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Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

babeljs.io

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Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#221

Post by roel_v »

cycomanic wrote: post #87

I find the comments here fascinating. So the lead developer was paid $11k a month, and somehow many start calling this a problem. Apparently, if you work on OSS you should be working for something slightly above the poverty line. People are comparing it to other salaries, but seem to forget that this salary likely does not include any other benefits (health insurance, stock options ...). I mean he is the lead develop…

"Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe."

LOL you're saying someone, in a rank and file (even if senior) developer position would be paid 'significantly above' $11k per month anywhere in Europe? This is a serious case of "citation needed".

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#222

Post by gnomewascool »

NiekvdMaas wrote: post #212
akmittal wrote: post #105

See what creator of Babel has to say >Babel used by millions, so why are we running out of money? Bluntly: Because funds were misallocated for years, and the project has been too slow to improve. >The reason there's no money is because someone took a $130k annual salary and didn't actually work on the project. https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1392019586833387522 - So donating money because of this post may not be a…

Looking at the the commit activity of some maintainers, that seems to be correct: 7 commits in a year: https://github.com/babel/babel/commits?author=hzoo&since=202... $110k invoiced: https://opencollective.com/left_pad/transactions

Are FOSS "donations" for on-going or past work, though? I'd lean towards a mixture of both.

However, by that measure the original creator should also be compensated for their past work, given that they wrote about an order of magnitude more code than the second most prolific contributor, at least in the main babel repository.[0]

(I have no way to easily measure other equally important contributions, such as shepherding other contributors, dealing with issues and PRs, so I'm ignoring them.)

[0] https://github.com/babel/babel/graphs/contributors

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#223

Post by Broken_Hippo »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #209
mschuster91 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm always shocked at how high these US salaries quoted on here are. I don't know if that's just FAANG companies or people inflating figures. US salaries are higher than European ones, but that is mainly because Americans need to account for healthcare and (especially in SV) extremely high cost of living. I have a ~62 m² 3 room flat in somewhat center of Munich and pay only 1.000€ a month in rent, whereas in the US…

All FAANG companies pay 100% of the employee's health care in addition to the salary. When people talk about total comp for these FAANG companies they mean base pay + stock the 100% health coverage is just assumed. I will say coverage for the full family often isn't free but it's still pretty cheap.

I'm pretty sure they just pay for health insurance premiums instead of the health care. Deductible followed by a percentage of everything until you reach your out of pocket coupled with poor paid leave if you get paid leave at all is a significant cost to health care. This is combined with a culture that glorifies not missing a day of work for any reason, which can't help folks use the health care provided.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#225

Post by mids_hn »

loremipsium wrote: post #177

The salary discussion aside. That's what I have always been ad odds with OSS. Nobody is forcing you to put it up for free. Put a price tag on it an sell it. If it doesn't sell, lower the price. If it still doesn't sell, good. Stop trying to force adoption on software that cannot sustain itself. Nobody ever heard oracle scrambling for cash.

Under the OSIs definition of open-source, and under the definition of free software, anyone can buy your software and redistribute it to others for free. This effectively limits you to earning money only off the labor of your work, not the work itself, and makes your business model effectively useless. This is such a huge difference yet the FSF, as always, confuse people (maybe even intentionally) by saying that free software can be commercial. No, it cannot. The services you provide can be, the labor you provide can be, but the software - no.

You can remove that freedom to the user. After all, the source is available, it can still be tested for malware, but your work won't be open-source.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#226

Post by pjmlp »

kuschku wrote: post #103
axguscbklp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babel is one of the most popular and widely-used tools in the history of web development. Why should its developers and maintainers not make at least as much money as entry-level Silicon Valley developers?

Why should they make more than senior engineers with decades of experience in Berlin? Why should customers/users of the project have to pay/donate twice or thrice as much for the same result, just because the devs want to live in the US instead of e.g. Paris?

Why should users of babel feel enttitled not to pay anything at all in contrast with other professions?

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#227

Post by nt2h9uh238h »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #184

Donations are nice but not really scalable as a revenue model. Planning to live of that is not a plan. There are a couple of revenue models that do work in the OSS community: - Just doing things part time. I have a few projects like this. It's fun, it's apparently useful for others. I obviously limit time I spent on this. I don't financially benefit from this and I don't mind. Lots of stuff I use falls in this catego…

#5: introduce a subscription fee for 'premium' tier or hosting. That works best by far in my opinion.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#229

Post by amelius »

barry-cotter wrote: post #44
amelius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inventors of our economic system didn't conceive of people giving away valuable stuff for free.

Our economic systems weren’t invented. They’re all hacks on top of hacks on top of hacks. Every economic theorist of note is well aware of that and they always have been. Everyone who has tried to build a new complex system from scratch has failed. Usually they’ve failed completely but occasionally they’ve gotten something functional at the end, but not what they designed. I’m reasonably confident every economist kno…

> Everyone who has tried to build a new complex system from scratch has failed.

Has anyone tried to design an economic system recently, based on tools from the information age?

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