"We never received a quote for the actual porting, but they said the evaluation cost is typically 10% of the total cost, which would mean the porting would have cost around $33,000 for Dasharo-branded coreboot, and $66,000 for unbranded coreboot. Even their highly discounted Dasharo-branded porting comes out to around $250 to $330 an hour, and that’s if they started from scratch. We had 80%+ of the job already complete. We just needed to debug our code."
How can you be champion of open source if you employ such practices? Double the cost?
What do you think labor rate has to do with public vs private code?
Generally open source code is worth more than propietary code, since the final result, that now an open source solution to a problem exists when it didn't before, is more valuable than if merely a commercial solution exists that you have to license and hope the vendor continues to like you and provide what you want in the way of functionality etc, and doesn't charge too much per seat/cpu/whatever.
The fact that in the end the code is free for everyone doesn't mean it has no value and it wasn't worth paying to have it brought into existence or to have something existing be improved or customized.
For me the value (the amount I'd be willing to pay as a customer, or the amount I'd be willing to work for as a developer) for new code is:
Least valuable: proprietary and the author retains the rights and the customer only gets a license to use a binary. As a developer I need less money because I get to lkeep the product and sell it again to others. As a customer I'm willing to pay less for the same reason, all I get is a limited use copy.
Middle valuable: open source. customer pays to have it written but once written, there are no licenses or limits other than copyleft which is just a formalized way to enforce the limit that there shall be no limits, everyone can use it forever with no worries or limits or serial numbers etc. As a developer I need middle because I don't get to sell the final result to anyone and need to make a reasonable labor rate for the simple hours of actual work. But I don't need more than that because at least I do get to retain the same use of the final result as everyone else, and my name is on something public which is valuable. As a customer I'm willing to pay more for the perpetual unencumbered use of open source than for any normal license. The fact that it's free for any number of machines forever after that is worth a lot up front. If it doesn't already exist, and I need it, then it's worth spending my own time to create it, or paying my own employees to create it, or paying an independant developer to create it.
most valuable: proprietary and customer gets to own (all copyright) the final result. I don't particularly like this model but there is no denying that if you wantto operate this way, it's obviously more valuable to own the copyright to something than not to. As a developer, if you want me to work on something that you then get the copyright to, where even I can't use it or re-sell it, then you are going to pay me a lot for that, because I get nothing but the one time payment and none of the long tail value from direct usage nor sales to others. It's like the difference between a print and the original artwork. If an artist takes a month to make a painting, they might be willing to sell you a print for $500 but the original might be $50,000.
The name thing is just a slight variation on that. If you want me to create something and then don't even want me to put my own name on it and instead let you put your name on it, well of course I'm not going to do that without some compensation to make it worth it. If you don't want to pay for that, you can write your own and then put your own name on that.
The fact that the final result is open source doesn't matter until after the thing exists in the first place. It's free for everyone after that, but before that it doesn't exist at all and needs to be created somehow.
If it's like coreboot where it already exists in a generic form that still needs to be customized and integrated before you can actually use it, doesn't really change anything. If you can do that work yourself, the open source license means you are free to do that work yourself and you don't owe anyone a dime or need any other permission to do it. Go ahead and customize coreboot for your motherboard, for free. Have a ball. No one stopping you.
If you can't, and need someone else to do it for you, then of course you have to pay them just like you'd have to pay someone to set up a web server to host all free linux and nginx software.
If you want to put your own name on the final result and not the actual authors, you can, but why should those authors do that work for you? The cost isn't "twice as much", it's the other way around, if you let the authors sign their work, then they give you a huge 50% discount just for letting them slap the dealership name plate on the rear bumper.
Those same authors are still fully embodying the open source ethos because the product itself is free and unencumbered. You don't need to pay them for your copy at all. Go ahead and use it yourself by doing the integration and customization work yourself instead of paying anyone else.
