bjorney

Half of them haven’t been active in 2025, and the first active member i clicked on’s commit history is “fixed a typo on the website” once this year, and once 6 months ago

It’s a shit metric because people spam OSS repos with “minor text fixes” pull requests so they can slap “inkscape contributor” on their CV.

The buttons don’t do any tracking just from existing. They only exist to encourage a miniscule number of people to repost your content on social media, and in the event a share comes from that, they may include affiliate info

All the useful information comes from the tracking scripts, which developers are also placing themselves because they are infinitely more useful. They tell you where visitors are coming from, how/if they are converting, everything they are viewing/interacting with on your site, and what the ROI of your ad spend is. In addition to telling you if someone clicked the share button.

Tracking pixels have been decoupled from the “share” buttons for at least 10-15 years

Just loading the “share” icon from the social media website allows them to see that you are reading that specific article

The buttons aren’t necessary for this though. They can do that with a <script> tag, or a hidden 1x1 pixel <img>

Yes, it was hyperbole, but saying “CodeWeavers does contribute back” is really downplaying it, many, if not most of the wine development is done by CodeWeavers employees (including Alexandre Julliard). Mac users buying crossover was pretty much the main economic driver turning the gears of wine for the 10-15 years before Valve started sponsoring it as well.

still can’t trust them long term because profit

The company is an employee owned trust (co-op) if that lessens the blow

The “Paid app” he is referring to is wine for anyone too lazy to read the article