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?

  • Gina Häußge@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    2 months ago

    I wish I could upvote you more than once.

    It all really comes down to making choices that make the most use of the extremely limited resources (time, money, spoons) you have as a maintainer.

    • chebra@mstdn.io
      0·
      2 months ago

      @foosel If that is the case, then how did the choice of using an open-source license even get through? It sounds like you are confusing commercial thinking (we have to get more users, we have to be where the users are, we have to support them, we have to meet the KPIs…) with the open-source. You don’t have to do any of those.

      • Gina Häußge@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • chebra@mstdn.io
          0·
          2 months ago

          @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

          • Gina Häußge@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            2 months ago

            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.