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The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

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Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#361

Post by eliashaddad »

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…

But then, to avoid that, you can embrace the concept of copyleft (free software) instead of open source.

So, you can make your software free as in 'free speech', and obligate other companies to keep the products they construct above yours still free.

Better than to make them free as in 'free beer' where they can just consume your work and not give back to the overall movement.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#362

Post by convefefe »

If a project starts having large companies relying on it, traditionally there have been 2 mechanisms to address this: - start a company around providing enterprise support services;

ask for the large companies to provide some resources such as a part (or all) of an employee's time to work on the project, for the parts that are more dear to that company. If a company is unwilling to pay, either in the form of a support contract or employee's time, it should look at another solution. Not just because they are being disrespectful/annoying/distracting to the maintainers of the OSS project but also because it means they don't have a good contingency plan for when things go wrong.

For a larger business, the value of using OSS is not to save money, it's to get the right level of customization for specific needs.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#363

Post by lysium »

Gpetrium wrote: post #21
lysium wrote: post #2

It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?

What would the world look like if all volunteering stopped? Would society have reached the point it is today? Volunteer encompasses all kinds of areas, including software and research. It can be argued that some segments would be covered by for-profit organizations, but decisions in this area is often driven by the return on investment (ROI). This means that some solutions would likely be paid or not pass the potenti…

I was not arguing against volunteering. From the article, I just did not understand what was described in the title. I’m glad there is so much volunteering, I think the current climate crisis shows that capitalism cannot work for everything.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#364

Post by lysium »

dnh44 wrote: post #23
lysium wrote: post #2

It’s a well written article. I did not get the point where the internet relies on people working for free. Yes, free software such as curl is in use, but where does the internet rely on it? If there were no curl, there would be something else, wouldn’t it?

And if that replacement were not free then the costs would have to be passed on. There is a tremendous amount of free software that runs the worlds infrastructure. Programming languages, compilers, libraries, frameworks, text editors, databases, operating systems, utilities, servers, encryption, and even curl all lower the price of entry for everyone to contribute and innovate, even when they’re using free tools for…

I’m glad there is so much free software! I think this shows how superior this volunteer model is over, say, a capitalist approach.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#365

Post by maximente »

pepper_sauce wrote: post #353
maximente wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prog…

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey[0] your intuition is wrong. C, C++, Java devs are paid less than average and F#, Clojure, Elixir devs above average. COBOL and Haskell didn't rank in the survey. I 100% agree most engineers are severely underpaid. A lot of my colleagues get paid more than anyone in their family ever has (sometimes whole family put together) and just like to ride it out. [0] https://ins…

fascinating, thanks for this link. i stand corrected.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#366

Post by aflag »

jchw wrote: post #225
aflag wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know there are volunteers that do a lot of Debian work, but that is not to say Debian is purely volunteer work. Obviously there is plenty of sponsored work. https://www.debian.org/partners/ I’d argue without trying to classify and quantify Debian contributions, there is no way to know who is doing work on Debian on their employer’s dime. I also try to contribute to various projects in spare time as well. My contrib…

I didn't do any quantitative study, but I'd be really surprised if most maintainers in the project are not volunteers. Those contributors, though usually individually small, tend to add up. It's also probably difficult to justify Debian package maintenance to your employer, unless you work for canonical. Even products that distribute a .deb tend to do it outside of the distribution, rather than really contributing.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#367

Post by banannaise »

wvenable wrote: post #29

I feel like there is an article a week about how open source developers are being used by corporations for free labor. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding that these journalists aren't grasping. Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do. Nobody is forced to build open source software. And, most importantly, most of these contributions aren't worth enough individually to charge for. It's only collecti…

> Nobody is doing anything they don't want to do.

And yet, one party is making all the profit, and a different party is putting in all of the work. That seems like a non-ideal situation?

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#368

Post by dbuder »

This would never fly but my suggestion is to change to a new form of the GPL that says mostly the same things except there is a list of organisations (FAANG, Oracle, MS, various governments) and they cannot use it unless they pay a fairly significant fee and list some large fines for avoiding this. I'm aware that these companies make contributions to OSS, it's just not nearly enough and they are the cause of many of our needs for OSS.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#369

Post by chiefalchemist »

rabidrat wrote: post #28
chiefalchemist wrote: post #19

> "It’s still not clear that companies would be interested in such a contract. When Stenberg asked the company that needed him to fly to a different country to troubleshoot their problem to pay for one, they refused." The irony is, in not paying directly for suppirt they are paying indirectly with risk. Risk to product. Risk to brand. And perhaps in sone cases risk to life. It seems to me a new licence is in order. O…

"shame" is not a reasonable means of enforcing such a thing with big companies. People may feel shame, companies don't.

True. But perhaps it'll "help" someone think twice about taking a new job and a shamed company? Without that information that decision can't be made.
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