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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

#251

Post by candiddevmike »

teddyh wrote: post #248
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…

A maintainer position for a software project is like any position or role, in say, a charity. You aren’t technically forced to do the work, but the charity announces publicly (on its web site, for instance) that the work will be done, and people expect it to be done. If you do not feel up to doing it anymore, you owe it to other people (who expect the work to be done) to announce your retirement and hand the position…

> B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development.

Pretty sure every open source license includes this in the warranty line...

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

#252

Post by gustavus »

jh0486 wrote: post #241

I understand this is a jaded take, but it's not wrong. Open source entered a bubble because companies started requiring active open source contributions to staff+ engineering requirements. The model was never sustainable. A select few contribute to open source out of sheer passion, but the majority are/were using it as a career advancement mechanism or network effect. The result is that major companies were able to a…

> who benefits most from open source: large companies.

Maybe in absolute terms but because of FOSS software I have been made free from the shackles of the windows ecosystem and liberated from the prison of Apple lock in to be free forever in the fields of the Linux and that alone has been invaluable to me.

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

#253

Post by disintegore »

siva7 wrote: post #43
komali2 wrote: post #37

I agree, however, compensation in general is reaching a point where rational value calculations are fraying. I can't explain why an engineer, though well paid, is making .01% of the CEO's salary, nor can I explain why an engineer doing the same work but in the Philippines is making 40% of the salary of the one in the USA. I was very inspired by "Walkaway" by Cory Doctorow. It involves a world where people detach them…

>> I can't explain why an engineer, though well paid, is making .01% of the CEO's salary, nor can I explain why an engineer doing the same work but in the Philippines is making 40% of the salary of the one in the USA. That's economics 101 and not the problem of a particular profession

Fantastic post. Your logic is a perfectly hermetic circle.

I'm sure the OP can competently explain all of these things. What they can't do is justify them, or reconcile them with the principles that their society has instilled in them.

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

#254

Post by ncallaway »

ahepp wrote: post #128
hypfer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what isn't clear to me is why maintainers don't ignore these people. One reason is that you're being told that that's an awful thing to do by basically every resource on "proper open-source" you can find. Another is that these people are pretty good at starting shit storms trying to ruin your reputation if you don't comply with their unreasonable demands. It's also worth nothing that some requests/issues/questi…

I've never read any resources on what constitutes proper open source. It seems like there are a lot of different and incompatible goals in the world of open source. For example, if I wanted to get paid I definitely wouldn't be reading something by Stallman. Sure, reviewing and maintaining PRs is work too. If I wasn't willing to do it for free, I'd be clear and upfront, and say > Unfortunately we don't have the time t…

> but the ones I can recall off the top of my head are usually situations that I'm sure felt like rug-pulls or shakedowns to users

It’s funny you mention shakedowns, because I’ve seen at least one or two minor shitstorms (objectively, they were pretty minor, but I’m sure they didn’t feel that way to the maintainers in the moment) because language very similar to what you proposed was interpreted as a shakedown:

> We also have a variety of sponsorship options, and a list of past contributors and maintainers available for contract work.

And I think that’s where the rub is. Almost any strategy as a maintainer for trying to establish a boundary and ignore people (close issues or PRs automatically, offer contract services, etc) can cause these kinds of issues. People really dislike being ignored, and so a policy of ignoring things will kind of inevitably lead to conflict and confrontation with some percentage of people.

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

#255

Post by okraigher »

cxr wrote: post #95
okraigher wrote: post #46

I think an open source compensation system could work similar to how artists are payed when their song is played on the radio. Radio stations in Sweden pay a fee to an organisation which distributes the money to artists in proportion to the amount of playtime. Imagine a new type of open source license that mandated paying a membership fee to a global foundation to use the code commercially. Non-commersial use would s…

> Imagine a new type of open source license that mandated paying a membership fee to a global foundation to use the code commercially. That would by definition not be open source.

I would not care so much about the definition of open source.

My ideal scenario is that code is open, can be improved and reused among commercial and non-commercial endeavors. I also would like that some of the value created by users of the open code flows back to the creators.

Individual commercial licenses do not create this ideal as they are monolithic and does not reflect that open source is a network of many dependencies.

Companies would be willing to pay for open source but they do not want to manage each node in their dependency graph individually. Thus the need for some centralized tax and redistribution system.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

pacifika wrote: post #168
ahepp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit tangential, but I actually think charging money to participate in certain online discussions is a really good idea. For instance, I think it would be awesome if everyone sending an email to my main account had to send me $1. If what they are sending me isn't worth $1 to them, why should I get a buzz on my phone? Spam would be solved instantly. I certainly don't think that every corner of the internet sh…

Your friends and family are going to pay you for every email? Every online purchase would be several dollars more expensive. Transactional email providers would go bankrupt.

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by teddyh »

candiddevmike wrote: post #251
teddyh wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A maintainer position for a software project is like any position or role, in say, a charity. You aren’t technically forced to do the work, but the charity announces publicly (on its web site, for instance) that the work will be done, and people expect it to be done. If you do not feel up to doing it anymore, you owe it to other people (who expect the work to be done) to announce your retirement and hand the position…

> B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development. Pretty sure every open source license includes this in the warranty line...

No, that’s the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development.

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

#258

Post by riemannzeta »

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…

There have been steps forward in the direction of making donation easier:

https://github.com/sponsors

GitHub Sponsors directs individuals to Open Collective https://opencollective.com/ , which can serve as a "fiscal host." The advantage here is that the default rule at law for how a group of developers working together will be treated is partnership, which means joint and several liability. Working with a fiscal host partitions individual liability from group liability.

But there are still open questions. I don't know all the details of how Open Collective works from a corporate law perspective. How do they partition the liability of different collectives that are hosted by the same fiscal host? That is important to understand because otherwise, the collectives that share a fiscal host are partners. This is better than all of the individuals who contribute to each and all of the collectives being partners (because there's still a partition between individual and group liability), but worse than if each collective's liability was partitioned from the other collectives' liability (and the fiscal host itself's liability).

This seems like an active area for legal innovation. No jurisdiction I know of is optimizing to maximize speed and minimize cost of setting up corporations. Yet without the ability to shield the contributors of capital and labor from individual liability, there isn't much a group of individuals can do in our modern economy. The problems that many DAOs have had is a case study in this.

People who care about open source should also care about scaling up the speed and minimizing the cost of incorporating. Stripe Atlas and similar services are underrated sources of economic growth for this reason, IMHO.

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

#260

Post by candiddevmike »

teddyh wrote: post #257
candiddevmike wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development. Pretty sure every open source license includes this in the warranty line...

No, that’s the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development.

What do you think a warranty is?
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