this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024

305 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

47290 readers

1059 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

305

Man pages maintenance suspended (lwn.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

From: Alejandro Colomar <alx-AT-kernel.org>

Hi all,

As you know, I've been maintaining the Linux man-pages project for the last 4 years as a voluntary. I've been doing it in my free time, and no company has sponsored that work at all. At the moment, I cannot sustain this work economically any more, and will temporarily and indefinitely stop working on this project. If any company has interests in the future of the project, I'd welcome an offer to sponsor my work here; if so, please let me know.

Have a lovely day! Alex

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Ahaha! It is already bad!

[–] [email protected] 236 points 1 week ago

https://xkcd.com/2347/

[–] [email protected] 170 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This sounds like the sort of infrastructure project the Linux Foundation should be supporting.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

They only invest in the fancy marketable new age shit, and well, corporate rejects (Tizen, MeeGo, etc)

[–] [email protected] 156 points 1 week ago (4 children)

In my opinion it's criminal just how often this happens. Big business making obscene profit off the back of volunteer work like yours and many others across the OSS community.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Germany has a Sovereign Tech Fund for exactly this, and while it's not perfect, it's one of the better uses of my tax euros.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

That's why the current state of open source licenses doesn't work. Commercial use should be forbidden for free users. You could dual license the work, with a single, main license applying to everyone, and a second addendum license that just contains the clause for that specific use, be it personal or corporate. Corporate use of any kind requires supporting the project financially.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a single dude who sells custom electronics with open source software on them. I sell maybe two PCBs a month. It just about covers my hobby, I'm not even living off of it. I can't afford commercial licenses. There has to be tiers.

In return, I've made every schematic, gerber file, and bill of material to my stuff freely available.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One way to allow for this would be a license that says if you sell them through an LLC or corporate entity of some kind, that should require financial support but if it's you selling them in your own name or as a single owner business, with your reputation and liability on the line, then you should not be required to provide support. The other thought to include in a license is actual money earned from sales. Once a company earns, for example let's say $1,000 or 1,000€ a month in profits, that's when the financial support license kicks in and requires payments to the open source authors. Of course, that would require high earners to report their earnings accurately which is a different can of worms.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I would draw the line at shareholders.

You may use my software free of charge if you are a student, hobbyist, hobbyist with income, side hustler, sole proprietorship, LLC, S-Corp, non-profit, partnership, or other owner-operator type business.

Corporations with investors or shareholders will pay recurring licensing fees. Your shareholders may not profit from my work unless I profit from it more than they do. If you can afford a three inch thick mahogany conference table you can afford to pay for your software.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

I hope we see an evolution of licensing. Giant companies shouldn't get a free pass if they're just going to treat the original devs like a commodity to be used up.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I agree, but this is mostly an issue with permissive licenses like MIT. GPL and its variants have enough teeth in them to deal with shit like this. I'm scared of the rising popularity of these permissive licenses. A lot of indie devs have somehow been convinced by corpos that they should avoid the GPL and go with MIT and alike

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Definitely agree, maybe it’s time to share Paul Ramsey’s talk on the subject again

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Bruce Perens is currently working on a new licensing model called Post Open requiring that business with sufficient revenue to pay up.

https://postopen.org/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I hope it catches on!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I doubt it. It is basically equivalent to buying a proprietary software license for 1% of a revenue. I doubt any large business would be willing to spend that much on a single piece of software. And it would always be only one piece of software at a time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Still better than being exploited

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's criminal to let someone do the thing he actively volunteers to do? It's criminal to use software that someone intentionally puts out into the world as free?

If you're willing yo do something for free, people are going to let you 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (9 children)

It's criminal the propaganda that lead people like this developer to believe they should do the work for free, and not worry, because the corporate world always gives back :)

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 week ago

Just, um, don't invite that guy who helped out with the xz tools...

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Everything needs to be slapped with the AGPL. Fuck corporate America

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

AGPL on documentation? What would that do?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Creative Commons-BY-NC would be better.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Things like this make me wish I was a tech CEO. I'd totally be the guy ensuring we give back to projects if I was.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 week ago

That is part of why you're not a tech CEO. You're not supposed to have compassion! No investor would want that.

P.S. This is an attack on CEOs and investors, not on you :)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nah, the investors don't see it as a benefit to your growth to pay people you don't have to

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

10k for a company making millions annually is nothing, 1% or less. But split between some of these projects, especially the less appreciated or funded ones, can be life changing.

But you're unfortunately right

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The 10k can pay dividends in PR alone, and will attract more developers to apply for job openings.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Exactly. Promote it as community outreach, it's more useful than feel-good Pictures at dog shelters.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Unfortunately, people like this don't become CEOs.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago

My old employer used to have people on staff just for technical writing. Some of that writing became the man pages you know, and some of it was 'just' documentation for commercial products - ID management and the like.

Then we sued IBM for breach of contract, and if you ask anyone about it they'll parrot the IBM PR themes exactly, as their PR work was brutal. People in Usenet and Forums were very mean, and the company decided to stop offering much of the stuff that it was for free. It was very 'f this'.

If man pages needed a volunteer to maintain, I know why ours tapered off.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

My company will let me purchase software, but it won't let me donate to FOSS. Budgeting says it's "unnecessary". So screwed up. (A tiny amount money on my end, but still, it would be nice to help out a little.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I think its this site? https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/

I don't see any option to give money. So he does not accept donations from users like you and me and only asks for sponsorship?

An alternate website can be found here: https://linux.die.net/man/ However, I don't know how much they differ.

Edit: What I don't like with both of these sites is, that they are powered by Google. I would like to see an alternative engine, at least an option to set it up. That's probably a reason why I never used it and actually wouldn't want to support it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (5 children)

You do realize that man pages don't live on the internet? The kernel.org one is the offical project website, as far as I know, but the project itself is very much not for the web presense, but for the vastly useful documentation included on your distribution.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The few times I've needed to man [app name] on a system without internet access or on an obscure utility, I've always been able to find what I need in the included docs

I hope the dev eventually gets sponsored, this is one of those utilities that you don't think you need until --help doesn't cut it