Projects with bigger problems [LWN.net]

Projects with bigger problems

Posted Apr 24, 2026 19:08 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Projects with bigger problems by rgmoore
Parent article: Dependency-cooldown discussions warm up

> we need a change in people's expectation that they can freeload endlessly off other people's hard work.

"endlessly freeloading" is a *feature*, and IMO is the primary reason why F/OSS has been adopted so widely.

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Projects with bigger problems

Posted Apr 24, 2026 19:58 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

And now people are discovering that zero cost comes with some downsides as well as upsides. If you want guaranteed rapid response to security problems, you're going to pay for it one way or another. In practice, chipping in to support the projects you depend on- whether that's direct financial contribution or paying for some developer time devoted to dependencies rather than your project- is still going to be way cheaper than paying for a proprietary solution.