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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

#51

Post by phpisthebest »

criddell wrote: post #16

I wonder if the promise of a couple hundred bucks would really be all that motivating at 11:43 pm, with your new baby sleeping nearby, after a full day working at your software engineering job? You have a new son and a partner that need a lot of you right now. Those PRs and bug reports can wait. The time you have all to yourself right now is extraordinarily rare. Use it for you. That said, I do agree with the premise…

Given the current state of birth rates is that even a normal state for most developers how many developers have children or even desire children

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

#52

Post by redwood »

johngossman wrote: post #45
seydor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have a path to monetization for the builder The existence of the path to monetization is entirely outside their control though. Millions of people make viral videos, very few have benefited from it. The financial system disincentivizes or outright bans open-product monetization.

The many startups built around OSS projects such as Mongo, Kafka, Spark, and Linux seem to have found a way.

There's a longer list of companies that have been basically out-competed and strip mined by the hyperscalers. But presumably the poster here is referring more to a long tail of small to medium sized projects that are important to the community at large but harder to monetize then these big high gravity projects that you mentioned

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

#53

Post by dash2 »

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'. Even if it was $1000 and only companies that paid, the landscape would shift dramatically.

Any solution to a problem that relies on humans becoming more ethical is not, in fact, a solution.

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

#54

Post by api »

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…

Those two things are connected.

People will spend $10 on a coffee drink at Starbucks without blinking. Suggest that they spend $10 on a piece of software and they’ll throw a fit and claim you are taking away their rights.

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

#55

Post by fzeroracer »

The issue isn't lack of compensation necessarily, it's lack of societal support.

Here in America I cannot work on OSS because if I tried to make that my main form of contribution, I would not survive due to healthcare costs, living costs etc. Companies being made to pay more or subsidize OSS I believe would have a detrimental effect on the system, because then it warps OSS to serve the desires of big companies in order for its contributors to survive.

The actual solution to this problem would be things like socialized healthcare detached from work. This isn't to say I think companies shouldn't pay for OSS (they absolutely should be funding and contributing to work that underpins their software) but rather that we need to reduce the reliance on corporate funding for people to be full time contributors.

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

#56

Post by TuringNYC »

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…

Knowing most large corps, they would rather pay a contractor $175/hr for two months than sign a $20/month license. Also, you usually cannot hire the open-source maintainer as the contractor, you have to use some company with insider relationships.

It isnt the engineering manager's fault at any large company. The policies make no sense, but there may be a larger wisdom that I do not understand.

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

#57

Post by johngossman »

Qem wrote: post #23

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?

You’re suggesting we reduce the work day just for software engineers (many of whom probably work longer than 8 hours) but not other engineers, teachers, autoworkers? Or for everyone, just so people have more time to work on OSS? I’m all in favor of a shorter work week, but this seems a fringe motivation

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

#58

Post by hahn-kev »

eschneider wrote: post #6

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's perfectly ok to charge folks for software and if you're OSS project isn't motivating you like it used to, it's perfectly ok to charge users for support/updates/bugfixes.

I agree with the sentiment. But if anyone has ever contributed now you're in a bad place because you are making money off their work which they probably didn't consent to.

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

#59

Post by bluGill »

api wrote: post #54
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…

Those two things are connected. People will spend $10 on a coffee drink at Starbucks without blinking. Suggest that they spend $10 on a piece of software and they’ll throw a fit and claim you are taking away their rights.

Some people. There are people who think Starbucks is too expensive. There are people who donate to open source.

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

#60

Post by janfoeh »

isaacfrond wrote: post #11

There we go again. It seems only yesterday we had the same thread. I choose an unusual hobby, that other people seems to find useful. Hence people should give me money. I don't get it, I really don't. If you enjoy working for free, by all means continue doing it. If you don't then stop. Nobody is forcing you. If you think your time and effort is worth more then you get now, go closed source, paid-support or whatever…

For what little it's worth, I fully agree with you. This _should_ be so blindingly obvious that I have yet to wrap my head around how one could think differently.

Maybe it's a clout thing? That some people really want to make a living _selling_ software, but at the same time do not want to miss out on the cachet of "I'm doing open source"?

Whatever the reason, there is some amount of cognitive dissonance involved.

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