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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#821

Post by an_opabinia »

andi999 wrote: post #706
derefr wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone deserves to get paid (in the sense of moral desert; i.e. people "deserve" human rights.) You don't have a personal obligation to pay them, though. Solving that discrepancy isn't going to be done in an HN comment; it's the Great Work of capitalist statecraft.

I agree he deserves to get paid like everybody else, but not because of this work he did. Unfortunately not all societies do that, so uually the common route to get paid is to get (a) work (contract), somebody is willing to pay for.

I believe prison laborers deserve to be paid minimum wage, despite their convictions and despite their inability to negotiate. Additionally minimum wage should be raised to a living wage.

You’re taking an overly reductionist view, incompatible with things like “equal pay for equal work.” He definitely deserves to get paid for his work, and it’s obviously a matter of by whom, and he’s fed up with giant corporations using his stuff despite being able to pay him, and he’s totally in the right even if he’s insert-some-undesirable-here.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#822

Post by kjs3 »

nineplay wrote: post #746
thomasahle wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if they asked Pike and Thompson to invert a binary tree. Would surprise me if they couldn't. Writing compilers include lots of working with trees. Pike has literally written a book with a chapter on Algorithms & Data Structures, including trees.

OK I concede that they'd pass it, I suppose I'm just amused at picturing the scene. "Can you invert a binary tree?" "I wrote a book on binary trees!" "That's very nice. The clock is ticking, you now 19 minutes left... "

I picture the scene as:

"...and that's the answer."

"Sorry...you're wrong. That's not how we solve it."

"I wrote the book on it. I just solved it for you starting from first principles. It can be used as a proof."

"Sorry...if you can't think the way we do you just won't fit in."

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#823

Post by ganafagol »

makecheck wrote: post #722

Not limited to software but modern society has a REALLY serious entitlement problem. (To the point where if I see a video on Reddit of someone screaming at a retail employee, it is not even surprising anymore.) I’ve had free and open projects for years, with evidence of thousands of users. Yet I could count on one hand the number of times anyone has bothered to thank me, much less donate. I do occasionally get E-mail…

So my conclusion after decades is this: you do the projects you like to do for your own benefit, and no one else’s.

100x this. If people only understood this right from day one, a lot of frustration would be saved. And with it all the expressed entitlement on which this frustration is built.

You write some code because you need and want it, be it for your learning experience or to make a tool that you need or because to get paid for it. You open source something because you want to get the community engaged in it, to help you find or fix bugs or add features.

Conflating these two is a recipe for frustration and the type of post that has prompted this article and the 500+ thread contributions, 90% of which demonstrate that they don't understand the difference either. Which is the real sad aspect here.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#824

Post by jokethrowaway »

orthecreedence wrote: post #704
jgilias wrote: post #163

So you've made something cool and it's time to release it. These seem to be the options at hand: 1. Release under a permissive license (MIT, BSD) and: - Have everyone and their grandma use it. - Die poor 2. Release under a copyleft license (GPL) and: - No company is going to use or contribute to it, unless they can somehow clearly separate it from what they see as their intellectual property. Or just hide it where no…

[flagged]

Why would I bother publishing it or creating it?

I'm well fed and I don't need to sell myself.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#825

Post by prepend »

spdionis wrote: post #414
prepend wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly can, but why? It’s a problem easily solved by not giving away free lunches or adding terms. It seems odd to me to have the solution completely within my power to fix, but not fix it, and complain about the situation. In my view, the license is specifically made to allow reselling. That’s why I pick MIT, Apache, and BSD. If I don’t want people to resell then I pick GPL or some other license.

That's exactly what the maintainer of faker.js is doing. He decided to stop giving away free lunches.

Not really. The repo is still MIT. He said he won’t make further changes, but hasn’t set up his project with a different license.

It seems like his current take is just seeking patronage to keep working on an MIT project.

I think this happens quite a bit, but not normally this way. There are lots of companies who employ people with the sole purpose of writing for MIT/Apache/BSD projects. So I guess that’s a form of patronage.

I hope this guy gets what he likes. I’ve never heard of this project, but it has at least 26k people who liked it enough to star it on GitHub. Not sure how that will ever equate to 100k+/year.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#826

Post by jokethrowaway »

yellowapple wrote: post #810
xen2xen1 wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ridiculous treadmill of people saying UBI is going to work despite all evidence to the contrary, apparently a long, long time..

