The Internet Relies on People Working for Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#211

Post by maximente » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

programmers love - and i do mean love - to program, so it's not surprising that they're willing to give away their labors of love for free.

hell, most programmers would probably take a pay cut to work in a "cool" language. i'm willing to wager that C/C++/COBOL/java mean salaries are a standard deviation higher than haskell/elixir/clojure salaries. why? many reasons but i bet that companies know that they can use programmers' passion for mastery against them. leave your boring C++ slog job to "hack in Haskell!"

i'm guessing many of these guys are just clueless when it comes to how potentially valuable they are as individuals and what that's worth, while they put up a $10/mo patreon that 6 people use. i'm guessing most engineers are severely underpaid when it comes to value added, they consistently fall for the okie-doke's of "we get to type stuff into a computer and learn and oh wow, i ought to be so grateful for my six figure salary", yet they're putting entire swathes of the economy out of work for their corporate overlords.

it's tough to convince management you're worth a lot of money if you're willing to give away your precious time and resources freely.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#212

Post by alexellisuk » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

I wrote a post on The Five Pressures of Leadership in Open Source and can relate to what the author is talking about having done this for several years and now without any pay. https://blog.alexellis.io/the-5-pressures-of-leadership/

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#213

Post by TuringNYC » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

snek wrote: post #135

Liquix wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, OSS contributions are selfless labors of love and curiosity. These people are flexing their intellect and creativity doing something they thoroughly enjoy: solving problems in the most elegant way possible. Code is shared with an air of positivity, camaraderie, and we're-all-building-this-together. At the risk of sounding kitschy, it's this sense of collaboration that enables the open source community…

It's generally not a problem until the big companies start asking for features, asking for bugs to be fixed, etc., expecting anything more than what the maintainers choose to donate. If someone from Amazon reports a bug it's kind of scary, you feel like you've broken Amazon. You might even try to set aside time you weren't planning to set aside. It's hard to remember/enforce that you don't owe them that time (especia…

That is a great problem to have -- it is how commercial wings of open source projects are formed. The commercial wing becomes a for-profit mechanism to help champion/grease bugs/features through the update process, as well as providing PS and indemnity/support services.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#214

Post by njharman » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

> Given then, that there's very little upside to doing open source, and most/all the benefits go to profit-making corporations

Such a wild claim would require some evidence. But it's so patently false, I'll give you pass.

Linus has gotten extreme benefit from Linux and Git. And developers have massively, directly benefited and the world indirectly from Linux and Git.

Wikipedia, directly benefiting everyone, would not exist without open-source either its infrastructure or the code it runs on. The Internet would not exist without open-source.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#215

Post by SI_Rob » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

Though I now cringe at the angsty teen outrage dripping from every word of this post, it's hard to believe that I wrote this on AskSlashdot 19 years ago:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/00/01/22/1843258/open-defensi...

and still do not know whether any formal method exists (apart from the choice of license model) which could inoculate "Open Source" from being tragically impressed into corporate rent-seeking service. Or at least, as much of the Open Source ethic as is encapsulated in the public works of ethically motivated open source contributors; people who are essentially investing their time, skills and resources in the improvement of a lightly defended public common that continues to be parceled out to private interests.

* rereading the above I don't think I've made much progress in my posting style. Maybe it's something about the apparent structural inevitability of this problem, which seems more a recapitulation of deeper conflicts in human dynamics than something specific to "open source".

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#216

Post by TuringNYC » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

Do you remember being a developer in the 90s? It was horrible and you were stuck in the confines of truly for-profit companies and for-profit platforms and paradigms.

One benefit of OSS is to lead the world to a place where you want the world to go.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#217

Post by aflag » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #181

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And openssl?

(It is possible for there to be multiple anecdotal exceptions.)

