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The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

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Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#21

Post by mcpackieh »

onion2k wrote: post #12
lakpan wrote: post #7

The annoying part in this debate is people spending their lives on a project and demanding to be paid for it. Don’t do it! Who’s asking you to work on it? I say this as a minor OSS developer who receives some donations. I love the money, but it would be pretty dumb for me to say they oughta pay me, because the only reason I work on it is addiction/compulsion/procrastination of real work. If it bothered me that people…

Who’s asking you to work on it? All of the people who demand things from the maintainers are. Very few of them are willing to sponsor or pay consulting fees. If you give up they complain loudly, and then often pay a contractor to do the work they wanted . If they paid $1 each, you would not hand thousands let alone millions of users. You could though, if the mindset of open source software consumers were to shift to…

If an individual were not the maintainer for a project, they would not be receiving demands from users of that project. The only reason they receive those demands is because they choose to be the maintainer. If they step down from that roll, all of the expectations go away.

If the reason you're doing something is for money, and you're not getting money, then stop doing it. It's that simple.

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#23

Post by Qem »

I wonder if, society-wide, the best way to allocate resources to free/open source software would be just reducing mandatory work hours. Say, if the average ~ 8h per day were reduced to 7h or 6h, how many of those freed millions of person-hours would be redirected to hobby software projects?

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#24

Post by benj111 »

I'd like to see some form system where you keep track of what you actually use. Apportion money appropriately and you can make an annual / monthly / weekly payment and it gets distributed in a somewhat sensible way.

Yes there's edge cases, but at the moment there isn't really a good way to spread my money around.

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#25

Post by csneeky »

Most complex, unique, value producing things have a path to monetization for the builder of the thing. If the money isn’t there for the builder they are either not leveraging their relationship to the thing correctly, or the thing does not have the value the builder may think it has.

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#26

Post by yu3zhou4 »

yu3zhou4 wrote: post #18

I'm on the same boat, so I built a marketplace for devs to charge for our software. Blueprint here: https://github.com/poss-market Long story short: I recently put the marketplace down, because I lack business skills If any of you is able to help with business side of the project, please reach out - mail in my profile

Let me just copy-paste it for easier access:

- Your company's perspective: Pay for the software to receive reliable products from trusted vendors

Business receives reliable open source software that is maintained on a daily basis, features are constantly developed and they receive a support from open source creators

- Why?

It's cheaper to pay a few (dozens / hundreds / thousands) bucks each year for a library, tool, component, etc instead of build it on your own, maintain, test, take care of security updates, do customer support

- Yours (open source developer's) perspective: Get paid to build, maintain and support your software

You as a developer make money by selling licenses to your open source software

- Why not free open source?

Because you still need a day job and do your open source after hours. Thousands (millions?) of companies make millions (billions?) dollars each year by incorporating your software in their products or using your software in their ecosystem, but you are left with $0 profit from it

- But I want my open source to be available to regular people for free

With poss market license it remains free for non-profit/personal/scientific users, if you choose to. It's just MIT License slightly modified

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#27

Post by kawhah »

onion2k wrote: post #12
lakpan wrote: post #7

The annoying part in this debate is people spending their lives on a project and demanding to be paid for it. Don’t do it! Who’s asking you to work on it? I say this as a minor OSS developer who receives some donations. I love the money, but it would be pretty dumb for me to say they oughta pay me, because the only reason I work on it is addiction/compulsion/procrastination of real work. If it bothered me that people…

Who’s asking you to work on it? All of the people who demand things from the maintainers are. Very few of them are willing to sponsor or pay consulting fees. If you give up they complain loudly, and then often pay a contractor to do the work they wanted . If they paid $1 each, you would not hand thousands let alone millions of users. You could though, if the mindset of open source software consumers were to shift to…

> You could though, if the mindset of open source software consumers were to shift to 'pay for things you get value from'

What if the mindset of producers were to shift? What if people only worked for free on things that they want to work on? Isn't that both more realistic and better for everyone?

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#28

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dale_glass wrote: post #9

One of the problems I found with this is that actually taking donations is hard work. I live in a country completely unsuited to making money from a hobby project on the side. To take donations I'd need to register as self-employed, and pay monthly for social security as long as I'm registered, even if I make no revenue whatsoever in that month. That's an absolutely awful idea for a project just getting started. I'd…

not to mention some countries requirements around running a non-profit would mean you couldn't keep control of your own project if you did get it created as a non-profit or add others to the project without risking that they used the rules to take over ownership when it was advantageous to do so.

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#29

Post by xoac »

IMO a huge problem is that extremely permissive licenses have totally devalued software development as the software you release gives everyone the opportunity to infinitely exploit it. What did people think was going to happen?

I find it especially funny when people complain "that they can't use the software 'at work'" when you release something as GPL.

Re: The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

#30

Post by kawhah »

ranting-moth wrote: post #13

The feeling of entitlement people have around open source is unsustainable. If someone releases code then that's it. You have it. Do what you want with it (within it's licence). Be thankful. Unless that guy specifically says he's going to maintain it for free you are entitled to exactly absolutely nothing more you ungrateful little git. If you add this code to your project, you should fix and share any problems you e…

What is the evidence for this feeling of entitlement?

I use tons of free software. I've never either demanded that anyone work on it for free, nor have I expressed any sense of entitlement or expectation.

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