Obviously I’m biased because I have skin in the game but articles like this really do a disservice for getting maintainers paid, something the author purports to support, because it gives people yet another excuse not to fund maintainers and maintain the status quo. I have yet to see illustrative examples in posts like these that show well funded projects doing worse because they got money.
Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
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Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author did say that open source maintainers should be paid and was harsh about exploitive corporations. They were simply stating that we should not expect the maintenance problem to be solved by paying developers. Whether that's true or not is debatable. Historically, some have certainly made a living off of developing OSS since their work was valued enough for someone to hire them or because there have been peop…
> was harsh about exploitive corporations taken from the article: "it’s not a problem to be solved, it’s a consequence to be embraced and exploited (if you’re clever enough)" another interesting quote: "Microsoft and other companies railed about Open Source being a cancer on intellectual property: because it is" none of the points made by the author are fundamental truth and most of his actual points are in direct op…
Read the sentence in its entirety, dropping the parenthetical comment:
> If you follow the above, you’ll see the supposed “free rider” problem is simply a natural consequence of open source being free as in beer: it’s not a problem to be solved, it’s a consequence to be embraced and exploited.
"to be embraced and exploiting" is referring to the consequence, not to the open source developers.
What the author is trying to say is that a large segment of the users of open source software are using it because it is free as in beer. That sounds like a problem, and it is if you are narrow-mindedly thinking about how to monetize the open source software directly. But there are other ways for open source developers to take advantage of the opportunity.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#13The article contains a number of problematic statements. One is for instance the statement that Linux destroyed value. It may have for the proprietary UNIX vendors. But this should be balanced by the value Linux and OSS has created overall. Cloud Computing would never have scaled the way it has, if there would be operating system licenses and cloud computing providers would not be able to modify the OS according to their needs. I doubt that the profits of the proprietary UNIX firms over their lifetime are larger to what Amazon Web Services makes in a month.
OSS is basically exploiting a network effect that aggregates a lot of smaller contributions to a large one. Learning how to use a specific open-source software is the contribution the corporate free riders make.
The question is, how can the maintenance work be decentralized and distributed. Kubernetes changes the release manager for every version, so distributes the work over time. As long we rely on the single maintainer the results will not satisfy expectations. BTW a commercial company providing the support needs to solve the same problem.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#14I'm always interested in discussions about this topic on HN. I will toss this out there in hopes of fostering discussion of how to actually solve this problem:
I think we would do well to develop some systems for helping people monetize their thing if it gets popular. But we could also work on the cultural side of this and help people understand that you need to think about how much you are willing to give and that if your thing gets popular, making money with it is an additional job to do, not an entitlement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824166
I say that as someone who does a lot of stuff "for free" and hopes it will pay off because I'm handicapped and can't work on a schedule and can't do a normal job and blah blah blah. I keep hoping that if I deliver value, someday that will somehow lead to sufficient money for my needs.
So I am not attacking people who feel they add value and should get money for it. I'm on their side.
But the reality seems to be that extracting money from people is additional work on top of providing them with something of value, like it or not. I really wish we would get better about finding ways to uncouple certain things and help people who provide value to live comfortably. I recently left a comment on HN suggesting a lot of really aggravating products that cause problems are likely due to the fact "people gotta eat."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33827984
I would really love to live in a world where people doing genuinely valuable things and not great at selling get comfortable lives and people great at selling and happy to make the world worse by it would get actively encouraged to find a better way to live their lives. I just don't know how to get there from here.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#15As someone trying to make a living out of my OSS work, this kind of clickbait titles really get on my nerves. Just yesterday, like most week a company did contact me to get support but when sent a payment link and instead of ignoring me took the path of questioning why would they pay for OSS. This kind of behaviour is so common, I have a canned answer for all those companies oss attracts trying to get things for free…
OSS is business as any other, there is no need to take it personally. Be happy you discovered toxic customer before even signing contract.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#16This is a good article, thank you for writing it.
