The Internet Relies on People Working for Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#101

Post by volkk » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

all good points. i also think what really pushes a lot of developers to do open source, and bear with me for the unpopular opinion--is ego. they love having followers, and a voice on twitter with some open source badge on their profile page. it's in a way a status symbol of "i did this important thing that a lot of people rely on, im pretty important." i highly doubt that even 5% of contributors are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts or the community.

you can sort of see evidence of this within repositories filled with smug comments within the issues or pull requests

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#102

Post by davnicwil » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

> most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for

I agree with your general thrust but on a tangent, this isn't true and isn't the right way to think about software contributions, even 'trivial' ones.

A trivial change seems low value to you because you wouldn't have to spend much time at all doing the same thing yourself.

To see its market value, you have to view it from the perspective of the average person - how long would it take them to make that change? Answer: a very, very long time. They'd have to learn the fundamentals of programming first.

The value of something isn't how long it takes to do it in isolation. It also factors in how long it took to get to the position where you could do it at all.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#103

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

kfrzcode wrote: post #99

Kalium wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High for salary, yes. High for buying enterprise support on mission-critical software? Perhaps the value might be different.

Good point - though I'd argue anything mission-critical should never rely on external SME contractors being hired to fix one-off bugs.. :shrug:

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#104

Post by turk73 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

I think without the Euro social safety net system that open source would totally collapse.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#105

Post by PeterStuer » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #98

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

There's an issue though. You spend time as you please and its fine, but ultimately current society revolves on exchanging services in a semi quantifiable manner (transactions at price). You cannot live on free contributions. I find this hybrid situation too paradoxical.

What makes you think a society relying on margin maximizing businesses is the better choice?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#106

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #24

user_50123890 wrote: post #4

Not 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

Edit: very interesting that this post is getting downvoted. I didn't even say anything controversial, just that banning people is bad. Exactly the danger we face online, which will eventually get into broader society. I got banned on a platform for saying a public figure was physically attractive to me. Prior to that, I had engaged in a perfectly factual discussion about certain statistics that were in favor of a par…

> I like HN's approach to moderation. You don't ban the person unless they are really unreasonable. You flag the comment, disappear it from the thread and tell them to behave.

That does happen, but HN also silently rate-limits and downrates comments for people that have been flagged as troublemakers by the mods.

I'm currently rate-limited on HN to no more than five comments in a period of, I think, several hours. Trying to post more often produces a cryptic error message that I honestly thought was a bug. I eventually messaged the mods and was told that I must have done something disruptive (they couldn't tell me what) and they'd restore my privileges if I'd promise to stop doing that (which I can't do in good conscience without knowing what "it" was). I received no warning before this began.

They said the obfuscation was necessary because, if I were a troll or a spammer, I'd just create a new account or three if I realized I was being restricted.

I don't claim to be a perfect commenter. I know I've let emotion get the better of me on occasion, and it's fair to want to rein that in. But I think it's clear from my history that I'm posting in good faith, at the very least. Treating me like a malicious abuser benefits no one.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#107

Post by swlkr » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #76

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

Nobody's saying it has to be, uh...what's the name of a profitable internet company that isn't Facebook? But making demands on people who are working for free is bad manners . I don't care if you think the internet changes everything, it's still possible to be an asshole. My off the cuff solution is for project owners to add a status flag to their issue trackers: PAID. Anybody can submit a bug as PAID, but it costs $…

This is great, although I’d settle for $10k/bug.

Of course this also incentivizes people to add bugs in on purpose

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#108

Post by anaphor » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #101

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

all good points. i also think what really pushes a lot of developers to do open source, and bear with me for the unpopular opinion--is ego. they love having followers, and a voice on twitter with some open source badge on their profile page. it's in a way a status symbol of "i did this important thing that a lot of people rely on, im pretty important." i highly doubt that even 5% of contributors are doing it out of t…

It basically boils down to whether you think people are really being altruistic, or whether it's simply reciprocal altruism.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#109

Post by dumbfoundded » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #98

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

There's an issue though. You spend time as you please and its fine, but ultimately current society revolves on exchanging services in a semi quantifiable manner (transactions at price). You cannot live on free contributions. I find this hybrid situation too paradoxical.

How is it different than any other sort of hobby or volunteering?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#110

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

user_50123890 wrote: post #4

Not 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

I assumed from the headline that this would be about moderators. Given how major sites depend on them, and how many forums there are strewn about the internet, the total man years of free labor must be enormous.