Hi. I am (@zloirock) a full-time open-source developer. I don’t like to write long posts, but it seems this is high time to do it. Initially, this post was supposed to be a post about the start of active development of the new major version of core-js and the roadmap (it was moved to the second half), however, due to recent events, became a really long post about many different things… I’m fucking tired. Free open-source software is fundamentally broken. I could stop working on this silently, but I want to give open-source one last chance.
Here is some pretty solid advocacy by NerdyDeedsLLC@github in the thread, which is written for new JS kids on the block, but I would extend it to reach US congress(wo)men as well (my country, unfortunately, is a failure that can not solve such problems). Quoting it here for posterity.
But you script kiddies that think being a quick-draw at loading NPM packages, and having a deft hand at finding what you need on StackOverflow have no clue how good you have it. I started coding in JS the year it came out, and NEVER STOPPED. I STILL do, to this day, nearly 30 years later. And yanno what? I STILL don’t know as much about the dark corners of the language as @zloirock does.
If it were MY call, we’d poach him and his family here to the US on EB-1A visas (the permanent-resident, so-called “Einstein Visas,” granted to foreign nationals deemed to hold “extraordinary talent” - same shit we got Einstein and Oppenheimer here on). I’m absolutely confident I could make an effective argument about how doing so could be viewed as a matter of national security.
Send the man a fiver. Skip ONE coffee this month. Or hell, a twenty, and forego cheese on your burger a couple times, too. We REALLY don’t want to lose this man, or his contributions. Trust me on this.