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No Free Features

landshark.io

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Re: No Free Features

#71

Post by detaro »

alangibson wrote: post #69
detaro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also why it makes sense for maintainers that have the capacity to offer some token "premium support" or something along those lines. "Just give this person money because we like them" is not in the vocabulary for people approving/checking expenses, "Give this person money in exchange for a service we say we want" is totally normal. Even if the "premium" is just something relatively minor like a guaranteed response (n…

I think recurring support contracts or subscriptions are actually very problematic in the case because the gains will naturally go the projects highest up the dependency tree because they are the most visible. However, if we payed for change requests in individual projects there would be the possibility for 1. money to trickle down from well sponsored projects to their dependencies when those higher level projects ne…

Good point, hadn't thought about the trickle-down aspect.

Re: No Free Features

#72

Post by dahart »

alangibson wrote: post #57
dahart wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is in fact an ethical problem to try to get something for nothing if you break it down The problem with this statement is that the software was offered by the author as something for nothing in the first place. The OSS authors propose that you walk into their shop and walk out with (a copy of) the painting. The problem isn’t taking the painting, it’s coming back later and asking for a change of background color…

I'm not really talking about the software as it exists at any given moment. The right to make a copy and use it is explicitly granted by the license. I'm focused strictly on change requests. > The problem isn’t taking the painting, it’s coming back later and asking for a change of background color or a new frame, and expecting that to also be free. Assuming the painting cost nothing to copy but costs alot to change,…

> I'm not really talking about the software as it exists at any given moment. The right to make a copy and use it is explicitly granted by the license. I'm focused strictly on change requests.

That's fine, it's just messy to speak in ethical absolutes about unpaid labor if it only applies to change requests and not the software itself. It's also messy to focus on the economic value of change requests and ignore the economic value of the software itself. It's messy to be perfectly comfortable with the open source license, but later expect that any communication with the author about the software should not fall under the terms of the license the author chose.

I'm wildly in favor of companies paying for their change requests, and wildly in favor of open source authors being paid for their work! I just don't quite agree with the framing of ethical absolutes you're proposing.

By and large, the majority of people using open source aren't making any change requests, and the majority of the people that do ask for changes are not demanding free work, they're reporting bugs, making suggestions, letting the authors know what would be more useful to them, but not expecting that it will happen. There is a minority of people (often newcomers) to OSS projects that expect responses and help, and they may be in the wrong, but the authors are under no obligation to attend to them, and often say so. All that said, many companies are already supporting OSS financially.

Why should we limit paying for OSS to change requests anyway? I'd love to see authors being paid for software that's used in commercial deployments. I'd love to see the authors compensated for their software's value. But we cannot ignore the fact that by choosing to release it openly, they are choosing to forego the requirement that they be paid. For some people, that's acceptable even if others ask for support.

> Assuming the painting cost nothing to copy but costs alot to change, then I agree.

Yes that is what I mean, and what you meant before that too, because that reflects the reality of open source software. This is why the art shop theft analogy wasn't great in the first place.

Re: No Free Features

#73

Post by dahart »

alangibson wrote: post #70
dahart wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, I think you’re right, a lot of companies are open to paying for it if it’s saving money and providing value. I mean, all companies already do have a software expenditure budget for commercial software. But I guess it is not simple to just put OSS projects in the same budget bucket as proprietary software. Companies have a special aversion to unexpected expenses. I’ve done business with companies that would r…

> I guess I’m not convinced that if software is offered for free in the first place that it always makes sense to expect money to be offered without asking for it. I'm explicitly not talking about the "software ... offered for free in the first place". I'm talking about changes to that software at someone else's request. > I just don’t necessarily agree with the hyperbole that unpaid labor is “wrong”, because that un…

If your software is valuable to me, and I use it without paying for it, then it is unpaid labor. It is irrelevant why you made the software, and irrelevant what the transaction cost is.

> My argument is that norm should be inverted

That norm is being set by the authors, and can be inverted by the authors, right? If devs want to be paid, they can and do ask to be paid, right?

Re: No Free Features

#74

Post by carapace »

alangibson wrote: post #43
autarch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "free software" predates "open source" by many years. Stallman started work on free software (the movement and the code) many, many years before Eric S Raymond coined the term "open source".

It's about the sharing of code, whatever label you put on it. Terminology usually lags behind practice.

No, you could always share your code, "Open" source adds nothing to that.

"Free" software is about preventing technology lock-in. As in "I'll share with you but only if you agree to share with me."

Re: No Free Features

#75

Post by alangibson »

dahart wrote: post #72
alangibson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really talking about the software as it exists at any given moment. The right to make a copy and use it is explicitly granted by the license. I'm focused strictly on change requests. > The problem isn’t taking the painting, it’s coming back later and asking for a change of background color or a new frame, and expecting that to also be free. Assuming the painting cost nothing to copy but costs alot to change,…

> I'm not really talking about the software as it exists at any given moment. The right to make a copy and use it is explicitly granted by the license. I'm focused strictly on change requests. That's fine, it's just messy to speak in ethical absolutes about unpaid labor if it only applies to change requests and not the software itself. It's also messy to focus on the economic value of change requests and ignore the e…

> it's just messy to speak in ethical absolutes about unpaid labor

I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that unpaid labor where the other side is profiting is definitely bad.

