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Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are

• ac2u 11y ago
  Put more succinctly that I did in my comment, where a lot of folks extrapolated my comments on the tone of the article to a full blown commentary on the free market.
• kbenson 11y ago
  > and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed. I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary compensation. Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free. > If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project. The people that start/work on a specific open source project have the right to ask for compensation in whatever way they like, or enforce it through their license. You have no right to speak for all open source projects.
  • ksk 11y ago
    >Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. No, it is not the same thing at all. People volunteer for organizations because the organizations DO NOT have the resources to pay them because all their money goes into buying goods and what not. When you bid $1 and work for free, you're saying I don't want the money you're willing to pay. To fail to understand this basic difference is silly.
    • kbenson 11y ago
      > No, it is not the same thing at all. People volunteer for organizations because the organizations DO NOT have the resources to pay them because all their money goes into buying goods and what not. The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that. This is the exact same. He liked the goal of the organization, he liked what they were doing, and he wanted to work with them, and he wanted to help out. Any money saved here isn't going to some CEO, this is the government, it's budgeted and if it doesn't go to another project here, it goes to some other service for the American people. When you comp some or all of any expected monetary compensation, which is what this and all volunteer work is, you are helping to set the market rate for that job. The only reason volunteers in an industry can be unpaid is because the supply of people willing to work for no money outstrips the demand. If there were not enough people to volunteer in an area, the organization could and would pay some amount out of their operating fund to pay the work, if it was important to them. This would likely result in fewer workers, but it's obvious how this would work out. It's all supply and demand, even for volunteer work.
      • ksk 11y ago
        >The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that. You are comparing two very different things. The material costs of feeding 100 people would probably equal the labor costs of one worker for one day. Nobody is going to make the labor compromise when the question is "Do I feed 10 people or 100 people". >Any money saved here isn't going to some CEO, this is the government, it's budgeted and if it doesn't go to another project here, it goes to some other service for the American people. Um, do you have any idea about federal funds just languishing in bank accounts? Just google "unspent government money". Sorry, your argument does not hold any water. In any case, we're entering into the minutia of a topic that I have little interest in, so I am not inclined to continue.
        • kbenson 11y ago
  • yellowstuff 11y ago
    Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.
    • cortesoft 11y ago
      Soup kitchens have the exact same risk. If those soup kitchens cook too much, they will drive restaurants out of business. Luckily, for both soup kitchens and programmers, this will never happen. There is more programming work to be done than programmers, and the markets aren't the same.
      • stuartaxelowen 11y ago
        Soup kitchens and restaurants are not competitors.
        • cortesoft 11y ago
          And volunteer development work and professional development work are also not competitors.
    • caseysoftware 11y ago
      This was the common argument 10 years ago as open source CMSes - primarily WordPress and Drupal - started becoming more common. That eventually web developers would be entirely replaced by people who just configure plugins/modules. As we've seen, software development has stagnated and almost gone away in the ten years since.
      • makomk 11y ago
        Open source CMSes increase efficiency - by reducing the amount of work required to set up a website, they mean that the time and money saved can potentially be used for more productive purposes. Working for free doesn't do that; it involves the same amount of work and time, just for free.
  • parennoob 11y ago
    > Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free. This comparison is inaccurate – soup kitchen volunteers are not performing a complete job which is being bid for. This underbid is more analogous to if a local government center asking for bids to serve a meeting of 500 people, and a local soup kitchen bidding $1 for the contract because they are essentially giving away free food. They then end up supplying the meeting with 500 bowls of great chili, and everyone is happy. If the soup kitchen started doing this every time the government center issued a bid, the local restaurants would never make any money from the government center. This is not to say that they would never make money. But it is legitimate for an average restaurant in the area to be worried by the soup kitchen's actions, and view it as a potential devaluer of their product.
