The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
onezero.medium.com
The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
1–10 of 375 posts
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#2It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#3It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?
>>there would be something else, wouldn’t it?
ummm, the gist of it is, someone else have to write for free, else every time you curl you would be paying $$ to oracle or someone :|
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#4Not just open-source maintainers but also moderators.
A bad thing about moderators is that nowadays they tend to be immature teens, it's one of the reasons Reddit content quality has been going down in the past few years.
It also creates some moral questions, as companies with giant revenues are outsourcing their internet janitor duties to naive unpaid child labourers
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#5A rational actor never works for "free", they derive some perceived benefit (not necessarily money) from their action, like reputation or self-satisfaction or warm fuzzies. I think it's brilliant that we can use these carrots to get good work out of people that can be shared on the internet.
All the same that's no excuse to abuse people who are acting far from rationally.
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#6It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?
>>there would be something else, wouldn’t it? ummm, the gist of it is, someone else have to write for free, else every time you curl you would be paying $$ to oracle or someone :|
Oh, that was not clear to me! Thanks for clarifying! I was wondering where the downvotes came for my honest question.
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#7It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?
>>there would be something else, wouldn’t it? ummm, the gist of it is, someone else have to write for free, else every time you curl you would be paying $$ to oracle or someone :|
Nobody had to write it for free. They could have sold it instead. They could also charge users for maintenance.
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#8> Because the code is available to use for free, without any commercial licensing, there’s no reason that companies need to tell him that they’re using it.
Well, that depends on the license.
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#9The overarching problem with expecting companies to pay for open-source is that they don’t have to.
It’s often as vital to them as the publicly-provided infrastructure used by their employees to get to work, but because they never see the costs, they assume there isn’t any.
In an ideal world business-critical FOSS projects would be funded by the government the same way that other public infrastructure is.
Until that happens I think lone developers of those popular projects should start to adopt licenses that allow them to charge businesses. It’s the only way to avoid creating martyrs of them.
Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
#10Not just open-source maintainers but also moderators. A bad thing about moderators is that nowadays they tend to be immature teens, it's one of the reasons Reddit content quality has been going down in the past few years. It also creates some moral questions, as companies with giant revenues are outsourcing their internet janitor duties to naive unpaid child labourers
In my experience with moderators on Reddit, is that they are power driven adults who still act like teens.