71–80 of 136 posts
This happens all the time with public procurements in Sweden. It's not uncommon to see negative bids as well. After you've got the contract you can bill them for service hours etc so it's a win anyway.
Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone. >I use open source technolo…
This is true for markets where there really is no other alternative than working for free. You are certainly referring to children of wealthy parents who can afford to do unpaid or low-paid internships and entry level jobs in industries like media, the arts, or sports.
When you are talking about contract development work, which exists a robust market for paid work, even if all similar gov't contracts gets done at the $1 it would not much affect someones ability to sell their skills in the private markets.
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No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.
> No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free. No, its not. "I can do it for free" is an instance of "I can do it cheaper". Its quite possible for someone to have a non-negative (zero or positive) net utility from an act which gives someone else a net positive utility, so that the "price" they are willing to charge for that task is zero or even negative (that is, they are willing to p…
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So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.
> So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else. If you donate things then you're still buying it from someone, but giving it to someone that cannot afford them. So really, you're a surrogate purchaser. The problem comes in when you're donating time (via work) to a group that can afford to pay for…
No, it's really quite simple. It's the ethics and morality (and circuitous justification) of being upset by others giving that's complicated.
I built a friend of a friend a billing system for his fledgling business. Didn't charge a dime. I even got sucked in to support for much longer than I really wanted, since no good deed goes unpunished. Was it unethical of me to undercut the other people who might have wanted to provide those services for money?
I did some free consulting last week. A friend is starting a company and hasn't hired devs yet, so I met him for a half day and we worked on system architecture. I told him ahead of time that I was happy to do it for free. He had the money to pay a consultant, but every bit he saves now extends his runway. He bought me a beer. Unethical?
Last year my water heater failed catastrophically and dumped its water all over the floor. I went to my next door neighbor and said, "hey, is there a plumber you recommend around here?" and his response was "don't waste your money on a plumber. That's an easy job, and I can help. Let's go to Home Depot." He spent the whole day helping me. Literally took a paying job that I was planning to pay a plumber to do. Should plumbers be upset about their work being devalued?
Given the tendency of HN toward libertarian and free market approaches, I've been consistently surprised at the suggestions being made around this. This is free markets gone right: A buyer and seller finding the most efficient price for each.
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There's a lot of crappy things that are 100% free market. Oligopolies come to mind. Just because it's a free market solution doesn't mitigate the negative experiences this person created for the other bidders.
Well the problem is self correcting. People will stop giving quality bids if they don't think that there is any profit to be made because a bunch of volunteers have destroyed the market. There is no problem here. Only that anyone bidding should be aware that they won't get properly compensated for their work and time.
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I host a general-interest VBulletin forum, which at one point had something like a hundred people posting. One day, we discovered that via the "groups" functionality, there was a whole parasitic forum co-existing with ours - we didn't know it existed, we didn't know any of the people there, and they didn't know us, and the two groups didn't interact at all . I wonder if it's possible for something similar to happen o…
Can you expand on what you were saying about a co-existing forum? I don't think I understand what you mean, but I'm intrigued.
[1]http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Help:VBulletin:So...
> It didn’t seem controversial to me. Writing some code to help out the government and the general public—what a unique opportunity! Y'know, if the author explained it along the lines of "I wanted to have a record of government work as a foot in the door", I think it would be an easier pill to swallow for the folks bidding at reasonable prices. However, the tone here is a little patronising if another bidder was just…
Why would anybody be against competent coders wanting to donate time to public use? I get that other people were hoping to be paid for this, but would you end all volunteer programs on account of them interfering with paid labor?
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> No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free. No, its not. "I can do it for free" is an instance of "I can do it cheaper". Its quite possible for someone to have a non-negative (zero or positive) net utility from an act which gives someone else a net positive utility, so that the "price" they are willing to charge for that task is zero or even negative (that is, they are willing to p…
No, it's not. "I can do it cheaper" implies that I can get my costs down lower. "I can do it for free" means that I'm ignoring any of my costs.
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> No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free. No, its not. "I can do it for free" is an instance of "I can do it cheaper". Its quite possible for someone to have a non-negative (zero or positive) net utility from an act which gives someone else a net positive utility, so that the "price" they are willing to charge for that task is zero or even negative (that is, they are willing to p…
No, it's not. "I can do it cheaper" implies that I can get my costs down lower. "I can do it for free" means that I'm ignoring any of my costs.
Zero or negative net costs are lower than positive net costs. So "I'll do it for free" (or even, "I'll pay you for the opportunity to do it") are instances of "I can do it cheaper."
> "I can do it for free" means that I'm ignoring any of my costs.
No, it doesn't; assuming rationality it means that the net costs are nonpositive, not that they are ignored (which would be irrational.)
Of course, it could be the result of ignoring some or all costs, but so could "I can do it cheaper" when there is still some charge for the work. There's nothing special about the zero charge case.