> despite all evidence to the contrary Do you happen to have some of this evidence on hand? Everything I've read on it suggests the exact opposite: that (at least here in the US) it'll not only work better than existing welfare systems, but would end up being cheaper .

It's hard to claim something is evidence or counter-evidence of anything in social science. Once you add one or more brains, the complexity skyrockets quite quickly.

I think it's a terrible idea for (at least) three reasons: - More money is being forcefully redistributed from people that produce work to people who don't produce. This will make people lazier and less entrepreneurial. Yes, I'm against any form of taxation for the same principle and I think the terrible corporate lifecycle is caused primarily by people not being entrepreneurial enough. - Taxes will increase, pushing businesses even more outside of here. - The more money you give to bureaucrats the more they will keep for themselves, the more they will waste, the more will not go to the economy.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#827

Post by nineplay »

kjs3 wrote: post #822
nineplay wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK I concede that they'd pass it, I suppose I'm just amused at picturing the scene. "Can you invert a binary tree?" "I wrote a book on binary trees!" "That's very nice. The clock is ticking, you now 19 minutes left... "

I picture the scene as: "...and that's the answer." "Sorry...you're wrong. That's not how we solve it." "I wrote the book on it. I just solved it for you starting from first principles. It can be used as a proof." "Sorry...if you can't think the way we do you just won't fit in."

"I asked you to write an algorithm, not a bunch of Greek letters. Is that your fraternity or something?"

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#828

Post by sangnoir »

belorn wrote: post #818
makecheck wrote: post #722

Not limited to software but modern society has a REALLY serious entitlement problem. (To the point where if I see a video on Reddit of someone screaming at a retail employee, it is not even surprising anymore.) I’ve had free and open projects for years, with evidence of thousands of users. Yet I could count on one hand the number of times anyone has bothered to thank me, much less donate. I do occasionally get E-mail…

I would agree to most of those conclusions. If a project is created as a recreational activity, as something a person is doing because they enjoy programming and is filling a personal need, then that is the payment in itself. Recreational activities may be identical with professional activity in terms of code, and some people can turn an recreational project into their way of earning a living. If it however stop bein…

I agree with you, I would argue that free software/open source developers are the ones who feel entitled to an income based sorely on the size of the audience they amass.

Something of incredible value was lost when Free Software was corporatized into Open Source, and instead of "True believers", we had more open-source-as-marketing. I am a frequent user of libre software, and I do it without paying (how many have donated to VLC, yet directly or indirectly depend on it or FFMPEG? Even closed-source applications remotely related to video likely depend on it one way or another). I pay it pack by contributing to open projects and making them better - granted, I have a day job that gives me this flexibility.

It would be a dark day (IMHO), if all open projects were to depend on the benevolence of F500s.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#829

Post by WalterBright »

samatman wrote: post #816
WalterBright wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pleases me when corporations use D to make money with, even if they don't contribute. After all, D is licensed to specifically allow this - I have no business complaining about it.

I imagine you would feel differently, if you were right at the threshold where doing a good job requires all your efforts, where people rely on your work, but where you can't pay your bills that way. A lot of good projects are getting stuck in that rut, and it behooves us to find ways to get them through it.

If people are relying on your work, it is perfectly reasonable to ask them for a contribution. There are other options like kickstarter, too.

I know more than one open source project developer who made a nice program, but it never caught on and the developer wound up discouraged and embittered. A common thread, though, is they simply put it up on a bare bones web site. They actively refused to do any sort of marketing, promotion, outreach, evangelism, read any books on sales and advertising, etc., which pretty much guaranteed failure.

BTW, in Apple's early days, Steve Jobs was a master at getting attention focused on Apple's computers. No successful outfit neglects that.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#830

Post by WalterBright »

okareaman wrote: post #791
WalterBright wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pleases me when corporations use D to make money with, even if they don't contribute. After all, D is licensed to specifically allow this - I have no business complaining about it.

That's what I meant when I said there were great open source projects like yours. Rust is another one. The energy, spirit of cooperation and welcoming community is a big plus for me. It would be nice if corporations kicked you a few bucks. For the life of me, I can't understand why the 100 millionaires and billionaires at the top of some of these corporations don't donate more.

There are a number of generous corporations and individuals helping us out in various ways, including cash contributions to the D Foundation.
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