The transitive nature of dependencies makes fund allocation extremely wonky. Say you have Next.js as a dependency in your package.json file? How many dependencies does Next.js itself have? What portion of your funds go to Next.js versus all the transitive dependencies of Next.js?
GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
61–70 of 352 posts
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might “reduce people’s motivation”. There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, craft…
The hikikomori [1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.
and yet their hypothesis is true, there are already many people, with or without UBI, that volunteer, create things and in general help people surrounding them without any reward and they are the backbone of every society, not the career-chasers
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#63$5 a month per dependency, OK let's go! Hold up I've just reorganized my packages into sqlalchemy-base, sqlalchemy-core-sql, sqlalchemy-orm, sqlalchemy-oh-you-want-deletes-also, sqlalchemy-fewer-bugs, and about eight more
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might “reduce people’s motivation”. There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, craft…
The hikikomori [1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.
Hikikomori seems to be largely a symptom of mental illness. NEETs almost by definition are not productive.
The fact that these groups are not producing mass amounts of creative works in no way implies that currently-productive people would not produce significantly more creative works if they had the time and resources to do so.
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#65> it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments. I am. I enjoy making things, and it's even better when others enjoy them. Just because you have expectations that you should be compensated for everything line of code you write; doesn't make it ubiquitous, nor should your expectations be considered the default. I…
I'm pretty sure you didn't wake up at 5am to an urgent issue. Because I did last night, and for sure __MY WIFE__ expects me to get paid for it!!
In general, people's time is not free if only because they have rent/mortgage, food, transportation, medical bills, education, etc.
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#66let everything be gratis and if you need something fixed, and engineer you hired to work for you in your org can fork or send in a patch. there, I solved it
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#67love this idea on so many levels. Of course, then the fight moves to how allocation happens, and how to avoid people further gaming things like repo stars, forks, PRs, voting, dependencies, etc.
in particular, there's repos with extremely high activity where funding doesn't help anyone and repos with low activity where funding ensures continuity for key components we all depend on but which are under-funded for various reasons.
obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s OK to say “No” or “Pay me and I’ll do it right now” to companies doing this.
Correct, maintainers can say that and get shamed. And it leads to unmaintained libraries, since companies don't want to pay. At some point, is open sourcing your work a liability?
I’m sure many companies like to pay. It’s probably the cheapest way to solve a business problem. It should be the norm. If a company wants to have a bug fixed or a feature added, they should pay. And GitHub should make it easy to do so.
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#69You do not want to add profit incentives like this to FOSS. Profit incentives like the one suggested is what brought us enshitification. And the code is a free gift, unless the licence says otherwise. What's wrong with letting developers choose what to bill for?
You are absolutely right
Re: GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source
#70> it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments. I am. I enjoy making things, and it's even better when others enjoy them. Just because you have expectations that you should be compensated for everything line of code you write; doesn't make it ubiquitous, nor should your expectations be considered the default. I…
I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might “reduce people’s motivation”. There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, craft…
Not really against welfare programs...but...
UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent. Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting space leaving people right where they left off.
You need to impose a tax called the Land Value Tax to prevent landowners eating up the public money. Even then we got a long list of much needed public spending before we can even think about a Citizen's Dividend.