I've had some reactions on my latest move to make Magic closed source, and figured I wanted to explain my motivations a little bit more.
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For me, as people learned of my loss of sight, I was then treated like unwanted garbage in much of the community. At one time (two decades ago) there were conferences that supported and encouraged blind and disabled speakers, and projects that valued their contributions. Not now, as soon as I am asked to speak and then ask how they can accommodate a blind speaker, they withdraw the invitation. I feel about as welcome as a transgender person would likely be at a GOP party meeting ;).
Since my participation is unwanted I often no longer even try to publish or do very much at all. I had figured out accessibility entirely on my own over the last few years because nobody cared to answer or support such issues or even answer simple questions in the community either. This I think is why so many disabled live in forced absolute poverty. So I see your point as a tangential issue, but one that I think touches upon related social issues.
I feel for you :/
Let me know if I can help you somehow ...
Last year I took down the projects I was still doing from various sites. Workflows made to accommodate external contributors only do make things much harder when there are none to accommodate anyway.
Mostly, before loosing my sight, I had a vision for developing smart voice and video agents to create smarter living spaces by converging voip, messaging, video, smart speakers, facility control (lighting, heating, etc), geospatial, and ai agents. However, it fits best within the smart-city concepts emerging in Asia than anything in the US, outside perhaps of automating property management; imagine the house that can automatically show itself off to potential buyers for realters. But many of my concepts and applications always were and remain a bit far ahead of the curve.
Najs! Do you have APIs? It sounds like a perfect match for my own Magic in fact!
I did start on an web api and admin server. I tend to divide things into separate (and stand-alone testable / replacable) service components.
These docs give some idea of what I was thinking about and doing....
tychosoft.com/tychosoft/coventry/w...
tychosoft.com/tychosoft/bordeaux/w...
tychosoft.com/tychosoft/apollo/wik...
Just here to say sorry for the pain you've been through and wish you the best in pursuing whatever path you've decided to set foot on.
On a related note, Reddit is undeniably the worst of all the communities with the most toxic people I've ever seen. I have been perceiving it as a gathering of the degeneration and try to stay away from it as much as possible.
Thank you. Reddit is the garbage of the internet, one notch up from 4Chan yes ... :/
Thomas, I think you have made the right decision. I remember creating a free online game on the primigenic internet and in this time only received as a pay complaints and miserable attitudes. And considering since then, human ethics and morals are in sharp decline, more so than Yahoo's market value :-)
As a matter of principle and a long time ago, made the decision not to give away my time, which is the most important thing we have. Because money comes and goes and health is a factor that influences the time you have in this life. That is why I have never followed nor will follow the advice for noobs-juniors of participate in free software Dev for the portfolio reasons and so on. I may be a bad human being but I don't even take advantage of anyone's time and effort and I always paid for what I needed or need and I ask for the same in the just terms of my time and knowledge.
My best wishes with your pathway and forget all about trolls and so on.
Thx Anton :)
That's why I always advise avoiding 3d-party dependencies as much as possible.
Specially ones that are not backed by big corporations that make profit.
No one likes working for free eventually, but no one likes having the rug pulled under their feet too...
Your argument is the exact argument that resulted in me "pulling the rug". If you and others hadn't used that argument previously, there would be no reasons for me to "pull the rug" ...
I agree don't get me wrong.
Those who profit from FOSS need a change of perspective so that contributors get better compensation for their hard work
Thank you! My point exactly! If we need a "rug pull" to make that happen, I'll gladly pull the rug on them!
It's starting to feel like at the very least there should be some sort of pool that distributes money to FOSS developers. Have anybody who is using FOSS in an enterprise endeavor pay into that fund, and then the fund pays out. You'd probably want to fine-tune it so it's based on the usage of the particular project and the percentage of total commits the dev has, but that's fine-detail we don't need to hammer on. The thing is, stuff like this could create a decent revenue stream for deveopers like you, Thomas, who have poured their hearts and souls into the building of the app.
Food for thought, anyway.
It's a great suggestion, but it accumulates power into the hands of the few, only opening up for (yet another) corruption scandal ...
I suspect the solution to the problem is what I did, and simply "go on strike" ...
I might open source license it again once I get my billion dollars though ...
Hang in there
Thx mate :)
sending hugs, I'm sure this was a hard realization. Wishing you all the best and that you get the money you deserve! 🎉
Thank you <3
that's very bad to hear, shame on those companies who never give anything back, very logical decision I think after all this abuse