61–70 of 160 posts
You know people like to complain about things and how everything is worse these days, but this is exactly how shareware operated back in the day.
The word we had for programs with features removed in this punitive and egregious manner was crippleware.
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
One of the problems I have with paid solutions is that they generally use open source softwares and don't contribute a dime to them once their paid solutions are generating cash.
If you don’t want this to happen, use an open source license with more restrictions on commercial use.
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The Hitchiker's Guide already had a rant about useless jobs like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers. While I don't necessarily agree with hairdressers being useless, I feel like much of the economy is selling stuff no one really needs to solve problems no one really has in order to justify one's employment, and that share is increasing as automation scales the useful things with proportionately less effort. That's…
I see automation scaling the less useful things, while the stuff we really need (on site trades, healthcare, child care, farming, etc) is having a hard time scaling.
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Comically high salaries are an aberration due to zero interest rates. SWEs should earn well, but not 3-4x as much as the median (and conversely, median salary should pay the rent, the housing market also being distorted by ZIRP).
Software is very scalable and can provide a lot of value. If you look at the revenue per SWE for Microsoft, Alphabet, Netflix, etc, then it's hard to compare them to the person whose job isn't scalable, to say a truck driver, nurse, or bartender.
Would ads be better? If JSFiddle were your project, what would you do to provide yourself a salary?
I think we've discovered that the "buy me a coffee" strategy is just that, enough to generate a little bonus income... but is it simply unreasonable to expect that a project on the web that requires ongoing maintenance can generate a reasonable income for most people?
How do we get off the enshittification treadmill? is this a corporate owner being too greedy? are we expecting too much? have our lifestyles become unsustainable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Hitchiker's Guide already had a rant about useless jobs like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers. While I don't necessarily agree with hairdressers being useless, I feel like much of the economy is selling stuff no one really needs to solve problems no one really has in order to justify one's employment, and that share is increasing as automation scales the useful things with proportionately less effort. That's…
No one needs hairdressers? How do you figure?
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The point of that rant was the culture that got rid of the telephone sanitizers was subsequently wiped out by communicable disease. A lesson we still struggle with…
I take it as just a joke, not as Douglas Adams pointing out no job is useless, because management consultants were included too and I can't see him think THEY are useful, but it's possible.
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I see automation scaling the less useful things, while the stuff we really need (on site trades, healthcare, child care, farming, etc) is having a hard time scaling.
Oh, yes, some stuff scales badly for sure, but for example farming scales hugely! Medieval societies required 80-90% farmers in Western Europe, it's now somewhere around 1-2%.
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
Software is the only industry where the marginal cost of the product is ZERO. All software you use has already been developed, you are presumably paying for updates and future versions - otherwise it's just rent. Something like Reddit is not pure software though, they have infra costs.
This is why Free Software is worthwhile to use and contribute to - it only needs to be written once for everyone to benefit from. Notice I didn't say "Open Source" because a lot of people want to commercialize that. YMMV.