> if it only applies to change requests and not the software itself.

I tried to break down why I think it is necessary to split these in the context of open source. I'll try to refine that point in the future.

> It's also messy to focus on the economic value of change requests and ignore the economic value of the software itself.

Much remains to be said about the economic value of the software itself. That's just not what I'm harping on right now.

> It's messy to be perfectly comfortable with the open source license, but later expect that any communication with the author about the software

I never said 'any.' Change requests are a very specific thing in our industry.

> should not fall under the terms of the license the author chose.

I don't get that. Why would communication with the developer fall under a software license?

Edit: I think you might mean that, because the source code was free, it's implied that the changes should be free. If so, that's exactly the norm I want to change and also why I split up the offer of source code from change requests. Getting the source code free should not imply you get changes free for reasons I laid out elsewhere in this discussion.

Re: No Free Features

#76

Post by maerF0x0 »

alangibson wrote: post #61
maerF0x0 wrote: post #59

If I give you a large number of scratch tickets (such that expected value is > $0), could it be considered compensation? Starting and contributing to a side project often has EROI > 0 and for many _that_ is their compensation. Now, as for Marak who is facing homelessness etc, that's just dumb (for society to treat such a beneficial member in such a manner) .

If all the dev wants is street cred, then great. I'm not telling anyone what is good for them. I'm arguing against a norm that I see as being frequently one-sided and occasionally actively destructive, and for something like the Norm of Reciprocity in this narrow case of feature requests on open source projects.

Yeah, hopefully thats where new engineers hoping to cut their teeth on FOSS contributions would step in and say "I want to contribute too!"

It doesnt have to be a full binary, can be a spectrum of outcomes where some people get paid for full time work, some take "experience"/"portfolio" payment and others are happy to just code ...

Re: No Free Features

#77

Post by dahart »

alangibson wrote: post #75
dahart wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really talking about the software as it exists at any given moment. The right to make a copy and use it is explicitly granted by the license. I'm focused strictly on change requests. That's fine, it's just messy to speak in ethical absolutes about unpaid labor if it only applies to change requests and not the software itself. It's also messy to focus on the economic value of change requests and ignore the e…

> it's just messy to speak in ethical absolutes about unpaid labor I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that unpaid labor where the other side is profiting is definitely bad. > if it only applies to change requests and not the software itself. I tried to break down why I think it is necessary to split these in the context of open source. I'll try to refine that point in the future. > It's also messy to focus on th…

> I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that unpaid labor where the other side is profiting is definitely bad.

That is definitely not always true. And regardless, creation of the software itself is labor. It’s not a great idea to claim all unpaid labor is bad when the author explicitly chooses to forego payment for writing the software, and also turn around and say you’re only talking about a fuzzy gray line called change requests.

If profiting from someone else's labor without paying is bad, then why focus on change requests? Most companies who profit from OSS aren't asking for changes, but are making money.

> it’s implied that the changes should be free

No, I didn’t mean that the license implies changes should be free. I just mean that the license doesn’t help setup expectations, and the author is the one who both controls the license and the expectations.

The main issue here is expectations. I see and appreciate your goals here, it’s applaudable to vouch for people who should be getting paid.

What I don’t see is a clear and strong argument for why this shouldn’t be handled by market forces - why companies should pay without being asked, how much they should pay, and why devs shouldn’t simply charge for change requests and/or the software, if payment is what they seek.

Re: No Free Features

#78

Post by junon »

Worth mentioning, there are quite a few people on another thread pointing out this person is not very pleasant, having done some seriously not-ok things and has an attitude that suggests these claims are disingenuous.

Re: No Free Features

#79

Post by alangibson »

jefftk wrote: post #62
alangibson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a great example since dropping a new release is pretty trivial, but consider the counterfactual where you're having trouble paying rent and you do know that ptzz is a highly placed engineer at a Fortune 500 company. A little compensation starts to sound like a good idea.

I have no objection to people working on open source saying that they require payment to make changes. I think anyone who gets obnoxious and entitled in response to such a request is being a jerk. I have a strong objection to the suggestion that this be socially required. If people felt that it was unethical to make a feature request or report a bug without offering payment, most people would not make feature request…

> report a bug

I explicitly excluded bug reports in an earlier draft because those aren't generally considered 'changes', but rather fixes to previous changes. Looks like I should have left that in.

Re: No Free Features

#80

Post by jefftk »

alangibson wrote: post #79
jefftk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no objection to people working on open source saying that they require payment to make changes. I think anyone who gets obnoxious and entitled in response to such a request is being a jerk. I have a strong objection to the suggestion that this be socially required. If people felt that it was unethical to make a feature request or report a bug without offering payment, most people would not make feature request…

> report a bug I explicitly excluded bug reports in an earlier draft because those aren't generally considered 'changes', but rather fixes to previous changes. Looks like I should have left that in.

I think I still don't understand how you're thinking about it. When I report a bug or file a feature request, it seems to me that you would say I am asking the author to do some unpaid labor. That is, I am asking them to fix the bug or to add my feature. A bug report is requesting a fix to previous changes, yes, but isn't it still, in your view, a request for something in exchange for nothing? If you fix a bug for me, "you pay a hefty cost in time while my cost remains 0", no?
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