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I'm having to move again, and I'm in need of money
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http://i.imgur.com/PC7EFD0.png
If you're just here to throw shit at me, please get the fuck out of this thread.
He didn't but he made the screenshot in case he would
What for?
I think the problem is he hasn't explained enough.
http://i.imgur.com/MQhOBtn.png was the reason why i posted it. viewed it on a different pc on firefox and the info disappeared in chrome. as said in irc, SORRY about that.
I think an interesting experiment would be seeing how effective it is to collectively support an independent open source developer with small contributions.
Let me be clear. I support Sven and here are the details.
Motive
This summer I hope to make a final move to a VPS panel that I can grow with. This means it has a solid, secure foundation. It means that it has the bare necessities and a foundation that I can build upon or have built upon. I could go many directions with this, but what I've decided to take a shot at is doing a small part to help fund CVM.
For those unaware: http://cvm.cryto.net/
Where I stand
Now, I'm not paying him large sums of money to finish a job. Rather, I'm giving the minimum that I know I can commit to and encouraging others to do the same. The purpose being that I don't want to be a bystander and wait for a possibility of two scenarios.
1. He cannot continue development and must pursue other tasks to make ends meet.
2. He finally finishes it and I take it without compensating him. Sure, open source allows this. The idea of open source isn't that everyone take without giving. Those who take and can give back should, and it doesn't even have to be money. It's about community.
What I'm asking
So what I'm openly asking for here and now is that any other providers or interested parties who would like to see this CVM project come to completion take a moment to consider if giving even a little bit each month may be relevant to your interests.
Why I'm asking
The VPS market has been exploding for some time and shows no signs of slowing down. It is an economical answer to a market that is also still exploding, in part because of the explosion of VPS. One of the most vital pieces of the VPS service is the control panel. Currently your reasonable choices for an automated and client-based control panels are limited. There are a lot of us who want choice and lack the ability to program it. There are significant complaints about many of the available choices. When you want something that you can self repair or add features to, you are out of luck with the available choices beyond OVZ-Web-Panel and HyperVM. OVZ-Web-Panel is great, but also a bit bulky and even less of us program Ruby. HyperVM is on life support, if that.
Now, you may disagree with everything I just said, or pieces of it. The point stands that I want something, I know many of you want it as well, and I know this guy is capable of doing it. I contribute because seeing this completed would be good for me and the industry. I'm not subtracting the "me" from it, but I'm also not trying to support something that is locked to me. If I support it and you can use it, you're welcome. If we all support it and it becomes what we hope, we've taken an active role in our futures.
Okay, promised post. Some of the primary problems I have with a paid job:
Commercial motive. When working for a (for-profit) corporation, the goal of what you are working on is always going to be 'profit' in the end. The problem with commercial initiatives is that "making a profit" isn't just a motivation, but the primary motivation. It takes precedence over any other motive or goal, simply because the company could not continue to exist otherwise. If some kind of desirable characteristic of $project has to be discarded in favour of profit, that will happen.
Bureaucracy and office politics. Most people can probably recognize this point. All distractions, often negatively influencing what is being worked on. Sometimes actively harmful to for example the security of the users. I don't think this really needs much more elaboration.
Lack of freedom. Closely related to the above, and I mean lack of freedom in development direction in particular. Managers wanting their pet peeve to be implemented, someone somewhere up the chain saying you can't implement something a certain way, and refusing to listen to reason. All distractions, and in the way of just getting stuff done properly.
Overhead. Meetings, travelling to work, etc. All time that could be spent much better by actually getting stuff done.
Closed-source/paid code. I see software (along with other things) as something that should be accessible to anyone, for any reason, without limits. I very strongly disagree with locking code up because of some obscure corporate interest, limiting access of others to it.
Limitations on projects. If I have an idea for something that may be controversial, I want to have the freedom to put that idea into practice, even if many other people do not have the ability to do so. Corporate interests can and most likely will conflict with that, with inability to work on said project as a result.
