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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?

#141

Post by notimetorelax »

underwater wrote: post #111

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…

Corps I worked for usually seek to create some kind of contractual obligation between the authors and the company. Of course they pay to get the authors to accept the obligations.

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

#142

Post by tonyedgecombe »

js8 wrote: post #82
qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism represents a solution to the tragedy of the commons: Privatize it. You guys are interpreting this as a takedown of capitalism when it's the exact opposite. Capitalism represents a solution to this issue. You might not like that solution, but this circumstance just goes to show that naive attempts to reinvent capitalism are unlikely to work.

Hm, a solution. They privatize it, and then companies will say to their webdevs, we don't want to pay extra for a profit of some capitalist, write the website without it. So each webdev will end up with their own half-baked solution. Tragedy of the lack of commons! I hear you cry, but that's irrational! Precisely, but so is not caring about the commons and letting them die. I am not under an illusion that under capit…

Companies make those sort of trade offs all the time, whether to buy or build. It doesn't take many to decide to buy to fund a small project like Babel. Not only that but you are likely to see competition driving the whole thing forward.

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

#144

Post by Dah00n »

If you have a problem paying a high salary then don't base the company in a high salary area. Any other place would be just as good and way cheaper. Also the origial author says someone is misappropriating money[1] on top of this! They definitely don't deserve more funding before they fix those two problems.

1: https://mobile.twitter.com/sebmck/status/1392019586833387522

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

#145

Post by arp242 »

Toutouxc wrote: post #66

There are many services that people only use as long as they're free or cheap, but stop using when a price tag appears or the price increases. Is it heresy now to propose that Babel maybe isn't THAT valuable?

If you run a company with a monthly labour costs of $100k, and Babel increases efficiency by just 0.1%, then you get $1k of value from Babel every month.

I'm no really involved in JS, but many people talk very highly of Babel, and I'm going to guess the actual efficiency increase is more than 0.1% for a lot of companies.

$100k/monthly is perhaps 10-25 devs (depending on where it's located).

So just $5/month sounds like a spectacular ROI to me; and 5,000 companies doing this already adds up to $50k/month.

And that's just Babel, not talking about all the other tools and libraries people use for free; people build literally their entire businesses on stuff like Python. Surely Python provides value, no? Yet how much money flows back to Python from the average business?

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

#146

Post by bsder »

plasma wrote: post #129
underwater wrote: post #111

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…

> 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. The request would be > roundly shouted down. I agree, at minimum, the its free but seeking sponsorship model is making it hard. Looking at their Sponsorship options on GitHub [1] I see there's a useful p…

Yeah, that jump from $20/month to $500/month is too big. JetBrains asks for $500 per year--that's probably right about the discretionary spend of a decent engineer.

$500/month means you're going to have to generate me an invoice and that invokes a whole bunch of corporate machinery that you don't want activated if you want a donation.

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

#147

Post by tonyedgecombe »

captainmuon wrote: post #64
qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism represents a solution to the tragedy of the commons: Privatize it. You guys are interpreting this as a takedown of capitalism when it's the exact opposite. Capitalism represents a solution to this issue. You might not like that solution, but this circumstance just goes to show that naive attempts to reinvent capitalism are unlikely to work.

In some cases that applies, but I don't think a paid version of babel would be viable. Electronic goods resist commodifying. It only works sometimes (like in streaming music), but you need to put in a lot of technological and legal effort. I believe that societies develop in lockstep with technology. The industrial revolution was only possible with the beginning civil society and capitalism; capitalism as we know it…

>I don't think a paid version of babel would be viable.

It would if there were no open source alternatives. Bear in mind that most of the users are commercial organisations deriving value from it. They need something like it to solve their problems and if it isn't available for free then they will pay.

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

#148

Post by exdsq »

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 easy enough as a contractor

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

#149

Post by Ambroos »

opk wrote: post #61
holistio wrote: post #8

I was horrified and humbled to see that the people making this amazing stuff are making considerably less ($2k/month) than I do... or frankly, than most of us here on HN do. Their impact is so much bigger and I aspire so much to have as a deep understanding of the Javascript world as they do.

I'm always shocked at how high these US salaries quoted on here are. I don't know if that's just FAANG companies or people inflating figures. They do quote $11k for a full-time position as others have pointed out. What I make is much nearer to the $2k figure but I am in Europe. Maybe they'd do better operating out of of somewhere cheaper. Many older open source projects including those I contribute to aren't owned by…

It's wild. I moved from Belgium (generic company) to Dublin (Facebook, 2018) to Seattle (still Facebook, 2020) and my net income more than doubled with every move. And that's as a software engineer without a degree (dropped out of college).

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

#150

Post by callamdelaney »

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 usd to GBP is £7791~ - that's £93.5k / year roughly. Most senior devs should make more than this in London; though this is pre-tax.
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