The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

mikrl wrote: post #223

andsoitis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>so they have to develop management strategies where they ignore the noise I believe this is called “please use the template when submitting an issue” and we all know how that goes. I’ve honestly found myself laughing like a madman at GitHub issues where the maintainer calmly and repeatedly tries to explain to the increasingly disgruntled reporter to UTFT (use the fine template)

I keep thinking that GitHub (and GitLab, and etc) made the initial costs to interacting with the developers unhealthily low. The barrier of having to create an account or adding your email to a newsletter on the older distributed systems was extremely good on filtering out that kind of thing.

Also, "Issues" should really, really have a different name.

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

#302

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

dom96 wrote: post #233

andsoitis wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it? How much of an impact do you think it has?

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

#303

Post by toasted-subs » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

PoutCo wrote: post #298

The last time I checked the statistics, approximately 75% of the industry's codebase was open source—a significant portion! However, when it comes to the earnings of open-source developers, it's almost negligible. I strongly believe that open-source contributors should be compensated for their work. So, in my opinion, there's a real need to establish an open-source economy where contributors can be fairly compensated…

To be fair a huge portion of the open source code being used by industry comes from industry.

Don't get me wrong though I love me a good open source project. I think the idea of being compensated might increase the quality, but let's point fingers at github. It would be as simple as adding a "support contributors" button on repos.

I don't know how divide the winnings fairly. But it should be possible.

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

#304

Post by jakubadamw » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #190

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

What? Which cities? In mine, Kraków, the above just isn't true. In my neighbourhood, there even isn't a chain-affiliated café that I could go to – if I wanted to in the first place – but there are five or six independent cafés in my immediate vicinity. Same with most Polish cities I've visited… That being said, yes, overall the number may be shrinking in favour of the chains. We're far from them becoming extinct, though.

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

#305

Post by cedws » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

If you want be compensated for your project, license your project appropriately and sell licenses/corporate support. Nobody's going to throw money at you out of the goodness of their heart, that's not how the world works.

If you burn yourself out on serving your entitled users for free, that's on you, not on them. You've created that sense of entitlement. You're an adult capable of saying "no" or "pay me."

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

#306

Post by seydor » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

cedws wrote: post #305

If you want be compensated for your project, license your project appropriately and sell licenses/corporate support. Nobody's going to throw money at you out of the goodness of their heart, that's not how the world works. If you burn yourself out on serving your entitled users for free, that's on you, not on them. You've created that sense of entitlement. You're an adult capable of saying "no" or "pay me."

easy to say - hard to do. corporates have the money to sustain an accounting department, random devs from developing countries don't. And nobody cares about them

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

#307

Post by zackmorris » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

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…

The feeling of entitlement people have around open source is unsustainable.

Do you have standards? It doesn't sound like you do.

People with healthy boundaries set standards for themselves as far as what they give to others and what treatment they accept in return.

I think the fallacy in your argument is that you're blaming contributors for noticing that they aren't being compensated for the work they've done, rather than blaming others for using that work without giving anything in return. I see your sentiment reflected in society in the way we treat low-wage workers with disdain for not doing more lucrative work. You're applying the principle of rugged individualism to a systems-level problem.

A healthier way to approach this would be to list a number of possible solutions and debate them in an open forum like this. When we find solutions but fail to adopt them, then that's a criticism of our agency. We are all failing ourselves by failing open source contributors. Then we can look beyond that to find the reasons why. Which are obvious because they are the same as with any other power imbalance. The fault lies with the wealthy and powerful people and corporations who profit from free and low-wage labor. The solution is to organize labor into a unified front so that exploitation can no longer happen.

Our failure to solve open source compensation is analogous to failing to stop suffering in developing nations which provide labor and resources for wealthy ones. Your argument places guilt and shame on workers instead of identifying exploitation by the wealthy, which might be better spent on something like an open source endowment or UBI more generally.

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

#308

Post by carapace » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

I honestly do not get the Open Source movement.

> It is quite literally a free lunch at the expense of hard-working individuals.

Yes! This. That's the point.

I'm a Free software developer and that's why I give my code away: to solve someone's problems with software. I can do that. I'm not particularly good at most things, but when it comes to writing software I'm very capable. In other words, I am a "free lunch" generator.

To me the entire point of computers and software (where these intersect with economics) is to change the structure of the economic system itself to a more humane system (that works in harmony with the global ecology, but that's a tangent to my main point today.) "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay."

Science and technology have won the day. We have the knowledge and resources to take care of everybody on Earth without "disadvantaging anybody" (as Bucky Fuller liked to say.) You don't have to "earn a living" anymore. We won history.

Software is just the clearest, cleanest example of the general phenomenon of science and technology obviating the physical bounds that held us back until now.

Getting back to software development: technology should be deployed so that folks only have to work a few hours a week to pay for their living expenses (e.g. $300 per month should cover food, housing, clothing, health care, etc., and over time that number should decrease!)

In that milieu people can develop software and give it away without the extra constraints of having to make it profitable in and of itself.

This is the whole point of technology in general and computers and software in particular: change the structure of the economy so that we can all "live happily ever after".

(And get on with space exploration and mitigating climate change.)

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

#309

Post by seydor » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

The EU has an elaborate system of VAT taxation. It is an accounting nightmare, but it is fair tax: every part of the chain is paying according to their value-add. Whole of the EU has it. If EU wasn't so anachronistic, the accounting for it could be completely automated.

But nobody ever thought to make a similar system to pay people for the value they add to the chain. On the internet it's possible, and many blockchain systems promise something similar. But big tech wants all the profits, from everyone's creations, all for itself. And governments are silently guilty standing in the background

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

#310

Post by mistrial9 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #309

The EU has an elaborate system of VAT taxation. It is an accounting nightmare, but it is fair tax: every part of the chain is paying according to their value-add. Whole of the EU has it. If EU wasn't so anachronistic, the accounting for it could be completely automated. But nobody ever thought to make a similar system to pay people for the value they add to the chain. On the internet it's possible, and many blockchai…

> nobody ever thought to make a similar system to pay people for the value they add to the chain

of course, you are joking! look in the USENET news archives.. from the early 1990s.. you will see many proposals like "micropayments" .. later, even standards proposed. Also see the importance of "ad free Internet" and how certain govt-company groups try to add their own "ID" to people and machines.