No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This • Hacker News Board

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

#861

Post by pksebben » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #853

WalterBright wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a software program is only 10% of the work. The rest is marketing, promotion, sales, support, accounting, paying taxes, attending conferences, creating manuals and videos, etc. Most developers fail because they stop after getting the program to work. "Build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood myth.

There's a lot of the mentality of OSS where the project creator releases it permissively, and is fine with many little guys (who otherwise wouldn't have paid for an equivalent library) using it. Then as they get traction, a big company who _could_ afford to pay also benefits from said project, and the creator is whinging that they don't get paid by the big company - with the reason that the company _could_ pay, that'…

yet, that's an entirely fair stance. The little guys, not having created the mechanism for value capture that the company has, are likely contributing to the ecosystem (or at least are active components of the ecosystem). the corporation, on the other hand, has ensured that they capture and process value such that they enjoy exclusive benefit from their output.

it's not unreasonable for an individual to decide that contributions to other open source developers are good, and contributions to a black hole are bad.

if you decide you don't want me to benefit from your work without profiting you, then you have to pay me for mine. if you want to play nice, then I'm willing to play nice, too.

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

#862

Post by pksebben » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #754

laughinghan wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are explaining how a person can deal with the world as it is. But if you think of yourself as a builder, then you really ought to know better than to accept the world as it is. Are there probably choices available to a skilled software developer where they could make more money than just working on something that they love and that provides value to the world? Sure. But why is that an acceptable world to live in?…

I am a pragmatist that is accustomed to the physical, mathematical and social constraints of the world. One big constraint is the average attention span of your target audience. Do you have time to care whether a guy designing/manufacturing that USB cable on your desk got compensated well? Or the one making your clothes? Or cleaning the corporate toilet? You know, unless you have sewed your shirt yourself, it was pro…

social constraints are only as strong as the amount of people who treat them as constraints. culture is recursively developed.

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

#863

Post by chii » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #630

Karupan wrote: post #17

Right move IMO. The consulting firm a friend works for uses faker.js for almost all their projects. The consultants get paid $1500 a day and they haven’t even thought of donating as it “free and open source”. I also hope the license is more restricted for commercial use.

To be fair, you get paid $1500 a day regardless. If you write the thing yourself, you'll get paid $1500 a day for a bit longer.

but if somebody else if equivalent skill could save the client money by using faker, then they will get all the business and out-compete you!

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

#864

Post by chii » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

pksebben wrote: post #861

chii wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of the mentality of OSS where the project creator releases it permissively, and is fine with many little guys (who otherwise wouldn't have paid for an equivalent library) using it. Then as they get traction, a big company who _could_ afford to pay also benefits from said project, and the creator is whinging that they don't get paid by the big company - with the reason that the company _could_ pay, that'…

yet, that's an entirely fair stance. The little guys, not having created the mechanism for value capture that the company has, are likely contributing to the ecosystem (or at least are active components of the ecosystem). the corporation, on the other hand, has ensured that they capture and process value such that they enjoy exclusive benefit from their output. it's not unreasonable for an individual to decide that c…

Which is exactly what dual licensing with (A)GPL and commercial license is.

And yet, this is more rare than common.

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

#865

Post by musicale » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

sbuk wrote: post #403

lixtra wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recording from the radio is technically unlawful I thought this was settled the other way in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni... .

My frame of reference there is the UK. Should've been more explicit stating that. Sorry :)

In the US the Audio Home Recording Act explicitly legalized noncommercial recording (and also created a tape/CD-r tax to compensate copyright holders.) In an alternate reality this could have legalized file sharing onto (taxed) MP3 players. (Though the subsequent NET act added criminal penalties.)

How did Apple's Rip. Mix. Burn. campaign play out in the UK?

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

#866

Post by rvr_ » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

There is an issue not being discussed here. The guy is almost homeless. He is probably angry and has nothing left to lose. Now think about all the damage he can do by having his open source project being used by so many people and companies. He can deploy a malware or ransonware and even if he doesn't make a penny, he can create some chaos.

This is the real risk of relying on a fragmented open source ecosystem, especially the NPM platform. Pinning is not enough when every Node project uses so many dependencies coming from so many developers.

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

#867

Post by andrewpolidori » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 6:24 AM UTC

mgsn wrote: post #755

john_moscow wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you need to understand the difference between a project and a product. If you want your product to succeed, it must target decision-makers with a budget to buy your license, and it must make enough difference to them to justify the costs. Most software libraries aren't products. They target other software developers who are not responsible for allocating funds. Furthermore, if there wasn't a library, m…

You're right, of course. But I am so, so tired of having to "sell" over and over just to have the value of my contributions recognized. And I think gp would agree. The poster, marak, is a founder [0]. They definitely understand product-ization. Yet two weeks ago they suffered an apartment fire and have been struggling to keep a roof over their head [1]. I can definitely understand the kind of bitterness that comes ou…

I wonder if this is advoidable by realizing what the popularity is actually for? It's not like it's for them personally it's for the fact that it's free and available. I feel like these values will always tend to conflict. I.e open source / free software and making money. They are opposed ideas in many ways.

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

#868

Post by fierarul » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #768

fierarul wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you define "part". Maybe the visible part like MySQL or the Linux kernel or Android. But I'd say open source has a long tail mostly unpaid. From where I'm staying there is also a myth that companies pay for all the open source I use.

I don't know what open source you use. But yes, the big ones are mostly done by people who are paid for it. They are not after work occasional effort. The smaller ones are also often done a part of university research or on clock. Not necessary because companies are altruistic, but because they need something and because open source developers need to eat.

A big part of Apache projects are not done by paid employees. Which is why you see the main developer for Maven push his Patreon for donations.

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

#869

Post by ganafagol » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:27 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #864

pksebben wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet, that's an entirely fair stance. The little guys, not having created the mechanism for value capture that the company has, are likely contributing to the ecosystem (or at least are active components of the ecosystem). the corporation, on the other hand, has ensured that they capture and process value such that they enjoy exclusive benefit from their output. it's not unreasonable for an individual to decide that c…

Which is exactly what dual licensing with (A)GPL and commercial license is. And yet, this is more rare than common.

Exactly. It's astonishing how little people understand this and just go post a rant about the big evil corporation not paying the little open source coder for their work.

It's all in the license(s). Make one that's fine for trials and other open source hackers, but draconian for proprietary commercialization, and another one for productization so that big corp pays you. That's it.

And if you don't care about the money aspect since open sourcing was never a way for you to make money anyway, then go with a single permissive license and be happy that your code gets widely used and hopefully contributed to.

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

#870

Post by ganafagol » Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 7:37 AM UTC

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."

If that's the answer you get, be glad. Dodged a bullet. Go find a job somewhere else where they value your skills. There was no good fit to begin with.