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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

#101

Post by Galanwe »

Unfortunately, a system can be individually unsustainable while being globally sustainable.

That is, maintainer burnout rate can be high, but a continuous influx of new maintainers could compensate.

In fact, a lot of industries work like that, and numerous examples regularly appear on HN. Video game companies are notoriously full of super bright young developers, which are squeezed until burnout, just to be replaced by a new ones.

As for the compensation bit, although I agree with the principle, I tend to disagree that it would solve the problem as a whole. Sure, some maintainers would be more willing to spend time on their OSS projects if they were paid, some might even quit their job and work full time on their OSS. But my personal experience is that money is but a short term replacement for passion. Once you reach the point where you're not willingly working on a project, additional money can give you a boost of motivation, but ultimately you will tend to procrastinate to work on it, until you just won't be able to force yourself to touch it.

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

#102

Post by hypfer »

kawhah wrote: post #99
hypfer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what isn't clear to me is why maintainers don't ignore these people. One reason is that you're being told that that's an awful thing to do by basically every resource on "proper open-source" you can find. Another is that these people are pretty good at starting shit storms trying to ruin your reputation if you don't comply with their unreasonable demands. It's also worth nothing that some requests/issues/questi…

> Another is that these people are pretty good at starting shit storms trying to ruin your reputation if you don't comply with their unreasonable demands. If you go on social media and offer your well-thought-out opinions about some controversial subject, you are very likely to get large number of people sending you offensive messages, arguing with you objectionably, trying to start pile-ons, attempting to dox you, e…

> Is the correct response to announce that "your participation in political discussion for free has become unsustainable", and that you need to be paid by all the people who find your comments interesting?

Why are you asking me this? I'm not the author of that text. My take on this article can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302098

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

#103

Post by komali2 »

siva7 wrote: post #43
komali2 wrote: post #37

I agree, however, compensation in general is reaching a point where rational value calculations are fraying. I can't explain why an engineer, though well paid, is making .01% of the CEO's salary, nor can I explain why an engineer doing the same work but in the Philippines is making 40% of the salary of the one in the USA. I was very inspired by "Walkaway" by Cory Doctorow. It involves a world where people detach them…

>> I can't explain why an engineer, though well paid, is making .01% of the CEO's salary, nor can I explain why an engineer doing the same work but in the Philippines is making 40% of the salary of the one in the USA. That's economics 101 and not the problem of a particular profession

Sure but it makes it a lot harder to figure out how much someone "deserves" for writing a FOSS project.

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

#105

Post by zrail »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #72
bluGill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people. There are people who think Starbucks is too expensive. There are people who donate to open source.

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.

Weird flex but ok. In any area big enough to have a Starbucks in the US you'll find at least one local cafe that has better coffee. You'll also find at least one with much worse coffee that thinks they're better.

As you say, people go to Starbucks and McDonalds for familiar known quality and you should be happy for it. That way the tourists and immigrants stay out of your local cafe.

Edit: to be clear I'm not defending supranational billion dollar corporations here.

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

#106

Post by argiopetech »

pjmlp wrote: post #82
mcpackieh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep reading from project leaders like ESLint’s things like “if only they paid $1 each…” as if that made any economic sense at all. If they paid $1 each, you would not hand thousands let alone millions of users. From another angle, if I gave a dollar a month to every Free Software program or library I used that month, it would cost me thousands of dollars a month. Obviously that isn't realistic. I have donated to…

Welcome to the pre-2000's, when it was possible to actually make a living from selling software, without having to bundle it behind a SaaS paywall, hardware devices,...

Serious question: is it not now?

I have worked hard to escape closed source, commercial software, but I still purchase several box products (FamilyHistorian and SuperMemo come to mind immediately) from small companies. I acknowledge e.g., Microsoft or Adobe can make a killing by making their products subscription-based, but is that the way small companies (who can accept the lack of continuous income and charge a significant portion of full price for major upgrades) have to go?

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

#107

Post by creshal »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #72
bluGill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people. There are people who think Starbucks is too expensive. There are people who donate to open source.

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.

Looks like you offended some Americans' sensibilities, but it's pretty much on point outside the US. We already have a coffee culture, we don't need union-busting megacorps giving us worse for higher prices and lower worker wages, thanks.

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

#108

Post by sofixa »

agent327 wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It still beats having a central planner from the politburo tell you to work in the mines for zero compensation.

You know that's not how central planning worked, right? You were told to live in a specific place, with a few (narrow) options on where to work at (unless you were (un)specialised, then there was sometimes zero choice), for meagre but sufficient compensation. You could have a place to live, food to eat. The place to live might be a room in an apartment shared with other families, the food to eat might be bread with bread, and there were little things you could buy outside of necessities, but you were compensated and it was near certain you would have a roof over your head, and baring drastic mismanagement/crisis, enough food.

If that's better than some having more money that they could possibly use, many having access to amazing amenities and luxuries, but a lot struggling to eat enough quality food and not being able to have a roof over their head is IMO a philosophical question. Do you prefer everyone (of course with some minor exceptions for higher ups) to be equally "not great, but not terrible" or do you prefer some to have amazing lives, but others to suffer?

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

#109

Post by sofixa »

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.

> 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.

Why should that be the exception? Why shouldn't people's passions, especially when they are widely useful to others, not be encouraged and turned into paying jobs? Everyone wins. The passionate can keep doing what they're passionate about without having to split their attention to a job to pay the bills, and in exchange everyone else gets better quality output.

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

#110

Post by hermannj314 »

api wrote: post #78
newsclues wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on proprietary software. Most of those people won’t spend $100 on open source software.

Yep, and if you ask them to they will throw a fit and claim you are taking away their rights.

Correct. They've learned the behavior that attacking someone's ego, sense of fairness, or duty pays off and costs little. Almost everyone in customer service or non-profit space has to deal with these leeches.

Easy to defeat, fatal to ignore.

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