Since we’re on lemmy, I’ll use this as an example. If someone were making a GNOME (GTK4 + libadwaita) Lemmy frontend, and I were to start working on my own Lemmy frontend for GNOME, thereby competing with this already existing project for users, is that wrong? To make things more interesting, what if I wanted write my Lemmy client in Rust since I didn’t like the original being written in Python? To make things even more interesting, what if that project is slow in development due to the developer not having a lot of time? My gut instinct is that it is immoral. I feel like I would be taking away a project that the author had sunk some amount of time in, hoping to impact others in a positive way. I understand there is no guarantee that my project does better than theirs, but I should still be conscientious of the possibility, right? Let me know your thoughts FOSS community.
If it’s free, it’s not competing.
If you want to make something, go ahead and build it.
Artists don’t compete with other artists
Steve Jobs attributed the quote “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” to Pablo Picasso.
However, the original adage seems to originate from 1892
“Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.
Steve Jobs was a great enough artist that he even stole the quote holy shit 🤯
Looks like Jobs himself was stealing here ;)
Only he changed the original to make himself look better.
Nothing is original anyway, might as well do it for the love of it
Non technical, but the amount of Bible stuff I know because lit authors can’t go a day without referencing it. Everything is referential it feels
It’s more that the Bible is a cornerstone of the zeitgeist for a lot of people.
When we create, we use semiotics in order to communicate ideas and feelings. The bible is so prevalent for so many people; the language, icons and themes it uses become the foundations on how we share ideas.
As an artist, you’ve gotta be speaking the language that people know and the bible has been foundational in how we express.
Classical art speaks as to humanity & god, Modern art speaks as to humanity & ourselves, Postmodernism speaks.
there’s nothing new under the sun
Somehow this has become a red flag for me. Especially in science stuff.I ditched a book yesterday because the first 15 pages were about how mental health maps to kingdom of heaven.
If it’s free, it’s not competing.
The more popular project will most likely receive more monetary and code contributions. So they are competing for survival.
Artists don’t compete with other artists
I see that you spent no time around artists
If they’re competing it’s a business not art in my opinion, but sure.
Existing in parallel doesn’t define competing
Nah OP, that’s just the nature of the ecosystem. We have more terminal emulators and text editors than we know what to do with and people continue making more. That being said, if your project idea is extremely similar to an existing project, you should check to see if the devs of that project would be interested in your ideas since you could collaborate with them if they are.
FOSS shit is built to be reproduced. if you wanted to fork somebody’s project and build your own thing on top of it, that’s in the spirit of open source. if they didn’t want it to happen, they wouldn’t use a FOSS license. if you can do that, then building your own thing that does similar stuff is certainly not a problem. FOSS isn’t competitive, its collaborative. everybody who contributes is doing a good thing, even if that’s by building more options for people.
Completely agree. It’s not immoral or wrong to reiterate on a project using a different approach or different technology - it’s encouraged, I’d say, or at least welcome.
Immoral? No, not at all. A waste of resources? Maybe. Depends. Maybe you are better off contributing to the other project, maybe not.
There are already 5 or so Android apps for Lemmy, at least 2 iPhone apps and 2 Linux apps on Flathub. Go ahead.
If the available software doesn’t work as you want it to and you have the skill and time to make something you like go ahead. Often enough in the open source world devs of “competing” programs actually help each other.
So in the end you will just make the world a better place with your contribution.
I’m reminded of a time I found myself using an open source tool on github and finding it severely out of date on sources of information it was using to operate. I made a fork, spent a few hours updating, committed that code and put in a pull request with the original developer so they could merge it back into their original. 5 Years later, no response. 🤣
People abandon projects for various reasons or only work with the scarce free time they have. You may find someone interested in a healthy competition, but it might be more likely they back off when they see someone pick up the torch and do what they no longer can.
There’s nothing wrong with having multiple projects that do the same thing, but the project might grow faster if you work together on one app.
Or jointly develop some libraries, so you all can focus more on what makes your own unique.
Lemmy and Kbin both fill the same niche. They can coexist peacefully. There is nothing wrong with trying it your own way. One of the great things about reddit was the app ecosystem that allowed all users to pick their favorite. My favorite was BaconReader, which wasn’t particularly popular, but really worked for me. I’m glad that the developers of BaconReader didn’t decide the market was already too crowded.
I would recommend anyone making a Lemmy app, especially open source apps, document the stuff that was hard for them in making the app so others can learn and not have to fight the same battle.
No, it’s not immoral. It’s preferable that people join their efforts into few projects (that’s how more impactful tools are created most of the time), but there is nothing wrong with you starting your own project and bringing your own vision to life.
Note also that not all free software projects want contribution from outside.
Are you planning on making a GTK4 Lemmy frontend? That would be awesome!
Probably not sorry D: I’m sure someone will come out with one at some point though
No worries! It’s a good idea…
Maybe this book would be of interest to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar . It is a bit dated, but nevertheless great read about OpenSource movement.
It must be about 20 years since I read that, I may have to reread it
Believe it or not, forking is something open-source devs really appreciate.
No, never. Diversity is the strength of open source software. Someone coming along and doing things differently to you is actually really helpful. Just remember that if you are both open sourced you can both see how each other solved a complex problem, fixed a bad bug, or made a performance gain. You won’t be able to directly import their code but the back and forth is helpful for both of you.
That said, helping with an established project is generally a better idea than making a new one from scratch unless you have a clear reason to be different. Many hands make light work and if you can work with someone you may make something better together than you would on your own. Never let that stop you though, go have fun, make a cool thing, and if it turns out you would rather work more in a team you can bring what you learned from building your thing to another project later.
“Is it wring to improve things, add features, or provide alternatives?”
In a word: no.
Nah it’s totally within the spirit of FOSS to outright copy someone else’s project and modify it let alone write greenfield stuff that competes with it, just because we’re not in a traditional corporate/proprietary IP sort of environment here doesn’t mean there can’t be competition; in fact competition in FOSS is good as it drives innovation and improvement.