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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

#291

Post by snek »

esotericn wrote: post #164
snek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If someone from Amazon reports a bug it's kind of scary, you feel like you've broken Amazon. Really? If Amazon filed a bug on one of my repos I'd probably see dollar signs flashing.

Some companies do have systems set up to pay OSS projects, but it's hard to navigate. I think a lot of people enjoy donating their time to OSS because it's fairly low-stress (until the above situation happens). I don't want to figure out billing and stuff when companies want my support, it's not a company, and that's why the article here exists. That's why this discussion is happening.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#292

Post by dr01d »

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…

The upside is the satisfaction of solving sometimes interesting problems. Some people do crossword puzzles, some play video games. A rare few write operating systems used by perhaps billions of people.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#293

Post by IggleSniggle »

orblivion wrote: post #120
volkk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think this is fundamentally different from being proud of your importance as measured by salary. Granted a salary might be a more accurate measurement.

Nonsense. Salary is an indicator of utilized leverage, not of quality. Plenty of software devs could easily put themselves out of business, and not be sure what to work on next, without capturing all of the value they generate.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#295

Post by mbrumlow »

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…

>> the vast majority of the benefit of open source contributions on github, be they to languages, runtimes, application frameworks, databases, etc, go towards increasing the bottom line of for-profit companies, not to developers.

Which inturn creates jobs doe devlopers.

Let's face it. As a devloper. My day to day would be tough and slow without many of the free tools devlopers created for fee.

So maybe the pressure for me to contribute is just.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#296

Post by kevingadd »

gitgud wrote: post #231
ViViDboarder wrote: post #36

“The catastrophic Heartbleed bug of 2014, which compromised the security of hundreds of millions of sites, was caused by a problem in an open-source library called OpenSSL, which relied on a single full-time developer not making a mistake as they updated and changed that code, used by millions.” And the catastrophic Specter and Meltdown bugs show that private code doesn’t prevent this sort of thing either...

Yes, I thought that was a weird jab at the maintainer of OpenSSL...

It was absolutely not the maintainer's "fault", which seems like it should have been clearly illustrated by them making the point that there was one developer?

The whole point is that tons of companies relied on OpenSSL but none of them were stepping up to the plate and funding its maintenance to the point of there being multiple maintainers, so it all fell on that one maintainer's shoulders.

Of course after the shit hit the fan those companies had a change of heart and... forked it. Learning the wrong lessons as usual

I recall reading a couple articles in the past about how NTP was (is?) maintained by one full-time developer who barely broke even on doing it, despite the fact that massive chunks of internet infrastructure rely on it. There's money and personnel out there who could be contributing to infra like OpenSSL and NTP and very often it seems like nobody cares enough to fund it.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#297

Post by xkjsdw »

lucb1e wrote: post #127
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…

He did not mean it so literally. Not everyone suffers from gender uncertainty or multiple personality disorder.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#298

Post by carapace »

navigatesol wrote: post #254
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?

I have a few moldy old blog posts but nothing worth linking to, sorry. I should probably take the time to write up a proper screed.

Meanwhile, I'll try to explain where I'm coming from.

Briefly, it makes sense to me to get paid to write software to solve some new problem; but once it has been written, I feel it would be venal (at this time in history) to refuse other people the use of it unless they give me a set amount of money. It costs me nothing and adds value to their lives, presumably, so why wouldn't I let them copy and use it for free?

(It also makes sense to me to pay for support if I need it, and not to use software I can't repair myself if support is unavailable.)

In more detail, I see automation as having its highest goal in the transformation of civilization to a better mode. Technology doesn't solve the human condition, but it does alter the set of daily problems with which we must cope.

Bucky calculated that we would be able to work for two years and then retire having paid for our living expenses for the rest of our lives in those two years, and this by sometime in the 1970's. The catch is that we have to align our technology with our needs efficiently.

He said:

> Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime.

In this scenario your problem is what to do with your free time, not how to get paid for writing/maintaining software, eh?

Restrictions on copying bit-patterns create an artificial scarcity and delay the arrival of this techno-secular Golden Age. That's why I call it regressive.

It is foolish to predicate your business-model on prevention of copying of data (software or media) because then you set up an open-ended source of additional overhead (cost of DRM) and bullshit (DRM).

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#299

Post by objectivetruth »

teddyh wrote: post #260
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too. My uneducated guess is that dang hit me with that flag after chiding me for talking politics.

I don't mind, really. Any topic here even skirting near politics or society brings out a mob of candidates for the "Least Empathetic Human Being" Award, so it's better for me to hit the "too fast" error early on and move on :-)

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#300

Post by lazyasciiart »

arandr0x wrote: post #186
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…

How is software unique in this? Tons of museums around the world are visited by the kids of people who make 100k a year even though the average worker there is an unpaid intern. Do you read any news? Listen to NPR podcasts? I think NPR does pay interns, but they don't pay them millions of listeners * 50min a week of listener time * $60 an hour of average listener earnings. What about science? If you ever benefitted f…

> Who tells these students to stop spending 60 hours a week at the lab and start using their skills doing something people will pay for, like develop a no-palm-oil no-aspartame but-still-addictive Mars bar for 25c unit cost?

Almost everybody, whether in or out of academic science, tells them that.

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