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The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

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Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#121

Post by Liquix »

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…

Traditionally, OSS contributions are selfless labors of love and curiosity. These people are flexing their intellect and creativity doing something they thoroughly enjoy: solving problems in the most elegant way possible. Code is shared with an air of positivity, camaraderie, and we're-all-building-this-together. At the risk of sounding kitschy, it's this sense of collaboration that enables the open source community to produce robust software proudly capable of competing with proprietary alternatives.

If this culture is stifled the name of depriving corporations 'free labor' through OSS, the creative hacker community isn't elevated - everyone is brought down. IMHO anyone seeking to build financial value for developers or pad their resume is better off working on a side project/startup.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#122

Post by miloignis »

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…

Perhaps I'm in my own echo chamber, but I definitely view open source contributions on a resume as a huge positive when I'm reviewing resumes (as a software dev my boss trusts to evaluate applicants), and I had thought that if that wasn't at least the norm that it would be pretty common among tech companies / companies where developers are part of the evaluation process.

edit: Also, all of the open source I do or that I know of my peers doing is 100% for the love of programming and open source culture, without a bunch of hidden motives. Open source was definitely key to me becoming a programmer when I was a kid - without it I would never have gone as deep as I did into coding (linux, gcc, irrlicht), 3D modeling (blender), etc.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#123

Post by tathougies »

eropple wrote: post #30
qudat wrote: post #18

"[...] people working for free." OSS is "free" in the sense that anyone can consume the content. It's not free labor though. Most of the time, the people building OSS are gaining clout and career progression as a result of their "free work." Companies end up paying for it.

I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers. Like most things, the top couple of percent are being used to project an upside that does not apply to everyone else.

> I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers.

Can you give an example of a very popular project whose maintainer is not employed in a related field?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#124

Post by anaphor »

volkk wrote: post #113
anaphor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

sure-- but the main difference is that the community pretends to be super altruistic under the guise of doing god's work for the good of all developers. it comes off as super fake. at least thats sort of the vibe i get from it. i also dont have a huge sample size of repos so maybe im talking mostly out of my ass in this case i would honestly rather it all be backed by corps and people get paid for it without any hint…

I agree that it's a thing, aside from some examples I have in mind, like for example, the original authors of OpenSSL (originally SSLeay) didn't really ask for any credit as far as I know. I think you might be overestimating the number of people who do a lot of self-promotion simply because those people are going to be more visible. There are plenty of people who work on important things and don't really do a lot of marketing or self-promo.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#125

Post by hope-striker »

nitwit005 wrote: post #117
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…

Back when people were making a big deal about the apparent lack of women/minorities/etc in open source projects, I objected to trying to get them to give away their labor for free. The response to that was that these contributions lead to jobs. But, that idea seems to have largely disappeared. There was a period where people were claiming your github account is your resume, but I haven't heard that sentiment in sever…

Funnily enough, a GitHub-to-resume tool recently hit the front page[0], but yes, that opinion seems to be in decline.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995056

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#126

Post by bsmitty5000 »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #73

I always liked this post by Erik Naggum: The whole idea that anything can be so "shared" as to have no value in itself is not a problem if the rest of the world ensures that nobody _is_ starving or needing money. For young people who have parents who pay for them or student grants or loans and basically have yet to figure out that it costs a hell of a lot of money to live in a highly advanced society, this is not suc…

I'd never heard of Erik Naggum before but his wikipedia entry makes him sound interesting as hell-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#127

Post by lucb1e »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #73

I always liked this post by Erik Naggum: The whole idea that anything can be so "shared" as to have no value in itself is not a problem if the rest of the world ensures that nobody _is_ starving or needing money. For young people who have parents who pay for them or student grants or loans and basically have yet to figure out that it costs a hell of a lot of money to live in a highly advanced society, this is not suc…

This whole argument is built on the premise that when you fall ill for a while or have an accident, nobody will help you and you'll die instead (I guess they didn't mean it so literally, but that's what the text says). As far as I know, this is actually false in every part of the world that can afford it except for the USA. You may not earn a lot while ill, government support isn't everything, but roughly a thousand bucks a month plus medical expenses paid isn't peanuts.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#128

Post by nautilus12 »

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…

I agree with what you are saying here. The underlying problem here is that companies (being emotionless optimization machines) aren't willing to shell out for the benefiet they are getting from open source, because people are willing to give it out for free. The only way this will get resolved is if open source contributors as a whole stop contributing leaving companies to either have to support open source in some way, or go back to developing in house. Most likely the later as it has the benefiet of retaining IP and competitive edge. What this says is that most likely open source will start to go away in the years following if corporate entities don't start sponsoring it more. Maybe some type of subscription model like academic journals, but we all know how much people like that.

Also an angle you are considering are open source projects like Spark maintained by a company (databricks) for the benefiet of being used as a sales tool. This whole class of open source exists and pulls unwitting contributors into helping out who don't realize that they are benefieting multiple layers of corporate entities not willing to pay for it. And they will not see any benefiet from it (unless they use it as a personal sales tool to get a job at those companies).

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#129

Post by manwe150 »

kfrzcode wrote: post #78
rhizome wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $…

$50k-100k seems a bit high for a bugfix.... else I'm desperately undervaluing my worth in salary negotiations

Nope, the bugfix is only $50. The other $49950 is for knowing which line to change. (adapted from old joke from https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/Percussive_Maintenance)

And in practice, it also "buys" you all of the other bug fixes and releases from helping to fund the developer. So while the bug itself might only take a day, the infrastructure around being in a position to do that takes much more time.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#130

Post by cheez »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #106
cheez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Try…

Interesting. I guess I haven't yet gone against the opinions of the moderators so I haven't yet faced this problem.

I guess gab is the way to go. Block others from your view if you disagree, not from the platform.

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