Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I understand that people need money to live, but a lot of the "most useful" software (as in... almost every part of the web) is open source software built by well paid developers.
Your comment might be applicable to an android lemmy client for example, but not to software generally.
Yeah they're paid but not for open source, but from a company. I'm no exception, as I do a lot of open source, I would go full-time open-source if I'd knew that I can live from it. But this is just not the case for say ~99% of open source, donations/funding is extremely rare and often bound to specific needs of the company that funds it.
And my answer was exactly pointing towards this, i.e. free software/open source, not software in general.
What you also have to consider is apps vs libraries, libraries are more often funded, but apps often not (and this was what we were talking about).
There are plenty of useful opensource applications, as evidenced by this thread.
How you make a living isn't really relevant.
My point is, implying that one should be surprised to find that an app is both useful and opensource is a misconception.
Yes and now please count the amount of useful applications that aren't open source. Spoiler: They dwarf open source applications by quantity and quality by far.
I'm repeating myself: I'm doing a lot of open source in my leisure time, this is absolutely relevant, I would be able to invest a lot more time into it if I didn't have to make a living somehow else. I directly see this with other people that were funded and aren't anymore, so they have to use their time to make money... (and the other way around)
My point is, that time is in fact limited...