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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

#131

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

sofixa wrote: post #108
agent327 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still beats having a central planner from the politburo tell you to work in the mines for zero compensation.

You know that's not how central planning worked, right? You were told to live in a specific place, with a few (narrow) options on where to work at (unless you were (un)specialised, then there was sometimes zero choice), for meagre but sufficient compensation. You could have a place to live, food to eat. The place to live might be a room in an apartment shared with other families, the food to eat might be bread with b…

The question of preference at the end is moot. Those with the power long ago made the decision that 'a few people should have a amazing lives while vast numbers of people suffer needlessly' is the way that society should be structured and structured it thusly. This is/was even true in countries with central planning as you've described above. There is/was always a select group of people at the top for whom the rules didn't apply and had all the luxuries that could desire.

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

#132

Post by DonHopkins »

phpisthebest wrote: post #51
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

Not RMS!

http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...

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

#133

Post by blackoil »

From all the discussion here and previous it seems OSS is unsustainable.

People pay for software, notably Office, IntelliJ, OS, Adobe, video games, enterprise s/w and many more. For normal consumer products things are simple you pay some money for product and can have simple expectations that s/w will work. Every once a decade the direction a s/w takes major change, and you have to decide if you want to stay with it or move to something else.

Now with OSS both sides expectations have become implicit and ambiguous. In letter they come with no warranty but in spirit it does. No sane person would depend on database/compiler which can stop working or won't fix bugs without recourse. It may be OSS but I don't have time/skills to fix myself, so implicit understanding is that community at large will fix it.

Next is the issue of payment to the community. how much should be the payment, who should be paying and should be paid? No payment was discussed up-front, but it is expected implicitly. Should I review all s/w I use to understand the payment I should have been making. Maybe I should stick to only commercial s/w as expectation of payment is clear or maybe s/w being free but created by large corporates are ok as no payment is expected. Is making s/w in NodeJS / Python risky, as I don't know if community is paying for all the libraries I am using and how much I should be paying?

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

#134

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #31
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…

It goes both ways. Crowd blame the maintainer if they change the license for the future updates. So it makes sense to blame the crowd if they want the updates for free. But I agree with you. Open source projects shouldn't have any obligation to listen to the people if they change the license. Even if they intentionally bait and switch, the users should only expect the current version to be open source and shouldn't e…

Yes, if it's open source then users don't have any right to expect that it'll be maintained by someone, but if a project deliberately uses the bait and switch trick to get people to start using the project when it's open source in the hope of trapping them, then that's clearly manipulative and ruins trust in other open source projects.

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

#135

Post by cherryteastain »

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…

This is one area where cryptocurrencies are useful. Don't need anything other than a wallet address.

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

#136

Post by sugarpile »

creshal wrote: post #113
zrail wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird flex but ok. In any area big enough to have a Starbucks in the US you'll find at least one local cafe that has better coffee. You'll also find at least one with much worse coffee that thinks they're better. As you say, people go to Starbucks and McDonalds for familiar known quality and you should be happy for it. That way the tourists and immigrants stay out of your local cafe. Edit: to be clear I'm not defendi…

Tourists and immigrants giving their money to an US company that funnels all the money away from the local tax collectors and underpays their workers is still a net negative. All we're left with is their pollution, and no tax revenue to pay for its removal.

Sounds like an issue to take up with your government. Don’t complain that other people spend _their_ money in a way _you_ disagree with.

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

#137

Post by gruppe_sechs »

sofixa wrote: post #108
agent327 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still beats having a central planner from the politburo tell you to work in the mines for zero compensation.

You know that's not how central planning worked, right? You were told to live in a specific place, with a few (narrow) options on where to work at (unless you were (un)specialised, then there was sometimes zero choice), for meagre but sufficient compensation. You could have a place to live, food to eat. The place to live might be a room in an apartment shared with other families, the food to eat might be bread with b…

You forgot the part where the central planners herded millions of people into Gulags, starved tens of millions more to death, then executed a few million more for good measure.

Other than that, spot on though.

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

#138

Post by ykonstant »

j7ake wrote: post #98
amelius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So the end result is that you live in a society where the average quality of education and health care slowly plummets to zero? That is not a sustainable solution for society.

No? What the fuck is this crap logic every time someone suggests we may not be living under a great politico-economic system? How did we go from "maybe we should tame inequality" to "let's resurrect Stalin"? Fucking fuck.

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

#139

Post by jussij »

I think one of the side effects of Open Source has been the devaluation of source code. Many decades ago, Microsoft destroyed the IBM PC by licensing their source code to other hardware manufacturers. Not only did that destroyed the power of IBM hardware, but it also allowed smaller hardware players like Dell to enter the hardware market and defeat hardware giants like IBM. Move on to the present day and software is no longer the king it once was, only because the major players like Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon etc now all tend to use the same Open Source software. However, they now run that common code on proprietary hardware systems meaning we have come full circle where hardware is once again the king of the castle, and the real money is the hardware and not the software. And the real problem is, unlike earlier times when a small players like Dell could take on massive players like IBM, these days with hardware once again king, it now requires high levels of capital to compete.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

benj111 wrote: post #8
vikmals wrote: post #3

The problem is that you ask for money on OSS. Companies use OSS because it is free. If you try to force them to contribute or pay money, there will always be someone who has more passion than you to do it for free. At this point, just pass on your OSS project that is highly demanded but you have no passion for.

Do companies use open source because it's free? Cost may be a component. But not the only component, and cost doesn't have to be binary. You can charge and still be less than the alternatives.

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