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Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

babeljs.io

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Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#111

Post by underwater »

I work for a startup that benefits from open source.

I can and do make the case for spending a lot of money on SaaS products and hiring people. But there is no way in the world I can stand in front of company leadership and ask for money to spend on something that I already get for free. I'd look out of touch with the realities of running a business and the request would be roundly shouted down.

If there's some value I can get then it's a much easier sell. For example, if there is a Babel job board then I can choose to use that over alternatives when I next hire. Jed Watson proposed https://budgetforopensource.org/, which puts this type of thing in the employee perk category so that I can justify it using hiring as a goal. These are things where I can make a business case for spending real dollars, rather than a philosophical argument.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#112

Post by physicsguy »

alpaca128 wrote: post #36
_pdp_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah that includes also any random automated job too… and there are many of them.

Even if those 29 million weekly downloads were all automated it would still imply 29 million users have setup automated jobs for building software with Babel.

No it doesn't. For e.g. how many stupid CI pipelines are set up to download it on every run? You could easily be 2 or 3 orders of magnitude out on actual number of direct users.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#113

Post by golergka »

cycomanic wrote: post #87

I find the comments here fascinating. So the lead developer was paid $11k a month, and somehow many start calling this a problem. Apparently, if you work on OSS you should be working for something slightly above the poverty line. People are comparing it to other salaries, but seem to forget that this salary likely does not include any other benefits (health insurance, stock options ...). I mean he is the lead develop…

Other comments are right, $11k a month is a very high engineering salary anywhere in Europe.

However, during the last year there's been more and more american companies that offer these kind of rates remotely. So, a good developer could make this, and even more, while living in Europe, although you might have not consider him "working" here (whatever this means in terms of remote work anyway).

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#114

Post by hnbad »

dash2 wrote: post #56
hnbad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence is worth emphasizing. Many people misunderstand the tragedy of the commons as an argument why a commons can't work, but the only possible conclusion is that the commons can't work under the current economic system (and specifically the dominant school of economic thought of the past half century). The usual example given is a pasture shared by shepherds who are each going to optimize their use of t…

That's mistaken in two ways. First, the tragedy of the commons - aka the public goods problem - is an argument why a commons can't work, full stop. It's precisely mathematically specified. If the conclusion doesn't hold, that's because the assumptions didn't hold. You can certainly argue that the assumptions don't hold in many places, e.g. among Maine lobster gangs or in the woods around Japanese villages, and indeed…

The economic system is literally part of the assumptions.

The tragedy of the commons holds up under laissez-faire capitalism. It can be somewhat mitigated under other forms of capitalism but there are examples for commons that pre-date capitalism itself and also specifically enclosure (the formal privatization of common land), which itself pre-dates capitalism.

I'm not sure why you think you need to defend the concept of homo economicus. You're literally refuting your own first point with the second: a commons can work, but where it has worked it has usually come with constraints that run contrary to laissez-faire/free-market capitalism (or the approximation thereof) and that don't necessarily translate to the dynamics between globe-spanning corporations compared to that between a much smaller set of individuals.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#115

Post by franklampard »

cycomanic wrote: post #87

I find the comments here fascinating. So the lead developer was paid $11k a month, and somehow many start calling this a problem. Apparently, if you work on OSS you should be working for something slightly above the poverty line. People are comparing it to other salaries, but seem to forget that this salary likely does not include any other benefits (health insurance, stock options ...). I mean he is the lead develop…

As the lead maintainer of Babel, he could’ve easily landed a job doubling 11k.

He is already working with a discount

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#116

Post by iagovar »

rvnx wrote: post #102
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $11k a month [...] Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe. lolnope

I like how one user deleted his comment saying even in Ukraine or Georgia basic dev earns more than 10k USD/month

No way. That must be top tier talent. With 10k USD a month you basically own the town.

You can go very very far with that money in western Europe too. Maybe places like Paris or London may be much more expensive, though.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#117

Post by anshumankmr »

mssundaram wrote: post #91
tmsbrg wrote: post #88

Sorry, but as someone who doesn't live in the USA, I have a hard time feeling bad for someone for not being able to earn "$11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source." Sure, it's nice to be able to make a living from open source based on donations. That doesn't have to be comparable to Silicon Valley salaries that are fueled by huge ad money and other dubious sources. I know many peopl…

132k is not that much for a US salary. And besides, I'd rather see the engineers of such an important project be well paid.

It depends on where you live though, right.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#119

Post by cryptica »

This is a genuine problem for all open source projects but I think in this case it's warranted because Babel doesn't add any value to projects. Transpiling new code into old code is an ill-conceived idea; it's not worth the complexity overhead it introduces into the project. These days, I've even run into cases where babel's configs actually prevented me from using new browser features and I could not find documentation online on how to enable it (none of the settings I tried work; maybe it depends on the babel version?)... Kind of Kafkaesque to think that a tool would do the opposite of what it was intended to do.

Kind of like many ideas which are forced onto people (in this case riding on top of Facebook's monopolistic network effects), they sound great at first, but they end up making things worse.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#120

Post by physicsguy »

tmsbrg wrote: post #88

Sorry, but as someone who doesn't live in the USA, I have a hard time feeling bad for someone for not being able to earn "$11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source." Sure, it's nice to be able to make a living from open source based on donations. That doesn't have to be comparable to Silicon Valley salaries that are fueled by huge ad money and other dubious sources. I know many peopl…

Yeah, it's a little galling. If he can earn more than that in industry, then great! He should totally go and do that. Let Babel die and other people will have to either step up with their time or with money or replace it with something else.
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