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Paying people to work on open source is good

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Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#31

Post by abound »

bugbuddy wrote: post #2

Yes, please start by practicing what you preach. I actually donated 1% of my income to various open source projects I use.

My (very small) tech nonprofit has started doing something similar [1], where everyone contributes to a list of OSS tools we use heavily, and then everyone gives a weight/score to each tool.

We then split the pot ($1,000 in 2022, probably ~$2,000 when I get around to doing 2023) among all the OSS projects, according to the relative scores.

[1] https://siliconally.org/policies/open-source/#yearly-donatio...

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#32

Post by FOSSwins »

I'm a developer with 15+ YOE, working mostly on legacy code in a govt job but I have extensive experience with modern code bases (C, Rust), and I have contributed to lots of FOSS of projects over the years in my free time as a way to learn new tech. I would work full time on Open Source if I was paid enough to leave my 9-5 job, which is not a lot in a third world country like mine. Say, $1500 / month.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#33

Post by jraph »

smburdick wrote: post #15
gorjusborg wrote: post #11

I want to agree, and I understand the position, but there's no room for nuance when you throw around the work 'always'. I think I disagree that it is always good. For instance, if a company is paying someone to work on open source, and they use that to leverage the project in a direction that is against its other users' best interest, can that be good? I don't think so. There are numerous examples of situations and b…

This is why grants are really important. That usually means deliverables in a specific timeframe. To me, that elevates open source from a full-time hobby to a job.

Grants are great but are often not nearly enough and they can vanish from a year to another. You'd better secure other sources of income. Grants will also usually fund specific features of your product but not the whole thing.

Other kinds of income are also good ways to fund open source like service, consultancy, support and even paid open source apps (which works particularly well for apps that have enterprise oriented features, turns out it doesn't matter that the source code is available under a free software license if it's convenient enough to click and buy).

Coincidentally, this is how I get paid :-)

Still, grants should not be ignored indeed.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#35

Post by ahepp »

wmf wrote: post #21
gustavus wrote: post #14

I don't understand when it became this was FOSS was always about "Free as in speech." But for some reason it became "Free as in beer." and many of the arguments I see around dev pay seem to be conflating the 2. Open source merely means the source is open and free for you to view look at modify, etc. At no point does it mean it costs nothing. Now with code it's not exactly a super reasonable business model to sell a s…

[Never mind, I didn't express this clearly]

I’ve worked for multiple companies that pay for dual licensed GPL software

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#36

Post by reedciccio »

wmf wrote: post #21
gustavus wrote: post #14

I don't understand when it became this was FOSS was always about "Free as in speech." But for some reason it became "Free as in beer." and many of the arguments I see around dev pay seem to be conflating the 2. Open source merely means the source is open and free for you to view look at modify, etc. At no point does it mean it costs nothing. Now with code it's not exactly a super reasonable business model to sell a s…

[Never mind, I didn't express this clearly]

Tell that to Red Hat, WordPress, Canonical, MySQL and many more products built on pure Open Source. The issue is complex.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#37

Post by jraph »

wmf wrote: post #21
gustavus wrote: post #14

I don't understand when it became this was FOSS was always about "Free as in speech." But for some reason it became "Free as in beer." and many of the arguments I see around dev pay seem to be conflating the 2. Open source merely means the source is open and free for you to view look at modify, etc. At no point does it mean it costs nothing. Now with code it's not exactly a super reasonable business model to sell a s…

[Never mind, I didn't express this clearly]

That's not true. The company I work for manages to sell free software [1]. All the stuff we sell is under LGPL, and it's not open core, it is fully free software.

It works under specific conditions and you need to come up with a business plan that makes it work, but it is possible. And it is one of the most ethical ways to fund free software so it would be too bad to discard this option too early.

For us, what works is enterprise oriented extensions for a platform we develop. Turns out companies will fork off hundreds of dollars and enjoy the support that comes with it instead of compiling all this thing by themselves. It's more convenient and employees understand that it funds the open source software they are using, and it's an easily justified expense. But should they want to enjoy any of the freedoms that come with free software, they can.

[1] https://store.xwiki.com

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#38

Post by Dalewyn »

gustavus wrote: post #14

I don't understand when it became this was FOSS was always about "Free as in speech." But for some reason it became "Free as in beer." and many of the arguments I see around dev pay seem to be conflating the 2. Open source merely means the source is open and free for you to view look at modify, etc. At no point does it mean it costs nothing. Now with code it's not exactly a super reasonable business model to sell a s…

The reality noone wants to admit is that most people use and patronize FOSS because it's free-as-in-beer and nothing else. Nobody cares about freedoms, but everyone cares about their bottom line.

This extends to even most of the FOSS devs themselves, refusing pay and ostracizing those who accept pay because money to them is kryptonite.

In my opinion, this philosophy that runs counter to a very fundamental law of the world (everything, including manhours, requires compensation) plays one of the largest roles in keeping FOSS behind both commercial and proprietary/closed software.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#39

Post by barnabee »

I donate to a decent number of open source projects. Others I think are more than fine without me (Linux kernel, etc.) but I wouldn’t hesitate to donate if I believed they weren’t.

For the rest, I would indeed as happily see them fail than compromise on the definition of open source. The two are equivalent to me.

Re: Paying people to work on open source is good

#40

Post by philipwhiuk »

So many strawmen being set-up in this article the crow population is gonna take a major nose dive.

If I hate any specific business model that is used by a company that does some some open source suddenly I don't think people deserve to be paid for their work?

Yeah no, that's garbage. There's plenty of garbage business models and they aren't suddenly okay because one company uses it and 1% of their money funds some small bit of OSS work that underpins their business model.

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