The story of how the popular JavaScript library began to display ads in the terminal
The Standard package, which is a JavaScript style guide, a linter, and a tool for automatically correcting code, implements what, apparently, can be called the first advertising system for JavaScript libraries.
At the beginning of the 20th of August of this year, developers who installed Standard through the npm package manager were able to see a hefty banner ad in their terminals.
Advertising banner in the terminal
This advertisement was created by means of a new project - Funding . Developers of the Standard library are engaged in it. The Funding library was included in Standard 14.0.0. This version of Standard was released on August 19 . It was then that advertising began to appear in the terminals.
The idea behind the Funding library is that companies buy advertising space in user terminals, and the Funding project then distributes the revenue between open source projects that agreed to cooperate with it and display advertising to its users.
Not surprisingly, this idea has sparked fierce debate in the development community. For example - here and here .
Some of the debaters believed that advertising in the terminal is a good way to finance important open source projects that always have money problems. Others considered it completely unacceptable to watch ads in their terminal.
“The bottom line is that those who support [open source software] need money,” said Vincent Weavers, a developer from the Netherlands. “Better solutions to this problem may appear in the future: and as long as they are not there, you can come to terms with advertising. This is not so bad. Although I personally don’t particularly like to see banner ads in the terminal, I understand their need and fully support this idea, ”he continues.
“My terminal is the last fortress, the last oasis of calm, which does not show me the continuous flow of advertising from the business movers. I am categorically against this idea, because I am convinced that it fundamentally contradicts the spirit of open source that we have cultivated for decades, ”says Vuk Petrovich, a US developer.
Most of the negative comments against Standard and the new open source project financing scheme come from developers who are unhappy that the advertising banners that appear after installation will now fall into the logs, which will completely complicate the debugging of applications.
“I don’t want to watch ads in my CI logs, and I don’t want to think about what will happen if other packages start doing the same. Some JS packages have dozens, hundreds, or even more dependencies. Can you imagine what will start if they all show ads? ”Said Robert Hafner, a California-based developer.
Nowadays, only the Standard library shows ads, but over time, the Funding project, by which this is done, can become more popular. It may be similar to how the OpenCollective project has grown in popularity over the past year.
OpenCollective is a project similar to Funding. But he, instead of showing banners, displays in the terminal requests for donations in which developers are invited to transfer funds to a certain project. These requests are also displayed in the npm terminal after installing various libraries.
OpenCollective Messages
Since last year, OpenCollective posts have been added to many open source projects. In such, for example, as core.js , JSS , Nodemon , Styled Components , Level , and many others.
As in the case of Funding, the developers complained about seeing these messages in the terminal. However, they were ready to accept them, as they only contained requests for donations, rather than full-blown advertisements.
However, in the case of Funding, there is a feeling that this project has crossed a certain line in the minds of some developers who do not want to see ads in their terminals under any pretext.
Some of these developers put pressure on Linode - one of the companies that agreed with Funding to display ads. The company, in the end, decided not to heat up the situation and abandon this idea.
Moreover, some developers went even further by channeling the energy of their anger into creating the world's first ad blocker for the command line interface.
Advertising in the terminal is an attempt to solve the serious problem of financing open source projects. But many do not really like it. As a result, the question of whether this phenomenon is destined to become widespread can now be answered more negatively than positively. In addition, it has recently become known that npm will most likely ban packages that display ads in the terminal.
If you are interested in this topic, take a look at the material that was written based on the results of the “Funding” experiment.
Dear readers! How do you feel about advertising in the terminal? What ways of financing open source seem most appropriate for you?
At the beginning of the 20th of August of this year, developers who installed Standard through the npm package manager were able to see a hefty banner ad in their terminals.
Advertising banner in the terminal
This advertisement was created by means of a new project - Funding . Developers of the Standard library are engaged in it. The Funding library was included in Standard 14.0.0. This version of Standard was released on August 19 . It was then that advertising began to appear in the terminals.
The idea behind the Funding library is that companies buy advertising space in user terminals, and the Funding project then distributes the revenue between open source projects that agreed to cooperate with it and display advertising to its users.
Not surprisingly, this idea has sparked fierce debate in the development community. For example - here and here .
Some of the debaters believed that advertising in the terminal is a good way to finance important open source projects that always have money problems. Others considered it completely unacceptable to watch ads in their terminal.
“The bottom line is that those who support [open source software] need money,” said Vincent Weavers, a developer from the Netherlands. “Better solutions to this problem may appear in the future: and as long as they are not there, you can come to terms with advertising. This is not so bad. Although I personally don’t particularly like to see banner ads in the terminal, I understand their need and fully support this idea, ”he continues.
“My terminal is the last fortress, the last oasis of calm, which does not show me the continuous flow of advertising from the business movers. I am categorically against this idea, because I am convinced that it fundamentally contradicts the spirit of open source that we have cultivated for decades, ”says Vuk Petrovich, a US developer.
Most of the negative comments against Standard and the new open source project financing scheme come from developers who are unhappy that the advertising banners that appear after installation will now fall into the logs, which will completely complicate the debugging of applications.
“I don’t want to watch ads in my CI logs, and I don’t want to think about what will happen if other packages start doing the same. Some JS packages have dozens, hundreds, or even more dependencies. Can you imagine what will start if they all show ads? ”Said Robert Hafner, a California-based developer.
Nowadays, only the Standard library shows ads, but over time, the Funding project, by which this is done, can become more popular. It may be similar to how the OpenCollective project has grown in popularity over the past year.
OpenCollective is a project similar to Funding. But he, instead of showing banners, displays in the terminal requests for donations in which developers are invited to transfer funds to a certain project. These requests are also displayed in the npm terminal after installing various libraries.
OpenCollective Messages
Since last year, OpenCollective posts have been added to many open source projects. In such, for example, as core.js , JSS , Nodemon , Styled Components , Level , and many others.
As in the case of Funding, the developers complained about seeing these messages in the terminal. However, they were ready to accept them, as they only contained requests for donations, rather than full-blown advertisements.
However, in the case of Funding, there is a feeling that this project has crossed a certain line in the minds of some developers who do not want to see ads in their terminals under any pretext.
Some of these developers put pressure on Linode - one of the companies that agreed with Funding to display ads. The company, in the end, decided not to heat up the situation and abandon this idea.
Moreover, some developers went even further by channeling the energy of their anger into creating the world's first ad blocker for the command line interface.
Summary
Advertising in the terminal is an attempt to solve the serious problem of financing open source projects. But many do not really like it. As a result, the question of whether this phenomenon is destined to become widespread can now be answered more negatively than positively. In addition, it has recently become known that npm will most likely ban packages that display ads in the terminal.
If you are interested in this topic, take a look at the material that was written based on the results of the “Funding” experiment.
Dear readers! How do you feel about advertising in the terminal? What ways of financing open source seem most appropriate for you?
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