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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?

#161

Post by iSnow »

wwn_se wrote: post #127
dandellion wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's hard to compare between different countries due to different taxes and so on. But that's almost double what a generic team lead would make here in Sweden (50-60 is probably closer) but a high level dev working a prestige project could make more of course. They should probably change the business model to make more money from consulting or lecturing. Many companies pay well to get "famous-project" devs for consul…

True, and in many (oldschool) companies, it is easier to book a workshop for $10k than give a donation of $5k.

Of course, the drawback is that the project would need even more devs to compensate for the time giving workshops, so IDK whether it would work out in the end.

The salary is high for Europe, but not outlandish. I come within 15% working in IT in old industry but without leading a huge project and managing people, cooperation and giving talks. So, no, they should not pay much less even if the contributors probably have their dream job in contrast to me.

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

#162

Post by intev »

physicsguy wrote: post #120
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.

Of course none of the solutions involve you. You just want the product for little to no cost. A product that increases your productivity and helps you earn more. Pay for it? Phshhh... let someone else step in and work for less. I'd rather sit here and ensure that the developers of an extremely popular tool earn less than a great engineering salary. They should work hard because they are passionate. It should not be rewarded monetarily. Seriously....

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

#163

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.

Actually, the average salary for people with computer science degree and 5+ years experience is 9-12k USD according to IDA (Engineering union in Denmark).

That's just the average!

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

#164

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

I was just thinking how messed up it is that basically companies can take those expenses off their taxes and they still don't contribute, but then I was thinking - do they think that if there was a healthy ecosystem then they would create problems to employ people because the healthy open source community is then another competitor for top quality talent.

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

#165

Post by adflux »

rndude wrote: post #140
dandellion wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really don't understand this logic. .. Very few engineers make 9k in Germany, simple. Why compare net wages to gross wages?

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

#166

Post by lbriner »

Isn't it an obvious problem that lots of OSS people have? If your project is non-trivial and effective, millions of people want to use it but it takes a lot to maintain it. In most cases, without vetting, it is hard to accept PRs from random people because you pretty much have to review the entire code and in most cases, it would probably take ages to understand enough about something like Babel to be a useful contributor.

The obvious solution is to charge a small amount ($10?) for a licence to use on a single site/application. You can't entirely enforce it but with some basic registration process, you could tie a licence to the code so that an internet scanner could potentially find people violating the rules. Minor updates included, major updates cost another $10. If only 500K projects are using it, that is still $5M, which would go some way to helping.

I understand that licences can be a problem if the code is/was open source since people might just fork it and use their own version but that is not a 100% easy workaround and requires time and maintenance to keep it up to date.

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

#167

Post by exdsq »

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…

The problem is the developer earning $11k didn’t actually work on the project.

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

#168

Post by wrnr »

Dah00n wrote: post #144

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

This seems to be overlooked, I was wondering why the original author is no longer involved.

Babel, Rome, Deno, are all transpilers the tech isn't as unique as it once was. Things come and go in JS land, and Babel will go the way of Dodo.js

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

#169

Post by axguscbklp »

uncomputation wrote: post #160
axguscbklp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babel is one of the most popular and widely-used tools in the history of web development. Why should its developers and maintainers not make at least as much money as entry-level Silicon Valley developers?

What entry level SV dev makes 11,000 x 12 = 132,000 x 1.25 (tax) = $165k/year pre-tax? I know the salaries here are high but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If they are that high for entry level then I’m being seriously underpaid :/

I am assuming that in the article the $11k/month figure is pre-tax. It is higher than Silicon Valley entry-level, I think, but I had thought that it is not higher by much. However, I just did a bit of Googling that made me realize that maybe I am significantly overestimating entry-level Silicon Valley salaries.

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

#170

Post by madeofpalk »

pferdone wrote: post #151
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 don't even get how his salary is an argument here, when babel is one of most critical parts in almost all web applications. His knowledge and skillset is way above any average "lead dev" and he's still doing "grunt" work. Sorry, but this is a very reasonable salary.

Critical parts in almost all web applications, including those built directly on the pack of this work. Facebook, Gatsby, Next.js, Netlify and Cloudflare (a bit more indirectly).
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