Professional maintainers: a wake-up call • Hacker News Board

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#291

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

dalke wrote: post #160

> Open Source maintainers graduating to sophisticated counterparties who send invoices for "support and sponsorship" on letterhead, and big companies developing procedures to assess, approve, and pay them as a matter of routine so that they can get what they need from the ecosystem. The first 1/2 already exists. It's the companies which need to change. I say this from experience. I'm self-employed, with my own compan…

If you offer your work with a price tag of $0 then people/companies will pay $0 for it. The nativity of open source developers thinking otherwise is jaw dropping. So yes I agree that commercial licensing is the way to go.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#292

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

andreineculau wrote: post #63

> Professionalizing the role of maintainer My 2c are that the problem is there, not specifically to OSS. The whole industry is looking down on maintenance and maintainers. Keeping things working might not be a great career, but it's equally important as creating new stuff, and guess what: some people don't want to create but like to debug and maintain. A parallel might be drawn with the right to repair electronics. W…

If course the industry is looking down on maintainers. They give away their work for $0 and then act all surprised and morally upset when people then value their work at $0. Facepalm galore. If you value your work, make people pay for it.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#293

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:02 AM UTC

Jupe wrote: post #152

I don't know... I just don't see how OSS will ever be a real, sustainable business. The moment it does, someone else will simply subvert the paid-for software with a look-alike that does 90% of what the original does, but for free. In my view, this is the birth story of OSS. And I don't see any real market there. Even if you manage to find a "niche", like some sustainable software-as-a-service with subscription, ther…

Yep. Open Source developers who give away their work for $0 are undermining their own value and the value of other peoples skills. Open Source should always come with a commercial license for companies.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#294

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #34

I feel as if engineers at firms that build systems that use open source libraries should campaign internally to create budget line items for paying non-trivial amounts to the maintainers of those libraries. I find it difficult to blame developers individually. Individuals working at these companies aren't going to see it as their role to send some of their own after-tax income to maintainers via GitHub Sponsors unles…

Why should they? Open Source developers give away their work with a price tag of $0. So why should anybody pay more than $0 for it? Do you pay more than the asking price for things you buy?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#295

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

fivelessminutes wrote: post #16

the_gipsy wrote: post #5

Please define "unsustainable". It has worked great for decades, both for the free market side, and for the FOSS community.

It has certainly 'worked great' for leeches, if you ignore bombs like this logging bug destroying Western civilization. Can you explain a bit more how it worked great for the bulk of maintainers / authors who don't see any return on their work, burn out and have to do something else?

I have no sympathy for maintainers who give away their work for $0 and the act all surprised when the world pays $0 for it and value it at $0. Wake up! Look around and notice how the world actually works and act accordingly. If you want people to pay real $ for your work then make that the price tag.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#296

Post by throw_nbvc1234 » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #238

usefulcat wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free? > If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? That doesn't answer the GP question, which is all about incentives. The answer is, at least some parties won't pay for what they can get for free. So the options are: a) deal with it b) require payment c) come up with some way to incentivize more donations

Those aren't the only answers. The notion that people only respond to direct incentives is incorrect and ahistorical. It's a convenient dogma for the selfish to promote, but I don't have to take it seriously at all. Another perfectly good option is for tech people to build strong cultural expectations that people and companies who benefit from a commons should help keep it healthy. Which is what's happening right her…

How has the strategy of "companies should just be nicer" worked for things like minimum wage, health insurance, workers rights, ect... It's getting to the point of insanity (in my opinion) that people keep thinking this is going to magically appear if they ask for it. It arguably flies in the faces of thousands of years (or millions if you count pre-humans) of evolution.