If anyone can name a job that does not suffer from any of the above problems whatsoever, I'm open to suggestions. So far noone has been able to come up with anything like that.
I'm not even considering non-development jobs, for the simple reason they are a complete waste of time and energy.
I might amend the list later on if I come up with something I forgot. It's starting to get pretty late, so I might be missing something.
EDIT: Just to have this clear, this post is intended as a clarification for those interested in my reasoning behind what I do or choose. I do not have any interest in discussing whether you personally agree with this or not, at this time. I am far too busy for that right now. If you want to discuss that, then please get back to me after I have a slightly more stable situation. This is not the right time.
Garbage collector?
Edit: my original comment is no-longer an accurate assessment of my opinions, following a period of reflection.
And I'm upset that living requires me to breath air. Stop making lame excuses and accept the realities of life.
Well I hadn't seen that when I loaded this up. Fair enough.
Why do you feel like this? Don't you think a company that has paid numerous computer scientists for a long time deserves to actually get their expenses back for paying the salary of said computer scientists?
If anything could be used by anyone without any limitations the Chinese (or other low-income countries) would just be ripping off any innovation without actually paying for the R&D and as a consequence noone would bother to actually make progress anymore.
If anyone ever really takes the time to talk to @joepie91 you'll know he's a pretty genuine guy. Sure you may disagree with some of his views and others, but I respect him for everything he's done for this community and for his belief. Personally, I wouldn't do it, but I believe and trust (and honestly I use) in his work that I'll continue to support him.
Here's some amount now.
To the providers on LET that I still haven't paid my invoice yet, I just got back from a week off, let me get back to my e-mails.
I terminated your service.
j/k muhahaha.
I think it's a stupid idea. If developers are any good at developing things then they should be able to support themselves by selling their work. I am against financially supporting anyone's hobby with real money. When I see that prices go up every day on everything, when I see how unforgiving and greedy big corporations are (I just had a very negative experience with Skype - now those people are greedy to the point of stupid), and when we are all in for even worse in the foreseeable future the last thing that I want to encourage is laziness and leeching. If as a developer you are not good enough to get paid for your work then maybe find another line of work to finance your hobby. And before you reply to this @jarland, please read bellow to what I have to say to @joepie91.
To @joepie91 I want to say this: I respect your principles and I adhere to many of them myself. I know that during harsh times the last thing that you need need to hear (or read in this case) are righteous comments and advice by other people who think that they know better. So I would say this: I hate to see a divided community so lets all get together and donate $10 to help @joepie91 out. Each person that donates just submit a comment saying something like "I donated $10 to @joepie91". If I see 20 people donate, I have no problem donating as well. Lets help out @joepie91 this one time, but if he makes a habit of it there won't be a next time.
Now with all that being said, back to your principles and ideas @joepie91: I embrace Open Source as much as you do, however you can get paid really well for Open Source work. I have seen jobs that pay as high as $80K to $90K a year in the US for Open Source developers, and I am sure that they exist elsewhere as well. This is one aspect.
If you want to stay independent @joepie91 and be a freelancer and you still want to be able to make a living then I don't exactly understand how you missed the Envato community. Envato only accepts Open Source code, they advertise your work and protect your rights as an author. There is Codecanyon.net and Themeforest.net, two places where you can make a small fortune as a freelance developer.
Here are some examples of people who made over one million dollars:
http://themeforest.net/user/peerapong - from Thailand
http://themeforest.net/user/internq7 - from Canada
http://themeforest.net/user/OrmanClark - from the UK
http://themeforest.net/user/Kriesi - from Austria
I don't expect you to make that much, but I am sure that if you are any good you should at least be able to support yourself without having to sell out your principles. According to the latest guidelines from Envato all PHP code that goes into a WordPress template has to be under GPL for instance. All other code sold on Codecanyon.net has to be Open Source as well.
