121–130 of 135 posts
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You're an employee so you can answer the question: does Formidable take copyright ownership of the open source contributions provided by you? Do you have to ask your employer if you want to change licenses for your open source projects?
No and no.
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Introducing a token payment such as this undermines the altruism of open source contribution. When people are motivated by altruism they don't want money. e.g. I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, but I wouldn't do it if he offered to pay me $5.
I think the parent's point is that for a lot of people, especially those outside of SV, $20/h is more than a token payment. Sure, it's not going to make a westerner rich, but if we think to happiness instead of just money - it could well enable someone to make a living doing something that makes them happy . And of course there are several countries in which $20/h is a great wage. The OSS vs money problem is a hard o…
In the Tri-State Area (AK/TN/MS), many people will say $20/hr is a great wage. Companies down here try to pay people minimum wage as much as possible. As close to it as possible anyway. We also have a low-enough cost of living that the ripoff isn't as obvious for skilled labor. They're ahead of most people they encounter even at $15/hr. Especially if it's steady work with benefits.
"but if we think to happiness instead of just money - it could well enable someone to make a living doing something that makes them happy."
Another great point. Some businesses even optimize for this.
I think if I worked at a company that was doing this, I would ask them to pay the money directly to a charity instead (like the Free Software Foundation or Software Freedom Conservancy).
Will take this under consideration!
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agreed, additionally, there's an interesting behavioral phenomenon where people are perfectly willing to help strangers on the street when asked for free, but the willingness rate drops dramatically when someone offers them a small amount of money because it reframes the conversation. Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.
>Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process. I think it's less about a different thought process , but about a set of potential legal implications or ramifications .
No no no. This work should be part of your total, main, comp. Working on open-source projects directly contributes to your employer's business, even if the code of that project doesn't get used in those systems. You're building your team's brand (and yes, your own, too). Because other Engineers want to work in an environment where OSS is encouraged, this reduces costs of hiring and retaining Engineers. At $20/hr Form…
I pitched that this could be worth trying at Artsy on my last day
As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot. The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr. Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do bett…
If the work is worth more than $20/hr, who's going to pay it? One person's work is "worth" what someone else is willing to pay. Markets are conversations, and all that. OSS is an arena where the supply of potential practitioners is huge.
I wish I was rich enough to view getting a bonus of $20.00 an hour for fun-time work as being more offensive than receiving nothing at all.
Am I going to end up the code-monkey equivalent of an Uber-driver - paid just enough to keep coming back, but not enough to pay my bills?
Is this going to disrupt real, bill-paying programming jobs? If so, is anyone going to realistically pay their bills, with the huge pool of hobbyists going out there chasing after this?
Is my hobby going to stop being fun, since someone threw money at it?
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Introducing a token payment such as this undermines the altruism of open source contribution. When people are motivated by altruism they don't want money. e.g. I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, but I wouldn't do it if he offered to pay me $5.
I would help my neighbor move some furniture for free, and I'd still do it if he offered to pay me $5. I wouldn't accept the money (because it's socially unacceptable to do so), but his offer wouldn't get in the way of me helping him. If he offered me a drink after, I wouldn't say no. It's understood that this offer is in direct response to me helping him, but I'm still motivated out of altruism. I'm simply receiving…
A thank you and genuine appreciation is better.
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You're an employee so you can answer the question: does Formidable take copyright ownership of the open source contributions provided by you? Do you have to ask your employer if you want to change licenses for your open source projects?
No and no.
Personally, I would like to see an honor or certificated system "giving pledge" that rewards impactful open source projects...especially those that are not initiated/backed by a corporation. Think of it as a sort of B-Corp (O-Corp anybody?) where a tiny sliver of value (equity/revenue/profit/annual fixed amount) is allocated to the open source libraries on which that business is built. How the money is used is another debate entirely, so is the handling of commercialized open source projects.
A very good candidate for something like this would be d3.js.