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Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

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Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#21

Post by samsquire »

quanticle wrote: post #19
samsquire wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (Linu…

Yes, I accept all the value that was generated by Linux is tangible and it's extreme.

I'm thinking from the principle of work: if you do some work for someone and it is not reimbursed, then it's obviously good for the people receiving your work but not necessarily the people working.

It's not the revenue from corporate UNIX that I'm thinking of, it's the being reimbursed for your work problem. The potential value produced by the non-free thing was destroyed.

Earning money is hard enough as it is, but today everyone expects everyone else to work for them for free, with nothing in return. If people stopped working on open source for free, would the value still be created?

To reiterate my point in my comment: if free things produce more value than commercial things, why isn't everything free?

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#22

Post by varispeed »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #2

As 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…

Corporations use OSS for avoidance of paying tax and labour. There is plenty of activist, idealist developers that can be tricked into doing work corporations need but without receiving remuneration. That's why OSS is being championed by big corporations as it saves them a ton of money that they otherwise would have to spend on R&D etc. With OSS they can cherry pick ripe OSS projects, appropriate them and use to make millions or even billions and original developers won't see a penny. You know you may get the so called "exposure", but try to pay your rent with it.

OSS really needs to be regulated, so that for profit businesses pay OSS contributors living wages at very least, if they use their projects.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#23

Post by TAForObvReasons »

varispeed wrote: post #22
mickael-kerjean wrote: post #2

As 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…

Corporations use OSS for avoidance of paying tax and labour. There is plenty of activist, idealist developers that can be tricked into doing work corporations need but without receiving remuneration. That's why OSS is being championed by big corporations as it saves them a ton of money that they otherwise would have to spend on R&D etc. With OSS they can cherry pick ripe OSS projects, appropriate them and use to make…

The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears.

Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#24

Post by varispeed »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #23
varispeed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations use OSS for avoidance of paying tax and labour. There is plenty of activist, idealist developers that can be tricked into doing work corporations need but without receiving remuneration. That's why OSS is being championed by big corporations as it saves them a ton of money that they otherwise would have to spend on R&D etc. With OSS they can cherry pick ripe OSS projects, appropriate them and use to make…

The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

> The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears.

There is no evidence for that. If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy.

> Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

This is great to see that more and more projects offer dual licensing, but this really should be regulated, so that developers won't be bullied into giving up fruits of their work for free. This would also create the level playing field where developers from disadvantaged background could participate in OSS knowing they'll be able to put food on their table if they commit time and their skill into it. Currently, OSS is really a domain of people with privilege, who have the luxury of being able to spend time doing unpaid work. They then often get advantage when being hired, by having OSS projects in their CV, whereas someone who is struggling financially can't afford to work on OSS. Many employers look for OSS contributions and that gives people with privilege an edge.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#26

Post by wakeupcall »

varispeed wrote: post #24
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

> The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. There is no evidence for that. If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. > Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it…

Relicensing is a big problem is the OSS world too. To work at all, it requires copyright attribution. For small projects this really hampers collaboration. But if you don't do it early it might become impossible to do later.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#27

Post by fluoridation »

varispeed wrote: post #24
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

> The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. There is no evidence for that. If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. > Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it…

That would not level the field. Someone who is disadvantaged would not be able to dedicate as much time to writing software as someone who is not. So while someone who is disadvantaged may be able to dedicate, let's say, two hours a day and get paid for it, someone else may be able to get paid for two hours and then do it some more for two more hours for free.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#28

Post by t0suj4 »

varispeed wrote: post #22
mickael-kerjean wrote: post #2

As 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…

Corporations use OSS for avoidance of paying tax and labour. There is plenty of activist, idealist developers that can be tricked into doing work corporations need but without receiving remuneration. That's why OSS is being championed by big corporations as it saves them a ton of money that they otherwise would have to spend on R&D etc. With OSS they can cherry pick ripe OSS projects, appropriate them and use to make…

I don't know how that would work. I don't think I would get a $1/mo VPS if the provider had to transfer his costs for all the OSS projects to the customer, me. And I like cheap cloud services.

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#29

Post by fluoridation »

quanticle wrote: post #19
samsquire wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (Linu…

> Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not.

What are you saying? That Google as it exists now would not exist? That's probably correct. That no one else would have created an equivalent search engine? That's much less obvious.

> Would the iPod exist without Linux? No.

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make a portable digital audio player with a hard drive?

> What about all the value created by smartphones?

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make cell phones with integrated computers?

Re: Paying maintainers isn’t a magic bullet

#30

Post by phkahler »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #2

As 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…

I just thought of another possible explanation to give them. "All software has a marginal cost of $0, so all effort is in improvements and that still needs to be paid for."
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