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

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#71

Post by zulln » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #27

Y_Y wrote: post #5

A rational actor never works for "free", they derive some perceived benefit (not necessarily money) from their action, like reputation or self-satisfaction or warm fuzzies. I think it's brilliant that we can use these carrots to get good work out of people that can be shared on the internet. All the same that's no excuse to abuse people who are acting far from rationally.

> A rational actor never works for "free" A rational actor with emotions can work for free is that work makes him/her feel well. Some people even call this a hobby.

That would fall under "perceived benefit" and thus not free, according to the parent's definition.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#72

Post by jerf » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

samuellavoie90 wrote: post #46

wslh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A rational actor never works for "free" A rational actor with emotions can work for free is that work makes him/her feel well. Some people even call this a hobby.

Isn't a rational actor with emotions called an irrational actor? ;p

It's kinda hard to sit down and formulate a "rational actor" that has no emotions or drives or goals, and put that into any sort of useful theory of the world. You end up calling rocks rational actors when they, having no goals or negative stimuli, "rationally" sit there and do nothing. (Which may be "true" in some sense, but isn't a terribly useful definition.)

Rationality is more about how goals are obtained than what those goals are. The latter can still play a part (e.g., are the goals coherent? that's a proper question for rationality), but it's lesser.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#73

Post by TurboHaskal » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

I always liked this post by Erik Naggum:

    The whole idea that anything can be so "shared" as to have no value in itself is
    not a problem if the rest of the world ensures that nobody _is_ starving or
    needing money. For young people who have parents who pay for them or student
    grants or loans and basically have yet to figure out that it costs a hell of a
    lot of money to live in a highly advanced society, this is not such a bad idea.
    Grow up, graduate, marry, start a family, buy a house, have an accident, get
    seriously ill for a while, or a number of other very expensive things people
    actually do all the time, and the value of your work starts to get very real and
    concrete to you, at which point giving away things to be "nice" to some
    "community" which turns out not to be "nice" _enough_ in return that you will
    actually stay alive, is no longer an option.

(continues) https://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3217750625724755@naggum...

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#74

Post by cheez » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #57

cheez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: very interesting that this post is getting downvoted. I didn't even say anything controversial, just that banning people is bad. Exactly the danger we face online, which will eventually get into broader society. I got banned on a platform for saying a public figure was physically attractive to me. Prior to that, I had engaged in a perfectly factual discussion about certain statistics that were in favor of a par…

You can treat it like an “emblem of cancel culture” and if you’re right. It’s also an emblem for “people doing things other people don’t like and getting ditched for it” but which emblem you choose to see is up to you. That’s kind of the power and the weakness of emblems.

I'm sorry but I don't see any dichotomy in the two situations you've described. Cancel culture is literally people getting ditched because some people didn't like what some people did. That is, sticks and stones may break my bones but words are terrorism.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#75

Post by human20190310 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

jjohansson wrote: post #42

Perhaps most egregious are companies who profiteer from open source, without contributing back. Amazon comes to mind.

There is basically no reason for them to contribute back. Using all available tools while restricting their own efforts for their own use creates a competitive edge.

The only time it makes sense to release something to the public is as a complement to one of their paid services.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#76

Post by rhizome » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

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's saying it has to be, uh...what's the name of a profitable internet company that isn't Facebook? But making demands on people who are working for free is bad manners. I don't care if you think the internet changes everything, it's still possible to be an asshole.

My off the cuff solution is for project owners to add a status flag to their issue trackers: PAID. Anybody can submit a bug as PAID, but it costs $50,000-100,000 to do so, per bug. And no private fixes: there is one version and everybody gets the benefit. No badgering on ETAs either.

If Ford thinks it has value, then the developer should get some of that value, and $100K for a suitable patchlevel of cURL might even be a low estimate.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#77

Post by wayoutthere » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #24

user_50123890 wrote: post #4

Not just open-source maintainers but also moderators. A bad thing about moderators is that nowadays they tend to be immature teens, it's one of the reasons Reddit content quality has been going down in the past few years. It also creates some moral questions, as companies with giant revenues are outsourcing their internet janitor duties to naive unpaid child labourers

Edit: very interesting that this post is getting downvoted. I didn't even say anything controversial, just that banning people is bad. Exactly the danger we face online, which will eventually get into broader society. I got banned on a platform for saying a public figure was physically attractive to me. Prior to that, I had engaged in a perfectly factual discussion about certain statistics that were in favor of a par…

Don’t kid yourself — moderation is done with an editorial goal in mind, and HN is no different. There are plenty of topics about which the mods will shut down discussion. It’s just that HN’s moderation is more consistent and less emotional/political than your average subreddit.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#78

Post by kfrzcode » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #76

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's saying it has to be, uh...what's the name of a profitable internet company that isn't Facebook? But making demands on people who are working for free is bad manners . I don't care if you think the internet changes everything, it's still possible to be an asshole. My off the cuff solution is for project owners to add a status flag to their issue trackers: PAID. Anybody can submit a bug as PAID, but it costs $…

$50k-100k seems a bit high for a bugfix.... else I'm desperately undervaluing my worth in salary negotiations

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#79

Post by rhizome » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

samirillian wrote: post #63

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. This is such a red herring. There are plenty of ways we can look at this situation that don't involve unreserved consent.

Hey, you chose to walk outside, you didn't have to walk under that piano being lifted into the apartment building with a weak rope.

Re: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free

#80

Post by Kalium » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

kfrzcode wrote: post #78

rhizome wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's saying it has to be, uh...what's the name of a profitable internet company that isn't Facebook? But making demands on people who are working for free is bad manners . I don't care if you think the internet changes everything, it's still possible to be an asshole. My off the cuff solution is for project owners to add a status flag to their issue trackers: PAID. Anybody can submit a bug as PAID, but it costs $…

$50k-100k seems a bit high for a bugfix.... else I'm desperately undervaluing my worth in salary negotiations

High for salary, yes. High for buying enterprise support on mission-critical software? Perhaps the value might be different.