The graying open source community needs fresh blood

Nemeski@lemm.ee to Programming@programming.dev – 314 points –
The graying open source community needs fresh blood
theregister.com
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Multiple things:

  • get rid of mandatory mailinglists
  • use a modern git flow without emails
  • get the hell off of discord
  • don't make me a "maintainer". I write code, I love it. Don't Peter Principle me
  • pay me if I'm supposed to care

The goddamn Linux Foundation is investing more into AI than friggin Linux. They could be hiring hundreds of staff to work on Linux with the billions they shove unto AI. What the fuck are they doing? Mozilla is another offender.

Open source foundations with money should be using it to develop open source.

Also, on greybeard conferences: allow virtual participation please? My company isn't going to give me 4 days off to travel somewhere for one day, have a 2 day conference, then take another day to get back. Nor am I going to pay 200+€ or something as an entrance fee on top of my ticket halfway around the world.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Ironically, I think it's the younger ones the ones pushing for discord the most. Some projects opened a discord because it actually made it more attractive to young people.

The question is how to make an open source alternative more attractive.

You can make a Discord server in like 1 second for free. It's got mostly good enough tools for managing the community. I get the appeal. If you already use it then it's super easy to just use it for that too. (Except on Android, where you can't easily switch accounts. Maybe iPhone has the same problem though.)

Matrix has the most potential. It was the most admired communication tool in the stackoverflow survey last year.

Mailing lists are pretty awesome. They're like a decentralized forum. There are even good web UIs!

That said, submitting and reviewing patches over email suuucks.

And they're easy to archive. Not super easy to parse, usually, but at least the data is there.

Wrestling to get email to properly bottom post is 99.999% of the battle. (Except the code review, is rather just pull it in locally)

mailing lists

So so true. Mailing lists suck. I'd rather use Discord. (As in I hate mailing lists that much.) Bring back forums!

In 2023 the organization reported significant revenues, totaling approximately $262.6 million.

They are spending BILLIONS on AI!!!

They are doing what they intended to do. It's just not in line with your agenda.

OK, I was wrong about the billions.

They are doing what they intended to do. It’s just not in line with your agenda.

The Linux Foundation spent 2% on linux kernel support in 2023.

Linux is "my agenda". It was me who put Linux in the name "Linux Foundation". Me and me alone. 😂

Anti Commercial-AI license

What does "project support" even stand for?

Edit: ok, apparently it's helping a bunch of foss projects that are listed in the pdf. I suppose that's fine.

You just misinterpret their agenda. They were never in line with you