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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

#311

Post by rhizome »

swlkr wrote: post #107
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 $…

This is great, although I’d settle for $10k/bug. Of course this also incentivizes people to add bugs in on purpose

It's not a cobra problem. If bugs get added "on purpose," which is a ridiculously cynical opinion of Stenberg's ethics, people can fork it and maintain it themselves.

$10K is way too cheap. I recommend putting some thought into the idea of business value.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#312

Post by sanderjd »

screenbeard wrote: post #307
athenot wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a project starts having large companies relying on it, traditionally there have been 2 mechanisms to address this: - start a company around providing enterprise support services; - ask for the large companies to provide some resources such as a part (or all) of an employee's time to work on the project, for the parts that are more dear to that company. If a company is unwilling to pay, either in the form of a supp…

Or ask them to fix it and submit a PR. If their edge case broke it, then they should know best how to fix it.

"Fix it yourself" is not a full solution to this problem. It takes time to review and merge pull requests. Especially if some well staffed team is dropping a large chunk of code for a relatively esoteric use case. It will inevitably take a lot of back and forth to work it into the right form for the project's primary goals, and it may never fit. If a company really depends on a project, it behooves them to contribute financially through a license or employment, or to maintain a fork.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#314

Post by unsined »

helpPeople wrote: post #39
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'm in a similar situation. Started a website for fun, maybe I'll sell books. Then my website got popular and people want more content faster. I have a day job, so I can't work full time unless I'm paid similar. I'm unsure what to do next. My free website can be monatized with the goal of quitting my job. Or users can get my hobby for free. It seems no one is happy except me. The only benefit, my popularity will like…

My 2 cents: keep supporting it for free for a little bit longer, and then if there's no way to keep managing it yourself, make the leap and monetize. If people don't like ads/paying and leave, then you'll at least have a large userbase that can recover.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#315

Post by rhizome »

gitgud wrote: post #194
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 $…

Charging money to fix something because of who they are seems unethical to me... Maybe it's just capitalism, which is usually antithetical to open source free software... If they want it fixed, let them add resources to the project like submit a pull request, donations or charge people support fees for urgent bugs, which many OSS projects do...

Charging money to fix something because of who they are seems unethical to me

First of all, I believe that everything people do is according to some ethic, or set of criteria that motivates them, so there's no such thing as "unethical."

Secondly, it's not charging money because of who they are, it's charging them because of what they have, which is money, which is a desire to have a bug fixed, and which is not expertise in doing so.

Thirdly, charging money like this is not antithetical to free software, and as a matter of fact is promoted by FSF. Here they are dispensing with your argument in the first sentence: [1]

Fourthly, if they were going to submit a PR they would already be doing so (and maybe they have), but as the story goes, the lion's share of coding is performed by Stenberg. PR's are free and money is also a resource. Why not put the resource in the place with the most expertise?

In what way is the money I suggest not a donation or support fee? Lack of contracts to complicate things? Lack of tax writeoffs? These companies don't pay taxes anyway.

1. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#316

Post by sneak »

SI_Rob wrote: post #249
arandr0x wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If you could literally sell meaning to people for less friction than those alternatives they'd eat it up. "If you want to get rich, start a religion" - L. Ron Hubbard prediction: 2020's will be a decade of hyperactive cult growth, accelerated by proliferation of private alternative currencies, loneliness and the decline in traditional religious affiliations. Patronage of the ambitiously famous will be direct and re…

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

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#317

Post by dwd »

athenot wrote: post #165
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 a project starts having large companies relying on it, traditionally there have been 2 mechanisms to address this: - start a company around providing enterprise support services; - ask for the large companies to provide some resources such as a part (or all) of an employee's time to work on the project, for the parts that are more dear to that company. If a company is unwilling to pay, either in the form of a supp…

RedHat basically showed how you can setup an Enterprise OSS support business.

There's also a multitude of businesses selling support licenses for plugins/modules that extend OSS applications.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#318

Post by sytringy05 »

partialrecall wrote: post #150
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 Amazon doesn't pay you, then why are you scared of breaking Amazon? I understand why somebody would be scared of that. They're big and important to the tune of many many billions of dollars, while you or I are not. But you shouldn't let that get to you. You should make a conscious effort to not let that get to you. If they want you to take their problems personally, let them hire you. If they can be broken by you…

I would love to have created something that was so critical it could break amazon. That sounds like a ticket to $5k a day consulting gigs

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#319

Post by joshlemer »

ken wrote: post #286
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…

It’s part of being a professional. We even have a word for it: pro bono. Volunteering your skills doesn’t make you a sucker. Companies may not care about volunteer work when making hiring decisions, but that should not be why you do it. You say most open source software is used by companies to better their bottom line, but if you’re making six figures through skilled work and not giving anything back to your communit…

I'm the one you're responding to and I'm not making six figures, you can't assume everyone lives in USA making amazing salaries and bonuses.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#320

Post by ken »

joshlemer wrote: post #319
ken wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s part of being a professional. We even have a word for it: pro bono. Volunteering your skills doesn’t make you a sucker. Companies may not care about volunteer work when making hiring decisions, but that should not be why you do it. You say most open source software is used by companies to better their bottom line, but if you’re making six figures through skilled work and not giving anything back to your communit…

I'm the one you're responding to and I'm not making six figures, you can't assume everyone lives in USA making amazing salaries and bonuses.

Forget I mentioned money, then. That doesn't change anything else I wrote.

I guarantee I earned less money in the past year than anyone reading this (I don't work in tech any more), and it didn't stop me from volunteering my skills. Being rich is not a requirement for contributing.

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