FOSS — still great

All of proprietary software is one big scam. It’s only thanks to FOSS that we even can catch some of the other scams people are trying to pull, like the recent SSH exploit.

Xckd 2347 is a li’l misleading because the situation is worse than that. There is not just one point of failure. There are many. A lot of stuff goes down if any one of those many long-suffering maintainers folds. That’s what it means to work on stuff together, outside of the boss system of payrolls and punch clocks. Somehow this weird li’l anthill of ten thousand straws is still standing.

The situation is worse, and better. Because you are not alone. This is how we do things. We see something messed up and we fix it and we realize that others could benefit from the fix so we share it.

Sometimes I get flak from people saying that the ancom style of pay-it-forward, here-you-go economies have never built anything. Except for Wikipedia, Debian, web servers, all of the modern internet, and the cores of all modern software platforms.

Last time something happened (color.js) people were like “This is why we should shackle maintainers with even more responsibility!” and I’ve heard that from a11y and i18n users as well. I kinda have the opposite take.

Being able to walk away is key to all of this working. I love this:

No Maintenance Intended

It’s just freeing to know that we can just help each other like a big potluck dinner.

Just a box of rain, wind, and water

Believe it if you need it, if you don’t, just pass it on

Sun and shower, wind and rain

In and out the window like a moth before a flame

xckd 2347: Dependency

Economics of Mittens & Socks

Release early, or only when it it’s perfect?