    • kbenson 11y ago
      Sure, but the government is under no obligation to support restaurants through soup kitchen contracts. Their mandate is to feed the poor. They should choose the option that lets them achieve this goal as efficiently as possible. Social, technological and economic changes that make it harder for restaurants to compete can and will happen, and it's the job of the restaurants to respond in a competitive way if they want those contracts, or shift their focus to a more lucrative sector, or go out of business. That's not smug and elitist (as the top level comment implied), that's the system we have and it's responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than anything we've tried before. You can safely ignore the rest of my comment if you like, it's sort of me just rambling because there's a place to do it. An important concept that I think some people miss with free markets and "fairness" is that it's all relative to the time frame you are looking at. Yes, it's possibly more fair (depending on how you determine fairness) to right now to completely redistribute all wealth equally between all world inhabitants, but will that result in overall better outcomes for people 50 years from now? If we had done that 50 years ago, would we be better off right now? 100 years ago? To my view, free markets are the best way we've found so far to increase wealth overall over time, so it helps prevent local maxima effects and eventually leads to better outcomes. Unfortunately that means some people get the short end of the stick, but it's important to remember that the short end is short relative to the other end, and the stick is getting longer overall as time goes on. That's not to say I believe in a completely hand-off approach to markets. They can and are manipulated at times, and there are runaway effects that should be mitigated.
• brownbat 11y ago
  Switching contexts, you could say the same thing about garage bands. "Why are these amateurs playing all these shows basically for free? They're stealing money from hardworking musicians!" Some disciplines spark addicted, passionate individuals who get other benefits beyond the price. (In contrast, there aren't a lot of enthusiast janitors.) If you want to make a living and you opt to compete with abundance, you shouldn't be shocked when someone is willing to underbid.
  • ksk 11y ago
    >Switching contexts, you could say the same thing about garage bands I don't know much about the music business, but as a layman, I don't think the two situations are comparable. I think that when a band releases free music they're thinking "I just need to put htis out for free and if my song goes viral THEN I'm going to get picked up by this huge record label, etc ,etc" Its more of a "let me win the lottery" prayer, than any kind of volunteer type sentiment.
    • Jtsummers 11y ago
      I don't think GP was talking about releasing music for free. I think they were talking about bands that'll do a gig in a bar for $200 (or whatever's considered cheap) versus one that costs several times that, but is actually trying to make a living playing music.
    • goorpyguy 11y ago
      This is a good analogy, actually. You want a chance to do the work, and have people see your good work. You want that badly enough that you're willing to do the initial work for free.
      • iMerNibor 11y ago
        Which is basically the reasoning behind bidding 1$ then.. He got a lot of attention from just doing that aswell, so a success for him
  • Jtsummers 11y ago
• zeckalpha 11y ago
  > If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project. It IS an open source project: https://github.com/18F/calc/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/18F/calc/blob/master/LICENSE.md
• cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  >Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. Go back to your gulch, John Galt. Just because someone chooses to be altruistic does not mean you have to crap all over their altruism.
  • Jtsummers 11y ago
    You're basically name-calling, which is unproductive. While I'm not in agreement with OP, some levels and methods of altruism/volunteerism can end up being counterproductive. A certain level of free <insert good> to a region is useful. Above that, or for too long, and you end up harming local farming and manufacturing, to the point where they may also depend on the free goods. I'm lacking specific articles and lines of research, but charity seems to be better when it's establishing people on their own (teaching them a trade, providing them a global market for the goods they already produce, education, medical, etc.) than giving them a thing. We have to be careful when giving to others that we don't simultaneously diminish them. All of this is a balance, and the correct balance very much depends on the extent of the need and the existing capabilities and limitations of the people involved so no universal line can be drawn.
    • kedean 11y ago
      You may be thinking of this example: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00.html http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00... TLDR; sending a surplus of tshirts to Africa did nothing but crash local textile industries by introducing a surplus of existing, cheap product. Guy wanted to do good, didn't think about the consequences, and screwed up.
      • Jtsummers 11y ago
        That was exactly the example that was in my mind, but I didn't have time when posting to look it up. Thanks.
      • djrogers 11y ago
        Except you clearly haven't read the article - he didn't send the shirts, he listened to the aid workers and criticism over his plan and decided against it. The local textile crashes referred to in the economy were from cheap second hand imports, not aid.