What do you think the authors are doing wrong exactly? Valuing their time and expertise too highly? Do you think that their time is not worth $350/hour for this work? What do you base that belief on? Can you do it for less for example? If so, then go ahead and do so. Surely you will eat their lunch and show everyone how it's done. Or if not you, then surely many others if the rate is unreasonable. Coding is all remote-work-able so the entire world is available to do it. That's a large number of hungry and skilled coders to compete with. Surely if their asking rate was too high, then they must have no customers and this customer in the article has 50 other firms they can call to do the work for $100/hour. Not sure why they bother complaining with an article like this in the first place since it's so easy to get just anyone to do the work and it's worth so little. Just go down to the local hardware store and grab some $50/day construction day-laborers easy peasy.
While it is definitely a legitimate issue. The recent anti Telegram rhetoric i see here on hacker news and other places seem to pretend that everything listed does not happen on all the other big tech platforms. Pretending it is any harder to achieve the same results
The recent anti Telegram rhetoric i see here on hacker news and
other places seem to pretend that everything listed does not happen
on all the other big tech platforms.
I didn´t see such rhetoric, but it is not relevant. Obstructing law enforcement is usually not a good idea. Telegram is a safe harbor for crime and that is why it is big in crime, incomparable to other entities that do wield out illegal activities from their platforms and comply with (or challenge) subpoenas.
Not sure which exactly anti-telegram rhetoric you mean, I registered jailing of the creator.
Among many other accusations against his person which can be maybe up to debate, one accusation stands out here in Geneva, Switzerland - he repeatedly used pretty bad violence against his youngest son to the point he is badly traumatized for life, having issues with basic functioning. That's suicide / self harm / bad violence material later in life. I have absolutely 0 tolerance for such piece of shit, you don't need to be a parent to see him as absolute scum of this world, and no suffering too great for him.
Maybe his work and product is stellar, maybe not, I am beyond caring. Child beaters can do whatever stuff they want, they are still primarily child beaters. The fact that russians use it so desperately for their war in Ukraine doesn't make it any better in my eyes. These are eyes of regular Joe mind you, just like most of this world.
Point me to other child beaters who also created something popular and I'll happily toss their shitty products down the drain.
Telegram is used by drug dealers in my country too. All types of illegal content. Honestly Telegram is new darknet, but not even that dark. Streets are full of QR codes linking to Telegram channels,
OTOH Telegram is a really good technology. Very lightweight client. Whatsapp sucks compared to Telegram. Very hard to block protocol, Russian authorities basically failed to block Telegram. Very easy to write bots. Telegram bots are very powerful, way beyond simple chat replies. One can build UI with buttons and dropdowns inside Telegram.
Also, in not so free countries Telegram is the Internet basically.
I wish that would be true. I loved internet 15+ years ago, before governments and big corporations and all these fuckers got their dirty hands all over the internet.
This is such a bad faith character assassination. The “child-beating” is an accusation from his partner after he stopped paying 150,000 euros a month in child support [1].
Of course, some weird accusations suddenly come out in such situations, coincidentally not when the money was flowing. The Swiss government hasn’t charged him with anything, so he’s innocent before the law in that case.
The issue here is between Durov and the French government. HN won’t care if he was indicted for domestic violence or something else not related to his app.
The fact that *insert American tech company * is still allowed to run amok when the *insert 3 letter agency* has their hands all over it and openly flaunts it is the greatest irony and crime here
No, they're not allowed because they don't want to follow the same laws that Chinese companies have to follow. The rules are the same for Chinese companies and those from other countries.
Thank you! As a musician I often complain about having to dual boot to get access to all the really good plugins. Mostly due to me not knowing where to find decent enough plugins without having to rely on hacky workarounds using wine
You're most welcome! Yea, I know _exactly_ how you feel. This is why I had my last Win7 partition for so long, but now it's gone as there all I really need is available on Linux. Bitwig + u-he, what more do you really need ;)
A fun thought experiment would be figuring how to achieve something similar using eBPF to get better control at the kernel level