Paying for Open Source Contributions

Post by drusepth » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

jb3689 wrote: post #35

nickjj wrote: post #27

I like the idea, but I'm concerned about the $20 / hour. Since this is done on the employees' own time (after hours), isn't this basically saying, "hey, go help make our app's dependencies better in an overtime scenario but we're going to pay you $20 / hour instead of 1x to 2x your usual salary"? I know at the bottom it clears that up but I dunno, it just feels weird to me. It seems like a concealed way to mainly ben…

They do say they pay for personal hack projects too, so I read it more as "hey, go do whatever OS projects you feel like/do some skill building and we'll pay you $20/hr". That makes sense to me - the company benefits if you bring more skills and knowledge to the workplace

Post by stingraycharles » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

SequoiaHope wrote: post #69

kylecesmat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formidable employee here: To be quite honest we are compensated very fairly for our industry already and this program is not meant to ‘provide a living wage’ by any means. Instead, this is a ‘fair nod’ at the work some of us feel compelled and motivated to do after work hours. Not saying your perspective is wrong, just hopefully providing a bit more context about what this program means for someone who uses it.

I get that. I work ten hours a week or so for free on my open source passion projects. If that turned in to an extra $200 a week that would be cool - I’m doing the work anyway. I haven’t read the article yet but my only fear with crowd funding is what happens when I want to take a month off of technical work.

Post by lozenge » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

theWheez wrote: post #70

bhousel wrote: post #40

As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot. The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr. Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do bett…

In the link, this is addressed: It’s well known that nominal compensation isn’t the most effective incentive to get people to do things, and compared to engineer salaries in our US and UK tech hubs, $20/hr isn’t exactly a windfall. This is intentional. We don’t want people to log on after hours to earn money. Instead, we think of the Sauce bonus as a recognition of the work people want to do anyway, and the compensat…

Post by tracker1 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

O_H_E wrote: post #57

sktrdie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why though? Of course giving a well-payed salary to people is something great and I have nothing against it. But the whole "cool" thing about open-source is that it showed that it can do pretty amazing things without capitalism. Instead here we are trying to push the same mentality we use for everything else into open-source. Why not continue the experiment as it has for the last 30 years (without any major econo…

That's an interesting perspective. I always had the feeling that it is unsustainable or unstable to rely on underpaid work.

Post by anderspitman » Fri, May 03, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

kylecesmat wrote: post #42

bhousel wrote: post #40

As a professional full-time open source maintainer and developer, initiatives like this bother me a lot. The work we do is worth much more than $20/hr. Ideally I'd like to see open source developers in stable, tenured positions that pay fair salaries with benefits. Anything that normalizes the idea that open source should be funded on tips, patreons, or spare time goodwill is embarrassing to all of us. We can do bett…

Formidable employee here: To be quite honest we are compensated very fairly for our industry already and this program is not meant to ‘provide a living wage’ by any means. Instead, this is a ‘fair nod’ at the work some of us feel compelled and motivated to do after work hours. Not saying your perspective is wrong, just hopefully providing a bit more context about what this program means for someone who uses it.