This is exactly what you get when you give your work away for free: your work will have zero value. Why are open source developers surprised by this simple fact? If somebody started giving away toilet paper for free then the value of toilet paper would go to zero. When you copy a commercial application and give it away for free (what most successful open source software does) then the value of those types of applications will go to zero. Which means that the value of the work (your work) goes to zero. Surprise surprise.
No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
941–950 of 966 posts
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#942So the author doesn’t have the biz skills necessary to turn his open source project into a commercial product, instead relying on the kindness of faceless corporations or strangers to recognise his value and reward him. Yeah good luck with that.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#943Not 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…
Of course people feel entitled to get your work for nothing when you give it away for nothing. People’s perception of value depends on how valuable it is (how much it cost). People do not have an entitlement problem. Open source programmers are the people with a serious entitlement problem. Of their own creation.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#944Give the source away for free. Get paid for any support.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was acquainted with Marak many years ago and he was an awful person then and probably still is. He put out some very well circulated revenge porn of his ex-girlfriend when she broke up with him long before that term was being used. He's a shitty person who seems to still be.
Has there been any coverage on the revenge porn incident? It sounds plausible given the circumstances but it's a pretty heavy claim.
It was a pretty well known incident when it happened. This was back in the Kazaa days (p2p file sharing). He clipped the whole thing together and made it like one of those old mastercard commercials. The file was called "master card revenge." He's in the video himself and it's clear he made it because it was an explicit fuck you to her. He even put her email address and physical college address in it. I'm not sure what came of the incident. This was about 15 years ago.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#946Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is 'feeling entitled to just compensation'; it is not a good concept. Lets imagine you favourite fast-food joint offers all menu items for 1cent. Then one week later they ask for more money, because:'If a work adds value to the world, shouldn't the worker rightly feel entitled to just compensation". And lets not make it about the company, lets say it has to close down and leave the workers unemployed if p…
I have no idea what you're saying. Surely you're not saying "we all agree fast food workers don't deserve to be paid, therefore software developers don't deserve to be paid either"? Of course fast food workers should feel entitled to be paid for their work, and fast food joints should feel entitled to charge money for the items on their menu. What?
No I an saying, if people or companies give away stuff for (almost) free and other people take that, the entities which gave that away are in no way entitled to get more compensation afterwards. I think it is so obvious that it might be confusing.
If you make bad business decisions it is your decision. Because the only way to do price finding is to make an offer and have customers accept it. If the price is low more customers accept it. This doesnt mean at a higher price they would have done the same. So selling with a low (or free) price does not give you any moral rights later to say it was too low, give me more.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#947Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what you're saying. Surely you're not saying "we all agree fast food workers don't deserve to be paid, therefore software developers don't deserve to be paid either"? Of course fast food workers should feel entitled to be paid for their work, and fast food joints should feel entitled to charge money for the items on their menu. What?
No I an saying, if people or companies give away stuff for (almost) free and other people take that, the entities which gave that away are in no way entitled to get more compensation afterwards. I think it is so obvious that it might be confusing. If you make bad business decisions it is your decision. Because the only way to do price finding is to make an offer and have customers accept it. If the price is low more…
Thank you for clarifying, makes much more sense.
Because the only way to do price finding is to make an offer and have customers accept it. [...] So selling with a low (or free) price does not give you any moral rights later to say it was too low, give me more.
You're thinking of this in a very narrow way.
If I tell you "here, have this for free, no strings attached", and then after you use it, I jump out of the bushes and say "hey! That thing had value! You're morally obligated to pay me!", of course you are under no such obligation. That seems to be the situation you're thinking of.
What if you open your imagination a bit? What if I say, "if I tried to maximize the amount of money I made, I would have to price out people who wouldn't be able to pay anyway and their lives would be better off being able to use what I built. I don't care about maximizing the amount of money I can make, I'd just like fair compensation, so instead of setting a specific price I just ask you to 'tip' a fair amount if you can."
Am I "morally entitled" to any specific amount of money, if I didn't set a specific price? Not really, no. But it's not like I'm saying "please, have this for free, I don't want anything back, seriously", instead I'm saying "I would like something back, but I'm trusting you to decide on a fair amount".
Here's the more interesting question: if you're not obligated to pay a specific amount, can such a "trust" system work? Can I get fair compensation, and still allow anyone who wants to be able to use my work?
As it stands today, in most cases, probably not. But open your imagination a little. Can it be made to work? Can there be public pressure on major companies to contribute to TideLift and/or OpenCollective? Maybe non-commercial source-available licenses, which still contribute to The Commons, even if they're not the traditional understanding of "open source"?
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#948Earlier quoted context omitted.
No I an saying, if people or companies give away stuff for (almost) free and other people take that, the entities which gave that away are in no way entitled to get more compensation afterwards. I think it is so obvious that it might be confusing. If you make bad business decisions it is your decision. Because the only way to do price finding is to make an offer and have customers accept it. If the price is low more…
Thank you for clarifying, makes much more sense. Because the only way to do price finding is to make an offer and have customers accept it. [...] So selling with a low (or free) price does not give you any moral rights later to say it was too low, give me more. You're thinking of this in a very narrow way. If I tell you "here, have this for free, no strings attached", and then after you use it, I jump out of the bush…
I fully agree. Yes, I read the post like the situation you described I am thinking of. Was it different, actually?
About if the first approach can work: maybe. For the companies I know it would be very difficult to donate money. First from what budget, then I am not sure if such donations can be tax deducted, then there is always the thing if you give money to a person how do you distinguish this from hiring the person (oral employment contracts are legal), so authorities might be interested if you circumvent labor laws. So this support has to come from the top of the company. I think paying for bugfixes/features might be much easier and cleaner for companies (still takes 6 month to get him as a contractor into the ERP system)
There seems to be working examples for 'pay what you like' restaurant, but there might be much bigger social pressure.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#949So 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…
My personal preference would be more like:
5. Make something cool and release it under any license which I feel like. Ruthlessly limit the project scope so I can finish it while still having fun and learning interesting things. (This means completely finished; documented, optimized for performance, and exhaustively tested with close to zero bugs remaining.) Then:
- Be very clear on the project page about what people can expect in terms of support and timely bugfixes. Let people make their decision to use the project or not, with knowledge of how much time and energy I am ready to give. Politely refuse to go beyond what has been stated.
- Make whatever amount of money I need through other means.
- Use the knowledge I gained from making said "cool thing" to make other cool things (whether for fun or for money).
- With a glint in my eye, reminisce about the great times spent hacking on computer code and all the fascinating discoveries made.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#950Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sheesh I'd forgotten - he's right, everyone does use that tool. He backed off on a bit but the point still remains, I'm sure he's a better engineer than half of google. I wonder if they asked Pike and Thompson to invert a binary tree. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
I'm not so sure. By his own admission homebrew is not that great a piece of software. There's a lot more that goes into popularity than being good. Being first, marketing and network effects are as or more important than being good.
Actually writting good software (from an engineering perspective) is easier than coming up with a popular software. If you dont like the 'easier' statement, I can replace it with 'more important' or 'different'. So maybe he shouldnt work as a programmer for FAANG, but more like a product manager (and let the other people write code for him)