• cortesoft 11y ago
  So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.
  • Jtsummers 11y ago
    > So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else. If you donate things then you're still buying it from someone, but giving it to someone that cannot afford them. So really, you're a surrogate purchaser. The problem comes in when you're donating time (via work) to a group that can afford to pay for it, and there are people looking for work that are willing to work for the normal wages/rates that would've been paid. If the people receiving the benefits of the work can't afford to pay, you aren't taking the work from anyone. When there's no one willing to work for the rates being offered, you aren't taking the work from anyone. But when people are willing to work for the rates offered, and you give your time for free, you are taking the work from other people. The ethics and morality of giving is kind of complicated.
    • cortesoft 11y ago
      Ok, so I took away some work that they were going to pay someone for. What, though, are they going to do with that money they saved? They are probably going to spend it on something else, which will employ somebody. It just shifts where that money is spent.
      • Jtsummers 11y ago
        Right. If we provide teachers to an area, we might be eliminating the teachers already present. More likely we're supplementing them. This is filling a need that a local economy may not be able to sustain on its own. If we provide volunteer laborer a to a farmer who can afford hired hands, we're reducing the income to those in the local unskilled labor market. Those are two extremes and most labor-giving and goods-giving fall in between. But we need to determine where it falls to determine whether is a positive or a negative.
• nogoodnamesleft 11y ago
  Calling other people "smug" and "elitist". Justify it by believing you are some sort of protector of the rest of us. Opening our eyes to our unethical behavior, and how we're demeaning and stealing bread from the mouths of others. Maybe our economics are unethical. I mean we have right here evidence that people can be motivated by things other than money. But yeah we have to bow our heads at the pulpit of "sound economics". Let's start excluding those who want to contribute in a different way because it undermines the religion. Maybe we should burn them at the stake?
• orless 11y ago
  > Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. Not necessarily, this may be also a valid profit-oriented strategy. My wife worked for ca. 8 month almost for free (for lowest rate allowed by the law) to get an entry in her CV which landed her on her next real money job.
  • pimlottc 11y ago
    Whether it's a good strategy is besides the point; it's still a luxury in that your wife had the means to live for 8 months without a substantial income. Some people don't have the safety net to be able to do that, even if they knew it would put them in a better position in the long run.
    • orless 11y ago
      > Whether it's a good strategy is besides the point It is my point that this may be a good strategy. > it's still a luxury in that your wife had the means to live for 8 months without a substantial income Spending 10k Euro on an audio system is a luxury, spending 10k Euro to get a better job is an investment with a pretty good ROI. > Some people don't have the safety net to be able to do that, even if they knew it would put them in a better position in the long run. Since for almost anything there will be people who can't afford it, so this argument makes everything a luxury.
• fasteddie 11y ago
  > Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. This is true for markets where there really is no other alternative than working for free. You are certainly referring to children of wealthy parents who can afford to do unpaid or low-paid internships and entry level jobs in industries like media, the arts, or sports. When you are talking about contract development work, which exists a robust market for paid work, even if all similar gov't contracts gets done at the $1 it would not much affect someones ability to sell their skills in the private markets.
• tptacek 11y ago
  How does the same argument not apply to everybody with full-time employment who works on FOSS projects?
• Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >"Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Not seeing a big difference between that and "Oh, I already make enough at my day job, now let me produce FOSS that competes with commercial software which are some people's primary job."
• celticninja 11y ago
  Perhaps but I imagine people would not willingly produce something for free if it was the private sector. The fact it is government and taxes pay for it, therefore you and me pay for it, there should be no problem in getting it done for free(essentially). Would it be better to pay a company $500, of which $150 goes to the dev and $350 to company coffers?
  • thaumasiotes 11y ago
    When Microsoft let volunteers supply photos for new default Windows backgrounds, there was incredible outrage among professional photographers. People who are not professional photographers can usually see that better images at lower cost is a good thing and not a bad one.