The whole thread is anecdotal. I'm not aware of any quantitative study in the matter. There are also the distributions like Debian which is essentially run by volunteers.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#218

Post by alexis_fr » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

arandr0x wrote: post #170

djsumdog wrote: post #68

There aren't a lot of totally free, open-source, end user products. In the 90s FOSS devs though one day GiMP would surpass Photoshop, we'd see Linux on at least 8% ~ 10% of laptops at coffee shops, Inkscape would be better than Illustrator, etc. Today, a lot of FOSS is corporate sponsored. But it's not end-product. It's all middleware. Hophop/Hack, Lightbend libraries like Slick, React, etc. It's all to help you buil…

In the 90s we thought open-source was countercultural. It was something you did to be part of a community, to be elite, to show those big dummies at Microsoft you didn't need them. Today it's something you do to show Microsoft they need you, because today Bill Gates is the world's nicest old man, big companies are safer than the state, and nobody needs any individual person anymore. It's happened with many other thin…

Hi, that’s easy. It = Youtube. Details:

It = feminism and men’s rights. I don’t know where is the crux of it, but nothing adds up about it: Feminist studies are all disproved one by one (remember wage gap?) and storytelling keeps making people believe women are unequal, which _isn’t true_ by far.

It’s Brexit. It’s Trump. Again, storytelling makes people believe they’re bad although careful study shows... least I say, the opposite. Storytelling.

It’s the state. People, especially in Europe believe in the state like they believed in God in 1100: The state is the source of all goods, it represents the people’s general will, and no matter how you show them this isn’t the case, they believe in it so much that we’ll need a Galileo Galilei to shake them off their beliefs. We’ll have to disprove this belief in the state like we had to disprove the belief in God in 1630.

If there’s something you underestimate, it’s the culture shift represented by Youtube, in which youngsters devote themselves. Youtube is a great way to present an idea and link to sources. Show a document on screen and link to sources. Everyone can present a trial of a false idea on Youtube and disprove it. That’s what’s happening for feminism. For Brexit. For Trump. For Kavanaugh. For the Iraki war. For Bachar el Assad. You don’t get Youtube ;) Those answers lie in all the deleted channels of Youtube (ex: “Soph”’s deleted channel, available on Bitchute). You say people engaged in journalism in 1900 because they didn’t want the powers that be to be the only ones heard. Now you have a full generation of Gen Z kids, 13 years old, already able to denounce the storytelling that doesn’t add up, built by mainstream media, movies, school, newspapers. It is sweeping. You _don’t_ get it :D

I’m kidding of course, because chances are you do understand where they’re coming from. But chances are you’ve built mental barriers to prevent from acknowledging their points too, like “muh fake news I only trust CNN”, but so did conservatives in 1969 couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that the Generation X could use a bit more social freedom than their parents. Older people never understand the big changes, because they had reasons to believe they were incorrect.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#219

Post by senderista » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

partialrecall wrote: post #150

snek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally not a problem until the big companies start asking for features, asking for bugs to be fixed, etc., expecting anything more than what the maintainers choose to donate. If someone from Amazon reports a bug it's kind of scary, you feel like you've broken Amazon. You might even try to set aside time you weren't planning to set aside. It's hard to remember/enforce that you don't owe them that time (especia…

If Amazon doesn't pay you, then why are you scared of breaking Amazon? I understand why somebody would be scared of that. They're big and important to the tune of many many billions of dollars, while you or I are not. But you shouldn't let that get to you. You should make a conscious effort to not let that get to you. If they want you to take their problems personally, let them hire you. If they can be broken by you…

https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#220

Post by WalterBright » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #89

Some other commenters in this thread have pointed out that nobody is forcing open source developers to work on the contributions that they make, and that is strictly speaking true. But in the culture of software development, there does seem to be an ambient message often repeated or hinted at, that it is good to "give back" to open source by contributing and that it is virtuous to do so. I now am starting to rethink…

> I think that no potential or current employer has ever given a rat's ass about open source contributions, and do not consider that work as valuable when making hiring decisions.

That is not the case with the D programming language effort. Quite a number of strong D open-source contributors have been recruited into very well paying positions directly because of their contributions.

I suspect the key is contributing to a higher profile open source project. One that is high enough that one can make major contributions, and not so high that one has a hard time standing out amongst the other contributors.