I am all for helping you out this one time, however if you don't think that you can at least compete at a self-sustaining level on Codecanyon.net so that you can earn a living then maybe you shouldn't be a developer and as such no one should support your hobbies. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, however I believe that someone needed to tell you like it is without trying to pick on you. I think that my advice is pretty sound and common sense.
A: His work for community is useful or not;
B: He deserves some compensation for it or not.
Nope. A bunch of people turned it into that.
joepie91 asked for donations to help with unplanned moving expenses.
That's a boolean decision for everyone to make and then move on. Everything else is just LET derailing.
@sleddog - I agree and I said this: lets all contribute $10 and help him out this one time.
I don't think of joepie91 as a diva, but if someone says the only job he'll take is in some impossible utopian world where there is zero office politics, you only have to work on what you want to work on, there are no meetings or commuting, etc., well...I'm not sure what other word fits.
You're willing to write closed-source commercial software (vb.net) and you're willing to work for commercial enterprises (freelancer.com). This doesn't sound to me like it's about ethics but rather that you don't like rules and find the prospect of having to show up at a certain place and work on something that isn't your immediate passion to be inconvenient to your lifestyle.
There are plenty of places where you could do noble non-profit work. There's a non-profit here in Portland that takes old computers, refurbishes them, puts a Linux distro on them, and gives them to the poor. But yes, there might be some gossip or a weekly team meeting, so you couldn't do something like that.
Freelancing is a way to have less daily structure. Seems to me like you're simply not making enough as a freelancer to pay the bills. Freelance more or freelance different. What really is the difference between spending 20 hours a week writing php shopping cart hooks for some freelancer.com job and spending 20 hours a week getting paid to work for a nonprofit? In both cases, it's 20 hours a week you can't use as you like.
Bullshit. Are you seriously saying that anyone who is not writing code is wasting time and energy? That your gifts are so awe-inspiring that the universe will forever regret squandering any minute when you're not coding?
I mean...dude...time wasting...you read LET :-)
I don't wish ill of you and hope it all works out, but there are so many productive, good things you could do which would also cover your bills that saying "sorry! I live to code on my own projects only! a software artist like myself can't spare 20 hours a week doing something beneath me to pay the rent!" just sounds more like lifestyle justification rather than true creed.
I will bow away from this thread now, I respect your position in life and the way you want to lead it.
But get up and get a job and stop begging here.
Oops, did I say that out loud. You actually nearly had me, thinking there was some thought provoking reason(s) for the position you are in, but no, not one.
Your reasons are the same as anyone else for not "wanting" to go and work, there is nothing new in your views.
As I said before, you maybe need to re-evaluate your position in life. Great, develop the projects you do, but if nobody is paying you or enough that you can live don't come begging in a public place when I am sure there are many here that have more justifiable reasons to ask for a hand out.
Jeez, can't believe I nearly fell for this shit...
+1
Yes you do a lot for the community and plenty of other projects, is it enough to support yourself long term. Frankly no.
No one likes working, no one likes the crap that goes with it - but thats life. I work on plenty of open source projects and communities - however I do it for the betterment of the project - not because I want or expect anything from it.
I was honestly thinking of donating to you, but was waiting for your reasons to find out why you chose not to work. After reading that I won't.
There are plenty of ways to earn money doing what you want - plenty of ways to earn a reasonable living and keep within the open source spirit. From what you've wrote you chose not to do that for no real reason. It seems you choose not to simply because you don't want to and some of your statements seem some what conflicting and hypocritical.
Either way, good luck with the donations. Alternatively work with the system and try and improve things within it - rather than working on the outside of it and simply criticising it and taking the moral high ground.
Archive and close please
So, all the open source projects supported by donations are just beggars that dont want to get a job, maybe ?