At the least people suggesting this should acknowledge that this kind of society has possibly never existing in this entire universe on the scale they want it to exist (larger then dunbar(ish) number tribes). The onus is on them to build a path towards this new kind of society instead of just throwing the ideal out into the ether and expecting it to just magically appear.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#297

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #205

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #204

Why not start a foundation, or even a business where companies and individuals can voluntarily pay for open source software, like an online store? Different projects have different prices, but you can pay more. The money is forwarded to project maintainers was wages, but a "tax" is applied so that some money is redirected to small but growing projects. Projects that see sufficient income would be certified as having…

You used the word “voluntarily” here, and it’s going to be the singular reason it won’t work. Corporations ever do anything voluntarily if the alternative is tangibly worse, evidently more expensive, or existentially threatening, especially in short to middle term.

Nobody pays for anything they don’t have to pay for. Surely that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody living in the real world?

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#298

Post by strenholme » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #290

strenholme wrote: post #268

Oh, yes, open source economics. Everyone wants to use open source, no one wants to pay for it, a large number of entitled people get angry when you don’t provide support or implement their feature request for free...I’m sure anyone here who has done an open source project notable enough to make the Wikipedia has seen all of this. To keep my sanity, I had to enforce strong boundaries: No, you are not a customer until…

You provide your work with a price tag of $0. So people/companies pay $0. What’s so hard to understand about that? You give away BMW’s for $0 and the same thing will happen. You are signaling that your work is worth nothing. So people then expect you to do more work for nothing. Yes of course! You yourself value your work at $0! And the world then agrees. Don’t be naive and expect otherwise.

Just because a blob of code is free doesn’t mean the support is free, and it has been this way for a very long time. Have you ever seen how much an email-only 1-year support contract from ISC costs (clue: Five figures)? In the real world, free but pay for support is a reasonable expectation. RedHat has been doing it since 1993. Even with end user software, freemium has been a thing for quite a while.

I see from your posting history that you’re pushing variations of this “they didn’t pay for this, so your time and effort is worthless” notion. I can’t be sure you’re not trolling; I will assume good faith and think you actually believe this ridiculous argument. Frankly, to pretend that free code with for pay support doesn’t exist comes off as entitled to me.

Let me explain to you how classic open source works.

The idea behind open source is this: The relationship between users and developers is different with an open source project. In return for getting code for free, instead of having the relationship a customer of proprietary software has, where the only way to implement a feature is to ask the original developer to implement it, we instead have a relationship where you can get any feature (or bugfix) you want, by simply providing a patch or pull request. The code is free, but the support is not free.

Linux is a classic case of this: Sure, you can get the kernel for free. Sure, you can download a distribution for free. But, as soon as you ask for support, the company tells you they will change you so much $$$ per networked computer to get service and support.

It works really great when a lot of developers and companies contribute patches and bug fixes for free, in exchange for getting the software for free. It works not so great when entitled users think they have a customer to company relationship with open source software.

Hence, the hard boundaries, and the resetting of expectations. I used to have a “I don’t support my open source project for free in private email any more, and if you reply to this demanding support, I will make this email exchange public on the mailing list” canned reply. I only had to make the exchange public once over a decade ago; most people got the message. I even occasionally had someone throw me a few bucks.

My project? I still maintain it, because my boundaries keep me sane. I’ve only have had one rude entitled user whose bug report I had to delete from GitHub in the last decade; since then I just lock the conversation after giving them the “no, I don’t support that” spiel.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#299

Post by CryptoPunk » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:24 AM UTC

Maintainers should start issuing NFTs and offering them to parties that want to support their work, and companies should create digital showcases displaying which NFTs they've purchased.

The showcase can be a simple OpenSea widget showing the NFTs owned by a particular address.

Re: Professional maintainers: a wake-up call

#300

Post by tbabej » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

fatcat500 wrote: post #103

If there was a button on Github that donated small amounts of money to the maintainer(s) of a project, I would press it frequently for many libraries I depend on. For example, donating 25 or 50 cents every time I visit gofiber/fiber would be fine with me. However, there is no way to feasibly charge small quantities of money without the majority of it getting raked in processing fees. For example, Stripe charges 30 ce…

You can donate small amounts of money to any project with Github Sponsors custom one-time payments enabled [1]. Github pays all the processing fees and the maintainers get 100% of your donation.

[1] https://github.blog/changelog/2021-04-06-custom-amounts-and-...