“Open source” is not broken

> So, it's not useful to say that "companies should do it".

Valid point, but so far NO useful solutions have appeared. I don't need log4j, my employer does. So why should I pay the developers? Because that's the only other solution I've seen presented.

What? Linux, gcc?

> An ad-hom insult doesn't make an argument. OP isn't bashing open source, OP is bashing for-profit companies using it without contributing as an overall system, and OP's website isn't a for-profit company, so even the "OP is a dumb hypocrite" isn't only an insult, it's also wrong.

I do agree that ad hominems are bad and that OP is maybe conflating bringing attention to problems with open source with actually being opposed to open source, which is definitely not the same thing! Lots of criticism may come from a position of wanting to improve everything. However, my more charitable interpretation of the original message would be along the lines of: "Open source seems to work, since you can post this criticism while utilizing a lot of open source technologies."

And that's why i felt like creating my response/question above (apologies if that wasn't clear enough), since i'm surprised myself that we have as much working open source software in the first place, given how underfunded and underappreciated many of the oftentimes critical projects are. :(

The bit about tipping is an interesting one - somehow many of the waiters in the USA aren't paid a living wage but instead have to rely on the patrons of the establishment to tip them. On one hand, that seems incredibly wrong to me (and unthinkable of in certain countries), however at the same time that implies that surely it's possible to somehow ingrain tipping or similar monetary actions into a culture to the point where it's not viewed as something outrageous by the denizens of said culture. How did tipping even become a thing? Why isn't tipping a thing in more industries (hopefully sans the abusive wage practices)?

Why did "npm fund" become a thing just a number of years ago but was never really successful? https://dev.to/ruyadorno/npm-6-13-0-7f3 Why do most corporations stop at extracting lists of dependencies in their projects so they don't get sued and don't have to release their codebases to the public, as opposed to actually funding the people on whose work they depend on?

> You want money, charge money. Code as an employee, be a consultant, be indipendent and sell your thing. You need money, charge money, there's multiple ways to do it, people have been doing it for years. Why aren't you able to charge money? At least partly because of all the people giving away the equivalent for free. Why would someone pay for your library when they could get a free one? If guilt tripping is the only answer, you need a better answer.

Are we incapable as humanity on a large scale to give money willingly to others, when we benefit from their work?

> If I plant a tree for everyone to have a bit more oxygen in the atmosphere, will you pay me for the oxygen you're using from my efforts? Of course not.

Why not? If i wasn't under constant stress about my financial future, scraping by to survive in an economy that doesn't feel viable long term (especially given how i receive cents on the dollar for my work in the grand scheme of things) and aggressively saving of what little i earn, while knowing that i have slim chances of ever having real estate of my own (given that currently that's only viable after decades of work, even if that), i'd be more than happy to pay someone for a tree or a well planted forest, if it'd be presented to me as something i can do easily.

Just look at: https://teamtrees.org/

If there is not a viable solution to the open source funding problem, i don't think open source has a future that's all that bright, at least outside of corporate backed projects or privileged people (e.g. those not under constant financial stress) who can afford the time and effort to put into it.

Edit: apologies if that's an emotional reaction that's maybe not entirely rational, but another post here on HN also made me think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29525286

In short: It feels like open source developers should be paid, regardless of everything else.

For some types of software, we really do not want students doing it, for free or otherwise. There are whole classes of software, like database engines, that are non-obvious and require many years of real-world domain experience before it is plausible that someone will design a competent, scalable architecture and implementation. If open source is going to run critical infrastructure, we don't want naive and inefficient software design but that is frequently what we get; this isn't a criticism of the people that create many of these projects, more the process in practice and our expectations of it.

UBI is not a solution because it would, at best, pay poverty wages. People with the skills to be effective core contributors also have the skills to be paid much, much more for their time. Few people, and definitely not enough, are going to sacrifice the living standards of themselves or their family for some ideal of OSS.

There are strong adverse incentives that make it improbable that the people designing and building OSS are who we as users of OSS would want to be in that role in an ideal world. This has been getting worse with time. The risk for OSS is that those adverse incentives are never addressed.

> SOMEONE has to pay the bills

Aren’t we paying the bill by doing the work to provide these things?

Finance was the old information network for distributing need. It was easily hacked/corrupted.

Isn’t the internet the replacement?

Do the work to have the stuff. Why the old money network too?

Open source is pretty strong evidence social doing just to do cool/useful shit just happens.

People grow food to eat, not because a boss said we need to produce N tons of corn this quarter.