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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

#181

Post by oblio »

cherryteastain wrote: post #135
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.

ORLY? That's your plan? Tax evasion?

And what about when you want to spend that money? At some point you have to declare that income and be taxed and the government doesn't care if you were paid in euros, bitcoin or seashells.

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

#182

Post by sevagh »

rpastuszak wrote: post #157
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…

> 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 think the issue here is that we don't have a system where being an OSS contributor is a sustainable career path. The value we get from OSS compared to the monetary compensation for that work is disproportionately small. OSS generally doesn't depend on an army…

>I think the issue here is that we don't have a system where being an OSS contributor is a sustainable career path.

They knew that before they started.

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

#183

Post by creshal »

sugarpile wrote: post #136
creshal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"You can't blame us for offering bribes, you can only blame the people who take them" is a weird idea of morality.

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

#184

Post by pharmakom »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #170
pharmakom wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do free open-source work because I want to reshape the world, and this is somewhere I have leverage. If I was paid to do the work, then I would have to deliver what the customer wants, which is not always aligned with how I see things. It’s pure ego, but I hope it benefits the world too :)

Thanks for replying. Yeah that seems like a decent model -- it starts as a passion project, then acquires users, then the dev stops having as much fun and starts feeling a sense of responsibility. One solution is to announce that you're abandoning the project and suggest that its users make a plan to fork it / take over maintenance. Instead of adding a social norm that open source devs should get paid, we could drop…

Another approach might be for employers to allocate 20% of employee time to open-source work.

Benefits:

- recruit high quality developers

- up-skill existing developers

- devs will sometimes fix things that the company is using

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

#185

Post by sevagh »

Tyler the Creator famously tweeted "Hahahahahahahaha How The F* Is Cyber Bullying Real Hahahaha ** Just Walk Away From The Screen Like ** Close Your Eyes Haha."

Seems like a ridiculous statement (and definitely doesn't address the real issue of cyberbullying)...

_but_ when it comes to open-source, that's my exact attitude. Notifications off, users opening issues and pull requests? May as well not exist. I'll occasionally check but that's it.

The easiest answer is that deep down you need to accept that you can only be "tortured" by the incessant, needy, unfair demands of your users if you choose to. If you can't handle it, disable it, archive your project, walk away.

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

#186

Post by sevagh »

Devasta wrote: post #116

This is why everyone should switch to AGPL3. You can use MIT/BSD/Apache/GPL3 dependencies without issue; never need to worry about derivative works or anything like that, just set it and forget it, and because corporations avoid you like the plague you can code away without a care in the world for backwards compatibility. The BSD/MIT license is free as in free tech support, always has been.

>free tech support

Like, what, open-source police are going to arrest you for not addressing support questions?

MIT/BSD is "free as in the maintainer is free to ignore any and all tech support requests."

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

#187

Post by j1elo »

"My choice of license allows you to hire a contractor and fix or change the code in the way you seem fit for your purposes".

There's user entitlement, but there's also lack of dev entitlement toward the license terms they themselves chose.

This should be a template response in GitHub issues by default:

  > Remember that this project is:
  > * PROVIDED “AS IS”
  > * FREE OF CHARGE
  > * WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND
  > * WITHOUT PROMISE OF FITNESS FOR YOUR USE CASE
  > * WITHOUT LIMITS FOR YOU TO USE OR EDIT

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

#188

Post by bjornsing »

andsoitis wrote: post #175
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…

I agree with your sentiment of "Unless that guy specifically says he's going to maintain it for free you are entitled to exactly absolutely nothing" That works both ways though, a maintainer cannot expect users to not complain (so they have to develop management strategies where they ignore the noise, rather than try to engage/capitulate). A maintainer can also not lament when users do not feel the desire to contribu…

> a maintainer cannot expect users to not complain

Eh… Isn’t that fairly close to the definition of entitlement (i.e. you complain when you have no reason to)?

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

#189

Post by sevagh »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #158

It's really interesting to me how the vibes have shifted against open source in recent years. I remember when open source came out, it seemed like an implicit critique of proprietary software as stuffy and corporate. But proprietary software has an advantage: The devs get paid. If you want to get paid for your work, why are you choosing to give it away for free? I'm not judging, I'm genuinely curious. Are there any o…

>Are there any open source boosters left, and if so how would they make the case for open source at this point?

I consider the way I publish MIT projects to be mostly in good faith. I put it out there because I like having my name associated with useful implementations of things. If my code, worked on with my own hands, is spread via unattributed copy-pasting? Good. Even if I don't know about it, somewhere out there my code is powering something.

I started this mindset when I was a new grad, and to achieve a task I would first look at a bunch of different open-source projects to get a sense of how they were approaching the problem domain.

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

#190

Post by OfSanguineFire »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #72
bluGill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know anyone who doesn't think Starbucks is overpriced slop. In any European city you'll find local cafes with better quality and prices than what Starbucks sell. They seem to only be present in the big metro areas that attract a lot of tourists, travelers and immigrants who are familiar with the Starbucks brand and go for that out of habbit and know quality, similar to how McDonald's is so popular.

> In any European city you'll find...

This is so ridiculously optimistic and misinformed. In Poland’s cities, for example, the cafes mainly belong to chains like Costa Coffee and Green Coffee Nero, which act identically to Starbucks in terms of prices, quality, and range of drinks. There aren’t many independent cafes left, let alone ones with lower prices than a Starbucks. Similarly, in Helsinki the choice largely comes down to chains like Espresso House and Robert’s Coffee that are no different than Starbucks.

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