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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

#351

Post by concordDance »

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 seems we shouldn't be, we should be warning people who want to contribute to Open Source that they should probably spend their time doing their own studying and personal/skill development which will allow them to succeed in the roles that they have with their current role or a role they'd like to obtain one day, for money.

Money is only a fraction of motivation for many people. Many do open source to make the world a better or more efficient place and reduce barriers to entry.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#352

Post by glenneroo »

sytringy05 wrote: post #318
partialrecall wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From the article:

> It’s still not clear that companies would be interested in such a contract. When Stenberg asked the company that needed him to fly to a different country to troubleshoot their problem to pay for one, they refused.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#353

Post by pepper_sauce »

maximente wrote: post #211
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…

programmers love - and i do mean love - to program, so it's not surprising that they're willing to give away their labors of love for free. hell, most programmers would probably take a pay cut to work in a "cool" language. i'm willing to wager that C/C++/COBOL/java mean salaries are a standard deviation higher than haskell/elixir/clojure salaries. why? many reasons but i bet that companies know that they can use prog…

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey[0] your intuition is wrong. C, C++, Java devs are paid less than average and F#, Clojure, Elixir devs above average. COBOL and Haskell didn't rank in the survey.

I 100% agree most engineers are severely underpaid. A lot of my colleagues get paid more than anyone in their family ever has (sometimes whole family put together) and just like to ride it out.

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#salary

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#354

Post by killjoywashere »

steinuil wrote: post #343
killjoywashere wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone making hiring decisions, I very much do visit the github accounts of my applicants. I consider the quality of their code and look favorably on them for making code available. I look even more favorably on those who bother to make licensing decisions for their code. Do you get an extra $5k for pushing 1k lines of GNU-licensed code? No. Did you get a callback on your job application? You bet. Do I take pride…

Does your company allow engineers to work on OSS while they're not busy? If not then how can you claim you're proud of their contributions, and don't you feel like you're coercing people into working overtime to get a better raise or a promotion?

We're so remote the sun never sets on our group, so the definition of "workday" is pretty fluid, so yes, "when they're not busy" is a good partition. Otherwise, as the other child comment says, there is a pride in supporting effort. I don't necessarily benefit directly from the projects they may work on. Like others have said, I can't coerce them to do write open source code. But I definitely benefit from their improved or sustained skills. You have to find differentiators to make such decisions. Are you arguing that I should ignore signal or that open source contributions are an invalid signal, or the use of the signal itself is immoral, by some definition of "immoral"?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#355

Post by steinuil »

wawawiwa wrote: post #350
steinuil wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your company allow engineers to work on OSS while they're not busy? If not then how can you claim you're proud of their contributions, and don't you feel like you're coercing people into working overtime to get a better raise or a promotion?

My take: He can claim he is proud because he acknowledges their work and - as the rest of the work - it influences promotion and raises. He enjoys and rewards the positive impact this work has for the company image and the skills of the employees.

I can understand that, I just disagree that to be a better employee one should also devote their free time to an activity that directly influences one's performance review at work. This is definitely a good deal for people who enjoy doing OSS work on their own time-- but it feels wrong and not fair to those who don't want or don't have time to put the extra hours for that.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#356

Post by paulryanrogers »

gitgud wrote: post #265
paulryanrogers wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world of open source benefits the powerful entities, and that's OK that's what open source is about... Everyone gets the code for free The risk is that it devalues labor. And could build a culture where so much is expected for free that there is never enough financial support.

We should strive to make things easier. If open source packages can make software easier to write, that's a good thing and devalued labour is a sign that the labour is easier. Much like the improvements in farming and agriculture have changed from manually reaping the fields to AI controlled harvesting equipment. There will always be software engineering problems to solve, they just move up the stack...

> There will always be software engineering problems to solve, they just move up the stack...

When fewer and fewer people are needed to do the same work it doesn't necessarily make for a better or more sustainable market: socially or ecologically. Consider a world where one needs 40 years of education (instead of say 20) to begin to contribute in a way the capital owners are willing to pay for. And paying for the privilege of much of that education.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#357

Post by skocznymroczny »

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…

Ahh. Irrlicht. I miss the era of small-scale game engines and everyone working on their own in OpenGL/D3D. DevMaster website even had a list of engines, with at least 300 positions on it, sortable by language and other technologies. Unfortunately that era has faded away because Unity and Unreal Engine cornered the market and there aren't many people left working on their own engines.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#358

Post by makapuf »

bhhaskin wrote: post #278
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…

You are forgetting about a third tool in the toolbox. Licenses. If you don't want your open source work to be used for profit select a license that is restrictive.

Ok but sometimes you don't care or encourage this as long as you don't have to support it for free. And you even expect companies not to be assholes taking but not giving back - not enforcing but if it's the nth ticket or bug from mega Corp X that profit from it then let them solve it themselves.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#359

Post by dkersten »

wvenable wrote: post #282
dkersten wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, I’m not even really arguing that its a bad thing. Personally, any code I publish online, I put under the MIT license because I don’t really care if people use it commercially or not. Its also the same argument used to say “piracy” isn’t harmful. I’m just pointing out that in open-source-as-a-hobby its very common that large corporations, who may or may not give back to the community themselves, derive pro…

I don't think it's simultaneously fair to release code in an open source license that allows commercial use and then be demoralized by that commercial use. The problem there is clearly one's own. Companies may use open source software but they don't directly or indirectly profit from it; they can only profit from the value they provide on top of it. Software that is free for everyone cannot be a distinguishing featur…

I don’t disagree, when I release under MIT, I’m basically saying “go ahead and do what you please under these simple terms”. I suppose this is why people release under GPLv3 or AGPL. I’m just trying to provide commentary on why I think people are bothered by commercial use without giving back. Ultimately, I think you’re right: if I release under a permissive license, I shouldn’t get upset if people use it.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#360

Post by gitgud »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #356
gitgud wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should strive to make things easier. If open source packages can make software easier to write, that's a good thing and devalued labour is a sign that the labour is easier. Much like the improvements in farming and agriculture have changed from manually reaping the fields to AI controlled harvesting equipment. There will always be software engineering problems to solve, they just move up the stack...

> There will always be software engineering problems to solve, they just move up the stack... When fewer and fewer people are needed to do the same work it doesn't necessarily make for a better or more sustainable market: socially or ecologically. Consider a world where one needs 40 years of education (instead of say 20) to begin to contribute in a way the capital owners are willing to pay for. And paying for the pri…

That's true, as technology advances, the knowledge needed to maintain it increases. In 50 years the software stack could require petabytes of memory to run complex simulations..

But to me that's a pessimistic way to look at it. It's an accomplishment to need less people to build amazing things.

We're already at a point where even the most experienced engineer can only understand a fraction of the stack they use. Compare that with the 1970's where a programmer might understand 90% of the mainframe they use... because it was simpler...

Basically you don't need to know as much knowledge as earlier generations to accomplish the same thing, but this devalues that thing (or makes it much harder to be good at) ... All the low hanging fruit is gone I guess

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