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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

#341

Post by [deleted] »

Beijinger wrote: post #177
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…

Excellent Idea. But why email? Just use a webform that charges 1 USD via paypal to contact you. Trust me, I wont!

[deleted]

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

#342

Post by mistrial9 »

seydor wrote: post #337
mistrial9 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

who exactly is the mysterious and all-powerful "they" ?

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

#343

Post by grotorea »

blitz_skull wrote: post #228
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…

Where is it written that being an OSS contributor should be a sustainable career? Just go write software for a company if that’s what you want to do. But why there’s an expectation that “open” source software should pay anyone is beyond me.

I think that society and companies benefit from FOSS even if there's no or little profit in doing it. Sure that are corporate OSS jobs, but think of all the societal benefit that comes from one-man or community FOSS projects. I feel that in an ideal situation people should be incentivized by being paid for doing that work.

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

#344

Post by ahepp »

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?

If Starbucks started giving the drinks away for free, I doubt people would still pay $10 for it.

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

#345

Post by grotorea »

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…

Wait a second, where is it said that those 75% were made by volunteers and not by for example the many companies contributing to the Linux kernel?

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

#346

Post by teddyh »

npn wrote: post #289
teddyh wrote: post #262

The feeling of entitlement of some developers is sometimes baffling. They have a position of authority in a project, and got that authority based on their demonstrated trustworthiness and ability to deliver useful software. Now they don’t feel like doing that anymore, but instead of resigning their position in the project like a responsible person, they want to use their earned trust to be paid for software developme…

they own the project, not you. open source licensing does not mean giving up the authorship.

They own the copyright. The project is a thing that happens in concert with users and contributors, just like art requires an audience to be art.

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

#347

Post by teddyh »

infamouscow wrote: post #283
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.

It also doesn't disclaim the author from writing you a check out of the good will of their heart. I genuinely don't understand what's so difficult to grasp here.

> * It also doesn't disclaim the author from writing you a check out of the good will of their heart.*

Nobody expects that. But people do reasonably expect a project to recieve updates, security fixes, and new releases.

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

#348

Post by ternaus »

I am one of the creators and maintainers of https://albumentations.ai/.

- 12800+ stars

- 1M downloads last month, 37k per day

- Paper about the project: 1500+ citations

- Used in 18k other repositories and 317 packages.

=> People use it.

But!

- 365 open issues

- 25 pull request

that hang for years

Only one sponsor.

And this is fine. People use the result of our work, but we do not feel that we are entitled / deserve / [some other vomit words] of more support.

In the beginning, we decided that we would do it:

- only for fan

- when and how we want it

- if some user is unhappy with our commitment or decisions

=> feel free to fork.

But!

We do enjoy when people thank us, create pull requests (we do review and merge them, although it could take time), or create feature requests or bug reports.

I can see open source as a great pet project that you do for fun and to improve your skills, but unless it is an OpenCore business or another setup where maintainers are financially compensated, all whiners and complainers can go and fuck themselves.

I would not recommend maintainers of the open source software even notice them.

If working on OSS is not fun - do not do it. Life is too short for unnecessary stress.

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

#349

Post by teddyh »

simbolit wrote: post #290
teddyh wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warranty is about the code which already exists, and whether the code is fit for a particular purpose, etc. (all legal terms). The warranty disclaimer in free software licences all say basically “Although this specific version of the software is meant to be helpful to you for a certain purpose, you can’t sue the developer if there’s a bug or an omitted feature, since we don’t make any guarantee that it will work.”…

You are saying I should add, to my free lemonade stand, a disclaimer: I will not help you with drinking the free lemonade; if the lemonade is too sour for you I will not be providing extra sugar; and I will not make free lemonade tomorrow. Can you give me one or two examples of official OSS websites where these are heavily implied or outright stated? Do you mean anything beyond a roadmap?

You don’t need a disclaimer for something which nobody reasonably expects. Although an “available today only” notice might be useful, since people might reasonably expect a lemonade stand to be available the next day.

Regarding examples, basically any software project web site which talks about the project as an ongoing thing, gives links to where “new releases” will be available. Stuff like that. All that implies that the software is actively developed and will be developed for at least the near future.

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

#350

Post by chlorion »

eschneider wrote: post #6

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's perfectly ok to charge folks for software and if you're OSS project isn't motivating you like it used to, it's perfectly ok to charge users for support/updates/bugfixes.

This is really important.

A lot of people think open source is about not paying for software, even some open source devs think this.

You are allowed to sell your software even if its GPL'd or whatever. You are not obligated to give the source away for free, you can charge people for the source and for binaries, you just have to provide the source when someone does buy it. I would like to see more people try this out.

The most common counterargument here is that someone can pay for your source code, and then upload it to github, or even sell it themselves, allowing people to circumvent paying (you) for it. This is true, but most software needs to be maintained in order to be useful, and you are not obligated to provide the updates to people who haven't paid you, and I think you could charge for access to the updates, even for people who have purchased your software before.

You can also use trademarks, anyone who would attempt to resell it would not be able to use your "marks", which could be the project name or logo for example.

Maybe there are reasons nobody is doing this, maybe its not viable, but I haven't seen any cases where someone has at least tried this.

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