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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

#331

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #311
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they released it as open source purely to lure people in and get them using it enough so that switching away would be difficult for them. If they're up-front with people and mention that it'll be open source up until a time of their choosing, after which subsequent versions will be proprietary, then I don't see a problem and no-one's getting tricked. When I'm choosing an open source tool to use, then I want t…

Any open source code that requires constant maintenance either has FAANG support or would switch license in the future. I don't think that donation or pay for support could pay market rate to talented developers except in a rarest of rare case(e.g. sqlite which has very high user to developer ratio). Just treat not open source product differently than open source. Assume that the current version is all you are gettin…

That seems to be a limited view of open source software and is ignoring communities that work together on useful code and a lot of successful projects.

One of the advantages of using open source code is that updates aren't purely done for commercial reasons and popular projects will tend to get a lot more people working on them than a similar proprietary piece of code. There's a lot to be said for enthusiasts working to make something better because they want to, rather than a paid developer just adding in features that a sales team think will look good in publicity materials and not being permitted to spend time fixing long standing issues with the code base.

It's an implied social contract between the developers and the users - the users will often recommend the software to others and there's an expectation that a popular, active project (i.e. not just some code that someone's published and then left alone) will continue to be active.

Switching licenses is only really feasible where all the code is owned by an individual (person or business) - certainly switching Linux to a different a license would be incredibly difficult.

It's all about getting people to work together rather than in competition.

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

#332

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ben0x539 wrote: post #328
api wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two things are connected. People will spend $10 on a coffee drink at Starbucks without blinking. Suggest that they spend $10 on a piece of software and they’ll throw a fit and claim you are taking away their rights.

Hm, why do you think that is? Do programmers just respect each other less than they respect baristas?

Because they got trained to think that way by the "free as in speech and free as in beer" and "Why pay for Windoze? (sic) Linux is free" marketing the early FOSS advocates used.

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

#333

Post by sublimefire »

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…

This is ridiculous because there is no legal or moral obligation from the creator to say anything except maybe adding the license. You as a user can use the given software and probably modify yourself at will due to the permissive license which is the main advantage of OSS. When I get stuff from the charity I do not expect them to provide a return policy and customer service, your analogy is moronic because the thing was done already and you can come back and get a newer thing if it is ready.

The problem is that the barrier to use any software is so low that it attracts people who have no clue and demand support. I am not talking about you, even the larger companies always mention a wish to force smaller developers to patch security issues for free, this is an issue in supply chain security at the moment.

The gist is that you can fix it yourself.

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

#334

Post by billythemaniam »

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.

I suspect ignoring them is more effective than essentially complaining back.

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

#335

Post by layer8 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #288
rpastuszak wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can say that for a whole host of things people volunteer to do with their time. They still volunteer that time often knowing it comes with no compensation at all. There’s this idea of altruism and greater good that drives a lot of people beyond money.

With OSS, it’s more like a personal creativity outlet, or “I want this thing to exist”. It is very similar to artists and musicians. Who also have a hard time getting someone to pay for their output.

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

#336

Post by teddyh »

growse wrote: post #273
teddyh wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That text does not disclaim support, security bugfixes, and future development. On the contrary, all three of those things are probably either heavlily implied or outright stated to be available on the project web site.

You and I are reading "SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION." very differently.

At best, that only covers bug fixes. And, as I said, bug fixes are usually implied to be available in future releases.

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

#337

Post by seydor »

mistrial9 wrote: post #310
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.

ok they thought of it and never did it, which has the same effect

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

#338

Post by cedws »

seydor wrote: post #306
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

Many of those complexities come with accepting donations too.

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

#339

Post by abeppu »

lynx23 wrote: post #49
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…

This! Its always the same. When volunteers start to complain they aren't compensated for their work, things start to smell fishy. And this kind of behaviour seems to have increased lately. Rather sad. Either I do something for the love of it, or I am going for a paying job. Sometimes people are lucky and these two are the same, but that is very much the exception.

I build stuff because I love it. But why should I publish it? If I publish it, why should I release it under a permissive license?

I think people get pissed off because they're working out of a spirit of generosity, and the users who they interact with most are definitely not.

Suppose my neighborhood regularly throws a block party, and everyone makes and shares some food, because they enjoy making and sharing food. Great! But suppose one neighbor grabs portions of everyone's freely shared dishes, packages them up, and begins selling your freely-shared food as plate lunches to others, and pocketing the proceeds. They come back and ask that you use more spice, and by the way, do you have any napkins and plastic cutlery? Is the right response here "well, if you don't love making and sharing food for the love of it, you should stop?" Or is it reasonable to want to share with people who are willing to engage in the same spirit of mutual benefit?

I build stuff and keep my projects to myself. I would happily share with other people who are building hobby projects for the love of it. I would happily let almost any non-profit use my work for free (perhaps excluding some political or aggressively religious organizations). I have zero desire to gift anything to anyone's for-profit company. But for some reason, there's a strong stigma against sharing source code but not allowing a total free-for-all of what it's published for. "That's not open source," I'm told. So I don't publish at all, but that has nothing to do with not loving what I build.

Meanwhile, a hobbyist makes music, and publishes some recordings with a CC non-commercial license, people get it. No one says, "oh if you object to companies using your recording as background in their ads, it must be because you don't love making music."

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

#340

Post by radiator »

growse wrote: post #265
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. So if I had a text file in the root of my repo that said: THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHE…

I think it is too long.
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