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The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

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Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#111

Post by sokoloff »

eesmith wrote: post #80
PradeetPatel wrote: post #71

As someone who grew up in India, contributing to OSS has always been the best way for junior developers to get noticed by recruiters. Due to the sheer number of applicants, recruiters are only interested in the ones that are truly passionate about coding - exemplified by OSS involvement or side projects. I'm not saying that it is right, but it does give the much needed exposure to junior talents in order to foster th…

"passion" often seems like code for "will work more for free". From a business standpoint, it makes sense as it shifts risk to the potential employee. But like having unpaid interns, it biases the employment pool toward those who have extra money and time to work for no income.

I’ll be honest: I do appreciate devs who love programming so much they sometimes do it for free. I still pay them (inc interns), but everyone I’ve known who was great at programming did some amount of it for free somewhere along the way (because they can and they like it), whether it was open source, programming contests, or just checking out some new tech on their own and never shipping the code anywhere.

Even though every line you’ll ever write for me will be paid, the fact that you did something worthwhile for free is a positive signal to me. You don’t have to show that specific signal to be hired, but if you do, I’m not going to ignore it.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#112

Post by Guthur »

compycom wrote: post #6

Open source has become yet another way for big tech companies to exploit laborers. If you are an independent developer working on an open source project without a copy-left license, you are a fool.

This is so moronic is not even funny.

It was a reaction against proprietary closed source software that restricted your rights as a user. To avoid this unilateral license control GPL and it's derivatives were created, but so many open source maintainers refused to use it instead using licenses that were essentially unilateral in the other direction.

And so frankly they're the architects of this, not "big evil corp".

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#113

Post by throwaway1723 »

gonational wrote: post #47

If you’re part of some group (e.g., OSS contributors), and a mass media propaganda company, like Wired, which is run by a Vanderbilt, comes along and starts saying things about “this poor lil feller is being abused”, etc., you should be extremely worried; they work for somebody who’s coming after you. The first step in taking advantage of a group else is convincing that group that they’re victims.

Well my friend, the soil where you're trying to plant your sensible words is just totally barren. Here on HN you'll most probably face feedback only from those who work exactly for somebody who's coming after some group as you say, or zealous dupes who follow the former for free. And that feedback will never be positive.

When there are only vipers and toads in a barrell, warm-blooded creatures are few and go by throwaway accounts :)

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#114

Post by thinkingemote »

apatters wrote: post #68
_greim_ wrote: post #10

It isn't so much that companies are unfairly using others' work. It's that if you're going to use an open source tool in your business's codebase, you'll inevitably need support, upgrades, and bug-fixes, which translates into you putting pressure on the maintainers to do more work. By all means, use those people's previous work to put something amazing out into the world quickly. However, when you inevitably need hel…

Something I never understood is why don't more maintainers just post the rate at which they'd be willing to do the work other people want? I suspect very few open source maintainers are doing so well financially that there's NO rate they would accept to perform other people's requests for their own project. Whatever number it would take to motivate you to do the work, just put it out there. Aside from the fact that y…

Why don't regular software consultants post their rate?

Pretty much for the same reasons as open source developers are the same.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#115

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bawolff wrote: post #72
apatters wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I never understood is why don't more maintainers just post the rate at which they'd be willing to do the work other people want? I suspect very few open source maintainers are doing so well financially that there's NO rate they would accept to perform other people's requests for their own project. Whatever number it would take to motivate you to do the work, just put it out there. Aside from the fact that y…

Lots of people do this as a hobby - getting paid for a hobby is a very good way to make it not fun anymore. If its consistent $$$ that might be worth it. For a one shot thing, maybe not as much. I think it also can be difficult to mix volunteer stuff with money. Posting in a bug tracker that multiple people work from which anyone can take on a bug from, that you will do it for $x, can make it feel like you're using a…

> Lots of people do this as a hobby - getting paid for a hobby is a very good way to make it not fun anymore.

This is true, but I don’t particularly like having my work thought of as a “hobby.” In the last three years, I’ve worked harder than I ever did, for a paycheck. I also feel as if the result of that work is the finest-quality software I’ve ever written.

My GitHub Activity Graph is solid green (and absolutely not “gamed”)[0]. I code every single day; often a lot of coding. It’s all been unpaid. The work I got paid for, never got into the public domain.

