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

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#251

Post by guntars » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:11 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…

Citations needed. This is just a pessimistic speculation based on your experience, but my experience is the exact opposite. So who's right? We should leave this kind of stuff at the door.

Is there research comparing the current situation with a hypothetical world where OSS doesn't exist? How many less developers would have a job? How much less would the remaining be paid? I'm imagining it and that's not a world I want to be in.

To add a bit more to the "factualness" of the conversation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Software Engineers in the U.S. took home $144 billion, which for comparison is more than the revenue of Alphabet or Microsoft. How much of that do you think can be attributed to OSS?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#252

Post by traverseda » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

How about duel-licensing your work AGPL and commercial? You can give back to the open-source community, but profit-motivated entities can pay for a license.

There is one significant barrier stopping me from doing that on my own (meager) projects, and it's that a scheme like that would require contributors to sign a CLA, a whole kettle of fish I'm not really prepared to deal with on my own.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#253

Post by antpls » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:15 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…

> Given then, that there's very little upside to doing open source, and most/all the benefits go to profit-making corporations

I partially disagree. Yes, the benefit will not be fairly shared. However, the volunteers' works accelerate entreprises' works, which can then provide new services and new products faster.

Imagine some ML algorithms could find the cure to aging. You have two options : either wait that some company develops it, but you might be dead by then, or accerelate the process by open sourcing your code and hopefully get the companies closer to this goal. Now, that doesn't mean you will be able to access that cure if a company finally finds it and decides to sell it, but you increase the odds that something might be discovered.

It's like giving $1000 to charity, but with the scale of software, your coded contribution can have way more impact than $1000 on the world.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#254

Post by navigatesol » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #182

I'm a Bucky Fuller fanboy. He calculated that we would have enough technology to make our current economic system obsolete by sometime in the 1970's. That has already happened, but we have, in general, failed to notice. The advancement of automation should lead to a post-historical quasi-utopia, and our biggest problem will be sorting out our personal baggage. (Like Star Trek but without FTL and teleporters.) From my…

>From my POV, charging money for copies of software is regressive and foolish.

Curious if you have any literature expounding on this idea; it's hard for me to wrap my head around.

Is the idea to use software as a tool to provide the product, not as the product itself?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#255

Post by sixstringtheory » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #123

eropple wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Famously, the creator of Homebrew wasn't able to get hired at Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338

Not exactly fitting your question, but an interesting point.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#256

Post by sharadov » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:19 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…

A lot of the FAANG and tech companies contribute to open source projects.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#257

Post by yellowarchangel » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

FOSS has always been a give and take. You use FOSS every day in your daily life from software on your phone, your computer, maybe even your microwave is using FOSS!

No one has to do FOSS! It's a give and take, you take, so there's no harm in wanting to contribute back. It's about freedom, passion, getting your work out there for the benefit of humanity. Can you be sponsored / paid? Sure! Are you obligated to work for anyone or do what they want? No!

It's is just impossible for big companies to pay every FOSS developer everywhere. When I install create-react-app, it downloads thousands upon thousands of libraries, from thousands of developers. Do each of them get a fraction of a cent from the profits of my company? No.

Does a developer at a job cloning a repo mean they have a moral obligation to pay the developer? No.

Right now, the top companies do primarily mobile / web development, and use code probably written by thousands if not millions of developers. Splitting payment to all of them is impossible.

The big projects like Blender, Krita, GNU projects... are all sponsored, and receive donations. The devs work on them for the passion, recognition, and "fun".

FOSS has always been a give and take. If money is a driving force for you, getting a traditional developer job (as they're very in demand) is the best choice for that goal.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#258

Post by dragandj » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

snek wrote: post #135

Liquix wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's generally not a problem until the big companies start asking for features, asking for bugs to be fixed, etc., expecting anything more than what the maintainers choose to donate. If someone from Amazon reports a bug it's kind of scary, you feel like you've broken Amazon. You might even try to set aside time you weren't planning to set aside. It's hard to remember/enforce that you don't owe them that time (especia…

You can politely ask these nice people to contribute funds towards your project that is so important to them. Since they are so nice, they will probably nicely send some money towards the oss developer.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#259

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:24 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…

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#260

Post by teddyh » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:25 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #189

teddyh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am, I have come to believe, in the exact same situation as you, except that I have never contacted the moderators. My account is even almost exactly the same age as your account. It’s very disheartening to hear that contacting the moderators, which I have considered doing, will apparently accomplish nothing.

It's worth a try, anyway. You might get a different mod with a different response, or you might be okay with making a non-specific promise to behave better. (The error I get is "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.", if that sounds familiar.)

Yes, that’s the message I get too.