I personally donate to Debian, EFF and odd ones I find useful. You can be sure not all ppl there are having paid jobs. I never thought of those ppl as beggars, except those that put up a donate banner all over the place, including the installer and the software itself.
I understand the general public that feels they suffer for the money they earn and as such everyone should, but it is the wrong approach, if you feel that way, try to solve your situation, dont preach to others.
If you do not wish to donate, dont think joe's projects are good enough for you, fine, nobody is forcing you to donate, coming here to vent frustration that some people manage to avoid getting a job and still manage to live with their hobbies only shows your envy and nothing constructive.
Go and call names around, this will not improve your situation, you will still have to bow to assholes that will blame you when their solution they forced upon you proves to be wrong as you said it would. You will still have to "get friends" with some guy you hate just to get a payrise to afford some stupid gadget you dont need anyway.
I agree this is the way things go, but this is because we let it to go that way, but letting it work this way and preaching the merits of the "system" are 2 very different things.
No, not everyone should work the way "we, the people" believe it is right so, no, you do not decide who is entitled to a donation, no, you cannot force everyone to go through the same misery you go through, they made some hard choices and those have consequences, you dont want to help, fine, wagging fingers and say "you are a lazy beggar" will not help you in the end, actually, will make you feel worse at the end of the day.
Why don't you do it?
How has he "managed to live" exactly when he created a thread asking for donations so he can move? That is not "managing" by any shape or size.
I only see 2 people preaching you and the op.
@Maounique - I have already said that we should all donate $10 (each) and help out @joepie91 and I also believe that I made a pretty decent recommendation of how @joepie91 could earn a living. If what I suggested isn't reasonable, then I don't know what is.
Guys listen. Don't donate to Wikipedia, they're just a bunch of beggars without real jobs. Why can't they just put ads on their site to monetize their site? So dumb, their morals shouldn't be so high.
I was going to donate to Wikipedia, then after I read their agenda and their high morals, I didn't donate. They chose not to work and they should get real jobs.
/sarcasm
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors
Some of them do, learning curve for someone here to get a job?
I don't see how this will get you in life really, are you going to be here requesting users to donate when you turn 30, 40, 50...? Even if it's against your "morals" you will eventually need to work or live on benefits rather than posting on a online forum asking users to "donate" to yourself when that money can go somewhere else for example to save someones life or someone living on the streets. Also have you asked your parents to help you out? Someone posted that on the first page but was ignored / missed out on your reasoning.
After reading all the thread, I think you should get a job, or find a way to get money from your work. @black you can't compare wikipedia (a site visited by EVERYBODY) with the projects he is is developing, maybe unintelligible for common people.
Although you obviously a good developer in this community I can't donate to someone who asks for donations to put a roof over his head but is unwilling to get a job because its a waste of your time.
In my opinion you have your priorities mixed up. If you think your time is too valuable for a job then you shouldn't be asking for donations to support your life. People will donate if your projects turn out to be a valuable use of your time. Until then you've gotta get a job as a reliable source of income.
I didnt really want to post this at all but I got irritated by your attitude.
Wikipedia had to start from somewhere, and Wikipedia has been living off of donations from day 1. Without people that donated to Wikipedia in the early days, it might've not gotten this far today. So yes, I can compare Wikipedia to any open source project that have people with strong morals and goals.
Personally, I think joepie91 is capable of getting a job, it's his moral standards that's stopping him as he previously outlined.
Sure, donations is not a long term solution, but if he's working a job, I don't think he'd be motivated to work, which can't be good for him or his boss.
Bottom line is, if you like what he's developing, donate. He's not lying to scam your money. He's actively working on a products that the VPS community might use. This to me is nothing more than a kickstarter post minus the fancy pictures and illustration videos, and a personal appeal.
I don't mean to divert the topic here, but since the project didn't make it's kickstarter goal none of that funding was attained.
--
BlueVM does donate enough that once he does get the place he won't loose it. It's the initial fees and other expenses we can't cover at this time.