead demand that maintainers cater to that as well on top of everything else.

Have a nice day, I'm out, I have a project to maintain and a community to manage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think he's coming from here:

As an developer you create a solution to a problem from yours. You release it under a FOSS license.

Your job is done - You shared your work. The community may find your project useful and builds upon it. Their interest is to get their changes upstream. You have no obligation to help with onboarding and implementing features for others.

So if they are requesting a merge you may reject it since it does not meet your standards. Maybe you have to make your stance clear and create a CONTRIBUTION alongside your code.

With this mindset you wouldn't hang out on a non-indexable platform.

Your project mostlikely is requesting explicit participation. Maybe this is the point in between you guys.

Now go on with the discussion :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Finally a comment with some sense. 100% agree

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago

@foosel Saying that I demand maintainers to cater to my requests can be easily disproven by just looking at my words above where I say the exact opposite. Then who is doing their best to misunderstand and turn words around?