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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

#231

Post by iscream26 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #145
sofixa wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible" or do you prefer some to have amazing lives, but others to suffer? This isn't the choice. Socialism (actual socialism) repeatedly starves its populations. Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and b…

> Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time.

> everyone's lives better

> things get cheaper and better over time.

Oh, fuck off with that bullshit. Capitalism may appear to thrive when living in a first-world country, but only does so through exploitation and cutting corners. More to the point, isn't it funny that despite capitalism being pretty much the de facto economic system of the world only a few countries are actually deemed worth living in? No, some abstract 'informed exchange of currency' didn't magically cause things to appear out of thin air. People make things, and they are almost certainly underpaid and overworked. Behind every AI model there are X poorly paid workers around the world that curated the data that it needs to function. Behind every piece of clothing there are Y poorly paid workers in Bangladesh that made it. And behind every rechargeable battery there are Z Congolese kids risking death inside a mine in search for cobalt. We might try to (and often do) look away, pretend that those are the unfortunate results of corporate blunders that seldom happen, but they're not. Invisible exploitation is what makes the kind of lifestyle that is available in first-world countries possible.

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

#233

Post by dom96 »

andsoitis wrote: post #194
bjornsing wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

As a maintainer you cannot control how people behave. There’s no point in lamenting that people act entitled. Instead, it is more productive to develop strategies to ignore the noise from entitled voices. You do not need to respond to them. You do not need to convince them. You do not have to keep them happy.

> There’s no point in lamenting that people act entitled.

There is: it discourages people from acting entitled.

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

#234

Post by vikmals »

karmakaze wrote: post #222

> Open source software developers should have compensation that follows this: money = contributions * usage This seems wrong. Typically opensource that gets compensation is for support . That's active ongoing work. Past contributions or usage thereof isn't material. That's the beauty of opensource, it keeps on giving to the original work, and derived works.

yeah, seems like the author came up with this formular to cope with the fact that others are making way more money off his software because they found a way to utilize their oss software to make profit. Author should do the same or not ask for money.

A more accurate and sane formular would be

   money = time_spent_on_project * avg_salary

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

#235

Post by hgs3 »

harha_ wrote: post #61

I develop some open source software that I created. It's not very popular, maybe few use cases currently + my services hosted by me. But I still have an userbase and that userbase demands features from me. I tell them that the source code is open, you are free to create pull requests for me to review, but 95% of these people are no developers so they cannot do that. So now I have users who I care about, but who also…

Charge a consulting fee to implement those new features? If a single user cannot afford it, then start a crowd funding campaign. If the crowd funding campaign fails, then say there wasn't enough interest. Let your users vote with their wallet.

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

#237

Post by gorjusborg »

kawhah wrote: post #30
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.

You may not be part of the problem.

However, there are entire industries that leverage open-source / free software, and put unreasonable, uncompensated demands on it.

At the end of the day though, I don't see the problem. As a maintainer of open-source, gratis, software, just don't do the work. It isn't like it is a job. If you don't do the work, they can't fire you.

Is that good for the community? Surely not, but who is asking whether the status quo is working for the developers? Nobody but them. So look out for yourself, and scratch your own itch, but don't treat open source as a job.

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

#238

Post by teddyh »

boxed wrote: post #47
PeterisP wrote: post #36

The article doesn't make any argument why the current situation is unsustainable - it does point out some problems, but as far as we can see, there's no reason why current situation, with all its drawbacks and limitations, couldn't go on for ever, i.e. be sustainably sustained. Some contributors will quit, but that doesn't imply that the system is unsustainable, as long as some more people will temporarily make some…

100% agreed. I've had my response to this sitting in my drafts folder for years now. Finally published it now after reading this thing. https://kodare.net/2023/11/17/open_source_could_be_better.ht... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302122 )

Your web site said “[CLAPPING HANDS SIGN] 3 claps”. Since I didn’t know what that meant, I clicked on it. It changed to say “[CLAPPING HANDS SIGN] 4 claps”. Now I feel like the person in that old joke about someone standing by a well or a cliff, repeating a number out loud.

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

#239

Post by FirmwareBurner »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #218
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>many of Cluj’s independent cafes began to play loud blooming music to discourage lingering Maybe because Cluj is an overrated, overpriced Silicon Valley wannabe (sorry to be so blunt), so greedy old-town cafe owners jack up prices to match IT workers' and tourists' purchasing power. In Iasi for example, there's still small neighborhood cafes that sell affordable coffee, you just gotta avoid the old town and city cen…

The development I mentioned in Cluj predates the IT-sector boom, let alone the tourist boom. It began in the student cafes, and it can be ascribed to the fact that running a profitable cafe is hard. You like to make claims about things you know little about, don’t you? “Go to Italy, Portugal, Austria and many others” The countries you mention by name are either southern European or Central European. You need more fir…

>it can be ascribed to the fact that running a profitable cafe is hard.

Seems like a lot of countries have figured it out. Just how you put it below that some old cafes serve as gathering centers instead of profit centers. Yes, if you're a business owner looking to maximize profit, then a cafe selling cheap coffee is not a good way to make a lot of money, and post '89 Romania is all about money and less about community.

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

#240

Post by teddyh »

hypfer wrote: post #15

IMO Posts like this always basically boil down to "Hey, I did follow every best practice and did everything as I was told and yet it's not working out like how it was promised" This is because the core premise is simply wrong. Sites such as opensource.guide are not written for you. They're written for people profiting from you thinking they're written for you. If you follow their guidance, you'll end up unhappy and w…

Open Source is a development process. It is not a business model.
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