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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • You know, I remember in middle school learning the art of Google for research purposes and being amazed that I could find almost any information I could want in minutes. It was also in that time that I first encountered the “Let me google that for you” website that just takes text, shows a mouse moving over the Google searchbar, pastes the text, and then returns the search results. Seeing that made me realize I’d feel a fool if it had to be pointed out to me that I could google the answer to a basic question.

    So to see someone acknowledge that they could take one minute to find the answer to what an acronym they don’t know, from a more reliable source than an internet stranger (like the gpt answer above), and then outright refuse to do so on the basis that the answer should have already been spoon-fed to them is frankly bizarre. I sure didn’t know what RDT was when I opened the thread, but just to make sure I wasn’t crazy after reading the threads here I typed ‘rdt coffee’ in my search bar and in less time than it took you to write your comment I had the answer.

    I need to understand, what is the process behind your thinking here? Why do they need to explain a 20 year old coffee term in a coffee community that takes less than a minute to learn the basics of if you do the thing you think you shouldn’t have to? I’m really trying to understand without letting judgement seep in, I’m just at a bit of a loss here.




  • If the author no longer has passion for his OSS project, and isn’t being paid for it, why is he still working on it? Why should he feel responsible for companies building their processes on a free piece of software without guaranteed support? Why the heck is he sacrificing sleep for something he claims not to care about anymore? It sounds to me like he’s not living his values.

    If compensation for volunteer work is mandated, it becomes less volunteer work and more of a part(or in some cases full)-time job. My understanding is that a core pillar of open source software is that anyone can contribute to it, which should make it easier for contributors to come and go. Based on the graph shown it would take more than a full-time job worth of money to meet his demand, which seems unlikely in any case, and it’s time for him to go. Either someone else will volunteer to pick up the slack, the companies using it will pay someone to pick up the slack like the author mentioned, or the software will languish, degrade, and stop being used.

    I don’t see how any of those outcomes suggest that people need to be paid for the time they voluntarily give. I could get behind finding better ways to monetarily support those who do want to get paid, but “how could it be easier to pay OSS contributors after their passion is gone?” is a lot less provocative of a headline.


  • Imagine you have a big board on your front lawn where people can come to write stuff and respond to others on the board. This board is an instance.

    Your neighbor has their own board, which they have “federated” with yours. Messages from your board can show up on their board, and people there can write on those messages same as ones native to that board.

    You can federate with them so their stuff shows on your board, or defederate if you don’t like the people there.

    Anyone with the ability to make a board can have one federated with other boards to make a really big web of boards, but to a person looking at your lawn’s board it feels like one big one.