The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community (2013)

I'm not sure I have any good arguments either way, but seeing an argument that open source software is uncompensated labor that devalues programming work and serves the corporate establishment makes me very uncomfortable.

It is true that the culture of OSS contributions and IRC lurkers is a very small subset of the available talent pool. On the other hand, jobs that hire based on open source contributions are still a very small subset of the total available jobs. The vast majority of my friends in college were hired with little experience into large corporations, who are better equipped to have a smooth onboarding experience and on-site training.

FWIW, I contributed to an open-source project and was then hired to work on it full-time, and it has been a great experience.

As a father of 1, I must agree to this:

- I lose ~ 2-3 hours a day every day on commute alone.

- I lose an additional 1-2 hours daily on getting my daughter ready, taking her to school, pickup from grandparents, and other daily needs of my daughter.

- My income is SIGNIFICANTLY lessened by the expenses of my daughter

If I was not a father, I would have the following:

- I could live 15 minutes away from work by foot, thus saving me between 1.5 - 2.5 hours a day.

- Living close to work requires most likely paying double my current housing cost, and having half my living space.

- Living close to work eliminates my need for a car, so some savings there.

- I will have 2 spare hours for extra sleep or misc. activity a day

- I will also have 2-3 extra hours a day not taking care of my daughter (homework, Daddy-Child time, planning meetups with friends, planning activities).

- No need to pay for extra food (time + money), no need to have homecooked food (I can survive on "ramen", child cannot), no need for gymnastics or other physical / social / mental development activity programs (lots of money saved).

Add it all up I am at ~ 4-6 hour disadvantage to the average 23-27 year old single male, with a significant lifestyle and monetary hit. If I was just to use 2 hours a day that the more free have to program an OSS project, and 2-4 hours on sleep, I would be better rested, more productive, and would contribute between 10 to 14 hours a week to OSS all while keeping my current lifestyle.

P.S. on top of that I work at a job who doesn't count ass-in-chair time, lets me work 9-5 (not 9-6), and is low stress. So already I am privileged over others in my exact position without this cozy 9-5 job.

P.S.S. on top of that as a divorced man, I also need to find time to date, so you can't argue that I too have time savings over a single man's need to date. Which mind you is really hard when you have a child.

P.S.S.S. Some people have a job that revolves around and/or encourages OSS contributions. So they get to contribute, all while getting paid for it in their standard job. This puts then in an even further advantage because they are now unfairly elevated above the average worker.

Getting blindsided by that complete botching of a strong argument seems oddly familiar, I must have read this back in 2013 too. The case to be made that unpaid labor to an OSS project should not be a barrier to entry to employment is very strong on it's own. The sidetrack into OSS diversity seems to imply that if open source were more diverse it wouldn't still be a terrible hiring practice to expect candidates to have contributed to open source.

Because people actively avoid OSS with licenses like that, always opting for projects that have MIT/BSD type licenses.