I’m currently working in closed-source, but the main reason is for a marketing embargo that will eventually lift (might be awhile, though. It’s a not-small effort). Nothing particularly proprietary or extreme. Most of my work is fairly pedestrian.

[0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#116

Post by pelasaco »

Being Open Source developer myself, i know the feeling/stress of a community. However, being able to work on my working time almost exclusively on my projects, helped me to have a normal life after the working hours. So I guess the problem is not being able to sell your idea to your company internally. I'm sure Twitter would support this idea.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#117

Post by bawolff »

apatters wrote: post #92
bawolff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people do this as a hobby - getting paid for a hobby is a very good way to make it not fun anymore. If its consistent $$$ that might be worth it. For a one shot thing, maybe not as much. I think it also can be difficult to mix volunteer stuff with money. Posting in a bug tracker that multiple people work from which anyone can take on a bug from, that you will do it for $x, can make it feel like you're using a…

Sure, but for almost everyone, there's a dollar figure at which they're willing to stop having fun and start making money. Maybe that dollar figure is $1,000/hr for some open source maintainer out there (I bet it's much lower for most of them). Why not put a line in the readme which says, if you want to commission a specific change, send me an email to discuss, my consulting rate starts at $XXX/hr. Or there's a $YYYY…

I imagine if someone is willing to pay a maintainer $1000/hr (implying they are that desperate to hire someone), the maintainer wouldn't need a line in the readme to hear about it.

As someone who tried their hand at doing paid "consulting" work on an open source project i contributed to (just very briefly when i was between jobs. I wasn't very succesful at it. Nobody offered me $1000/hr) most of the jobs were very small and there was a surprising amount of overhead between getting different jobs (maybe not that surprising, i was probably just naive). Decently big $$$/hr translated to less than i thought it would in practise.

> Maintainers can handle this problem however they like, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who's not getting paid

What exactly are you feeling sorry for, and would $$$ alleviate the issue? People don't go into open source software to become millionaires, and money will not fix burnout.

> with the bonus that the expectation to do other people's shit for free is gone.

People will always try to get you to do shit for free, even if its a paid project by a company. Not being paid at least means you can tell off the people you don't like really easily.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#118

Post by rozab »

dvdkon wrote: post #93
ianlevesque wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this is a great way to sell it, but don’t all the dead end forks of Linux for various ARM SoCs belie the Linux argument?

They perfectly demonstrate the disadvantages of private forks. They don't get security fixes, other bugfixes, or new features that userspace software will eventually use.

Right, they never would have seen the light of day were it not for GPL.

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#119

Post by nadaviv »

apatters wrote: post #68
_greim_ wrote: post #10

It isn't so much that companies are unfairly using others' work. It's that if you're going to use an open source tool in your business's codebase, you'll inevitably need support, upgrades, and bug-fixes, which translates into you putting pressure on the maintainers to do more work. By all means, use those people's previous work to put something amazing out into the world quickly. However, when you inevitably need hel…

Something I never understood is why don't more maintainers just post the rate at which they'd be willing to do the work other people want? I suspect very few open source maintainers are doing so well financially that there's NO rate they would accept to perform other people's requests for their own project. Whatever number it would take to motivate you to do the work, just put it out there. Aside from the fact that y…

> The overjustification effect occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. Overjustification is an explanation for the phenomenon known as motivational "crowding out." The overall effect of offering a reward for a previously unrewarded activity is a shift to extrinsic motivation and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Once rewards are no longer offered, interest in the activity is lost; prior intrinsic motivation does not return, and extrinsic rewards must be continuously offered as motivation to sustain the activity.

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

Re: The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders

#120

Post by lionkor »

noncoml wrote: post #85

There are TONS of people out there writing code and opening the source. These people don’t do it for company sponsorship or money or to improve their CV. They do it purely for the pleasure of someone else using it. It’s just that only a very tiny fraction becomes popular. That’s when the problems start. Some may see their software being adopted by millions and may start feeling envious of those that make money using…

> They do it purely for the pleasure of someone else using it.

Exactly! I've been open sourcing all my projects, often even under MIT or similar, and hope that one day it will be useful to someone!

I even sit down for sometimes hours to write documentation, comment my code, make it maintainable. It gives me a certain joy to make it all neat and tidy, just in case someone ever comes across it (which might or might not ever happen, but if it does, it'll be nice!).

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