I want good things to spring up and come up and exist, so I am happy paying for things. If I wasn't, those things shall eventually go away.
Free things take regular effort to maintain, if everybody that produced something that was free ceased work on it, it would too become less valuable with time and finally it would shut.
We have a societal cultural attitude problem that people expect others to do all their work for them and produce things for them with nothing in return.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#17The article contains a number of problematic statements. One is for instance the statement that Linux destroyed value. It may have for the proprietary UNIX vendors. But this should be balanced by the value Linux and OSS has created overall. Cloud Computing would never have scaled the way it has, if there would be operating system licenses and cloud computing providers would not be able to modify the OS according to t…
Linux and open source removes the capacity for people to compete against it commercially. It takes air out of the room. Why would we pay you when we can get this for free?
free as in 0 cost is very difficult to compete against unless you are 100, 1000x times better.
There is the value that would have been provided (generated) in revenue to UNIX manufacturers had Linux not existed and the value that exists with Linux being free. These are two numbers.
One is a tangible financial number, the other is another tangible financial number from profits not needing to pay for a UNIX manufacturer.
It's difficult to say what would have happened, but you cannot deny that prices for corporate UNIX DID in fact exist, and they were not getting paid due to the availability of the free option.
Also, remember that the UNIX manufactuerers would have produced value too, so you need to include the value produced by UNIX versus the value produced by Linux minus licence costs.
If you're using the argument that if everything was free then there would be infinitely more value than things being commercial, then why isn't everything free, if that truly produces more value?
I would expect everything to be free if that was truly the better option.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#18The article contains a number of problematic statements. One is for instance the statement that Linux destroyed value. It may have for the proprietary UNIX vendors. But this should be balanced by the value Linux and OSS has created overall. Cloud Computing would never have scaled the way it has, if there would be operating system licenses and cloud computing providers would not be able to modify the OS according to t…
The statement about Linux "destroying value" reminded me of Bastiat's famous satire, The Candlemaker's Petition [1]. Saying that Linux is a net negative value because it reduced demand for proprietary Unixes is like arguing that the sun is a net negative value, because it reduces demands for light bulbs.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#19The article contains a number of problematic statements. One is for instance the statement that Linux destroyed value. It may have for the proprietary UNIX vendors. But this should be balanced by the value Linux and OSS has created overall. Cloud Computing would never have scaled the way it has, if there would be operating system licenses and cloud computing providers would not be able to modify the OS according to t…
Linux and open source removes the capacity for people to compete against it commercially. It takes air out of the room. Why would we pay you when we can get this for free? free as in 0 cost is very difficult to compete against unless you are 100, 1000x times better. There is the value that would have been provided (generated) in revenue to UNIX manufacturers had Linux not existed and the value that exists with Linux…
>It's difficult to say what would have happened, but you cannot deny that prices for corporate UNIX DID in fact exist, and they were not getting paid due to the availability of the free option.
Yes, this is the problem of "the seen and the unseen" in economics. Prices for corporate Unix did exist, and they are not getting paid now. That is the seen. What is unseen is the value that was created by having a cheap (Linux isn't free --- you still need to pay people to set it up, patch it, provide support, etc) operating system that was available to anyone with an Internet connection. Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not. Would the iPod exist without Linux? No. What about all the value created by smartphones?
When balancing all of those against the profits of proprietary Unix vendors, I feel comfortable in saying that the existence of Linux is a giant net positive for the world, even if it did result in the proprietary Unix vendors going out of business.
Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet
#20As someone trying to make a living out of my OSS work, this kind of clickbait titles really get on my nerves. Just yesterday, like most week a company did contact me to get support but when sent a payment link and instead of ignoring me took the path of questioning why would they pay for OSS. This kind of behaviour is so common, I have a canned answer for all those companies oss attracts trying to get things for free…
> instead of ignoring me took the path of questioning why would they pay for OSS.
Sorry, I thought you wanted support, not a therapist... Here's a local listing of professionals nearby.