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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?

#131

Post by tonyedgecombe »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #29
captainmuon wrote: post #6

This is another case of tragedy of the commons. Individually, it doesn't make sense for a company to donate. I can't even resent them, since it puts the company at a (slight) disadvantage. Unless I was flush with cash, I probably wouldn't donate from company funds if I were an entrepreneur. But collectively, we would all benefit to fund something like this. (Edit: I like culturestate's response of budgeting a small a…

In this case the problem would actually be solved if the project was a bit more capitalist and charged money for usage, no? This isn't capitalism failing, it's Burning Man gift economy type stuff failing.

I never understand the reluctance to charge for software amongst this community. Especially when you consider projects like Babel are mostly being used in commercial environments. Why do people expect that their employer should get this stuff for free or that the developer should have to beg for a few crumbs at the end of the month.

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

#132

Post by wodenokoto »

dandellion wrote: post #90
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…

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

If you include benefits, then yes. You don’t even need to be lead developer to reach that kind of salary if you assume the $11k includes pension, vacation, mobile phone, computer, maybe a budget for seminars, lunch, etc.

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

#133

Post by throwaway8709 »

dandellion wrote: post #90
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…

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

Are you kidding me?

FANG has lots of offices in Europe.. I work at one of those at around 20-35k USD / month, depending on stonk prices :)

Making 11k USD is not uncommon for contractors in northern Europe, Switzerland or Germany.

Sure, you can find many who are paid less. But talent is expensive.

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

#134

Post by baybal2 »

mort96 wrote: post #68
baybal2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transpilers are bad. They add to the already giant mess of unnecessary JS tooling. How much of them is really needed, and how much is there just for webdevs to show their "street cred?" Not a lot at all. Not only the debugging is breaking down because of them, but they often introduce bugs on their own which are very hard to find. Framework authors force involuntary decision to use transpilers on people downstream, a…

Being anti-transpiration seems really weird to me? It just lets developers write code using new standards without requiring all users to be on bleeding edge browsers. What do you think should happen instead? Should web applications just exclude anyone who's using a browser that doesn't implement all the newest web standards? Or should developers just unnecessarily use old versions of JavaScript? You might not be awar…

First, wringing code which is debuggable, and experience less perturbations will alone add to better code longevity, and maintainability.

I lost count to cases when old code is unsalvageable because the tooling combination used to "build" it simply refuses to work with modern nodejs, distro, or some other dependency.

There were very few vital features introduced since ES6, and some of them were in browser earlier than major ES releases. Browser APIs did change, but those have no bearing on the JS/ECMA language support

And the few remaining things are so hard to polyfil, and so hacky that I see myself no point in using them:

1. ES6 Proxy - possible to polyfill, but hacks involved are just terrible. Basically the only way to do it is to re-implement half of Javascript VM inside the your Javascript.

2. Async/await - possible to polyfil, but all polyfills are of extremely low performance, and high memory consumption. They send desktop PCs fans' spinning, and I don't want them.

3. Intl API - what's the point of using a system INTL functionality, if you yourself polyfill it? Just implement the string substitution in the code.

And so on, and on

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

#135

Post by av8avenger »

formerly_proven wrote: post #92
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…

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

Lol sure. If you get this kind of responsibility anywhere in western Europe in a professional setting, you are getting paid definitely somewhere in that salary region.

The effective amount will of course differ greatly between the countries, but please don't forget that the expenses vary as well. (15k a month in Switzerland isn't as much as 15k a month in Germany)

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

#136

Post by rightbyte »

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…

If my employer donated to Babel, I would interpret that like they would be sending gifts to the Crown. I mean fine, but understand that people might be salty.

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

#137

Post by antoinec »

dandellion wrote: post #90
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…

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

One thing with software products is that revenues are usually not correlated at all with the size of the dev team, much more with the popularity of the product.

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

#138

Post by intev »

dmingod666 wrote: post #50
esquire_900 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to give a similar comment here. I get that this is more common in the US compared to Europe or asian countries, but I'd expect that 5-6k a month would be a far more reasonable salary. You're not in open source for the big payout I assume.. And then again, 2k just to help on the side, that's about minimum wage here for full time employment.

Same thoughts. If the dev moved to a nice SEA country he could live a very comfortable life with that kind of money.

So in order to work for product you're passionate about and used by millions, instead of being paid well you should consider moving to a different part of the world just to live well? Your work should not be rewarded in proportion to the impact you are having?

This is ridiculous. Great engineers should be incentivized to work on open source projects. Would you rather the engineer and project get absorbed into a company like google? Because that's what will eventually happen if the developers don't feel like they are being rewarded for their work. They'd rather go somewhere where they feel more valued.

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

#139

Post by input_sh »

dandellion wrote: post #90
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…

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

Seems plausible to me. That'd amount to something like $5k after taxes (definitely in a higher tax bracket), or a bit above €4k.

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

#140

Post by rndude »

dandellion wrote: post #90
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…

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

$11k makes roughly €9k.

If you work for a company in Germany this would be gross salary of roughly €6.5k a month. The rest 2.5k would be ancillary wage costs for the employer. That finally translates to €4k net after taxes including health insurance etc.

I believe many good engineers make that amount of money in Germany.

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