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

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#331

Post by Ayesh » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

miloignis wrote: post #122

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 tha…

Have you encountered applicants with OSS on their GitHub profiles just to show off to HR? ResumeWare if you will?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#332

Post by m463 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:26 AM 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 couple of things I've been thinking of (speaking of GPL sofware)

- free software (GPL) can be used for any purpose, by the user. Yes, this means a corporation can use the software without paying. However if it tries to redistribute the software it has the obligation to distribute the source code and any improvements made to it.

- Large corporations are made of people. It is also of value that a person inside a large corporation can learn to use GPL tools, then leave the corporation and download use the same tools at home or another job and continue to use the skills learned.

- GPL software is also great for education - students can not only use tools, but can also pull them apart and see how they work

- GPL software can be a legacy if you're into that. You can write and distribute software under the GPL, and it can survive your current job, or corporation, or live on past your lifetime. GPL software has outlived most of the places I've worked. Meanwhile the non-free software those places created during my tenures have largely disappeared.

- GPL software is a great foil against our losing war with privacy. I can foresee a future where running software you can view and modify might be the only way to ensure you know you aren't being taken advantage of.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#333

Post by em-bee » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #328

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…

As much as I dislike licensing zealotry, this is where I think the BSD guys have it dead wrong. The BSD license strictly enables corporate parasitism by dis-incentivising upstream contributions and source-sharing. If the pride in suspecting that one's work is widely used is payment enough for a person, then so be it. But I've never understood why subsidizing corporations is a point of pride for those folks.

one can make an argument that it depends on who is the copyright holder. if it is an individual or a non-profit entity, then the GPL is beneficial. but if it is a corporation, then a BSD license is preferable for others because it allows competitors to that corporation to compete on equal terms.

so to turn the argument around BSD unix would not exist in its current form if the initial corporate developers had not released it under a BSD compatible license.

so it's not just about volunteer BSD developers subsidizing corporations. but there is a give and take in the BSD world too.

compare that to mariadb which contains most of the code that is owned and controlled by oracle now and which prevents mariadb to sell to clients that demand a custom license agreement.

now for a GPL fan, this is irrelevant because they shouldn't be selling such licenses anyways, but fact is that the owner of a GPL product is the only one who can sell such licenses, whereas anyone who uses a BSD product can sell such licenses.

in this sense, BSD code ownership can not be sold because actual ownership of the code is pretty much irrelevant, whereas GPL code ownership can be sold because the owner always has an advantage.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#334

Post by tathougies » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

sixstringtheory wrote: post #255

tathougies wrote: post #123

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. 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.

I mean, homebrew is completely inapplicable to what Google makes its money off of, so it's not particularly surprising. I would not be surprised if I wasn't able to be hired in anything but a junior role at a very niche medical technology company for example. Or a java desktop app shop (I have no java experience). For some reason people are under the impression that Google makes its money from 'doing computer science', and mistakenly think that anyone good at something that qualifies as computer science ought to be able to work there. Aside from the obvious (and oft-repeated) critique of rampant Google fetishism, it's important to note that Google does actually operate several businesses, and its goal when hiring engineering talent is to find talent that will help its business. Homebrew, a package manager for OS X (I don't think Google uses OS X for anything but consumer apps), is completely orthogonal to most of their business.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#335

Post by em-bee » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #267

antpls wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 co…

Thanks for pointing this out. The quoted statement is only true if "benefit" is restricted to meaning "financial benefit." In whatever people do, not just in software, most of the financial benefit goes to profit-making companies because everything they do is directed toward making profits. But what about the unquantifiable benefits that come from improving people's lives? How would you weigh the benefits of millions…

in the same vein i disagree with people who complain about freeloaders who use Free Software and don't seem to give anything back. in reality we do not know how they give back to society. they might be doing many of those things that you mention that i as the developer of the software can not see.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#336

Post by tathougies » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #277

tathougies wrote: post #123

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

Being "employed" in a related field isn't the same thing, though. A moderately animate clothes rack can get a job as a software developer; it's just not that difficult. My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence (i.e., excluding potential improvements in skill and craftsmanship from w…

Software engineering is not one field.

> My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence

If you define 'open source project' as something that exists on GitHub, then the vast majority of open-source software is completely useless and unhelpful to a resume. On the other hand, if you have a popular piece of software, a community around it, and a demonstrated ability to manage tickets, contributors, etc, then you are going to have great chances of working in an environment where that skill is used.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#337

Post by xz0r » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

We need to understand that open source contributors "working for free" is not in the context of market norms. There are experiments[0] indicating that people who work for free adhere to social norms and they do a far more fantastic job from what they would have when they get paid to do the same work.

I myself am an open source contributor working for free and I do it to the best of my abilities even though its "free".

[0] Predictably Irrational - Chapter on The cost of Social Norms.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#338

Post by jacobolus » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:06 AM 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…

> 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

This is nowhere close to true, unless you define “benefit” as “cash profits”. Even then, it’s a tough argument.

There have been extraordinary benefits to most people in the world from open-source contributions. Without a wide range of open source code projects there would be no Wikipedia, no SciHub, no web forums, no search engines, no web maps, no movie/book/restaurant review sites, no craigslist, no online dating, no news websites, no web education platforms (MOOCs, Open Courseware, Khan Academy, ...), no technical Q&A sites, no video sharing sites, no social media, no e-commerce, no online banking, no ...

The great majority of the benefits of all of these software products and projects accrue to their many users, not to their authors or corporate hosts.

(Of course technology is not all positive, and many people have also been harmed by technology. Open source also enables surveillance, stalking, bullying, new kinds of fraud, new venues for propaganda, new legal risks, new avenues for social and political control by self-interested and unaccountable people and institutions, etc.)

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#339

Post by kqr » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

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…

If one of your primary motivations for working on FOSS is to improve the world (which for many of us is the case), then it's very easy to feel an obligation to un-break Amazon because it is a quick way to improve the world for millions of people.

That, on its own, is fine. It brings you satisfaction rather than financial support. What starts being fishy is when companies like Amazon who can readily afford to offer financial support instead rely on and exploit that sense of obligation to get work done for free.

I realise this sounds whiny and that's not the point. The point is that by withholding FOSS contributors financial support, these companies are creating an environment in which the best and most dedicated contributors run the risk of burning themselves out, making everyone worse for it.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#340

Post by Pmop » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

An interesting note that I often like to bring is that one might not catch the entire idea of "There's no free lunch".

Follow with me. People need to eat in order to stay alive; therefore people will often spend a part of their precious time working on acquiring food.

So, there's no such a thing as "people working for free". What is effectively happening is that the costs are being outsourced, either to who's working or to someone else who buys the worker his lunch.