11 ms·

In which, alas, I must rattle a tin cup

40 points by duncan_bayne 10y ago

danaliv 10y ago
> ...we’re fast approaching the point where if someone were to offer me a day job, I’d have to take it. And that would be unfortunate for the long term; the infrastructure work I’m doing and expect to do in the future is tremendously important. Somebody’s going to need to design and field NTPv5 to fully cover the IPv6 transition, and it looks increasingly like that somebody needs to be me. Eric, get a job. And let some air out of that ego.
- bsder 10y ago
  Unfortunately, ESR's personality is the absolute antithesis of somebody you would want to hire. And, in terms of software output, he's just not that productive.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    Those two can be quantified, so, there would be a price where ESR would be hireable.
jlgaddis 10y ago
> Thus, even with the Patreon, we’re fast approaching the point where if someone were to offer me a day job, I’d have to take it. Yes, that's the method that most of us implement in order to acquire money. > And that would be unfortunate for the long term; the infrastructure work I’m doing and expect to do in the future is tremendously important. Wow, that comes off as extremely arrogant and egotistical (to me). > Somebody’s going to need to design and field NTPv5 to fully cover the IPv6 transition, and it looks increasingly like that somebody needs to be me. Are we taking a vote on this? --- Let me be blunt: get a fucking job. To anyone who might be considering a donation in order to support NTP, allow me to recommend directing your donation at the NTP Foundation [0] instead. [0]: http://www.networktimefoundation.org/ http://www.networktimefoundation.org/
- justin66 10y ago
  Does NTP Foundation compete against the ICEI that Raymond mentions?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    ESR commented: ICEI is indeed rebooted. The reason for the long hiatus was that CII spun up just as the first version of the org was about to go public. That sucked all the oxygen out of the room for a while. So CII definitely competes! In addition the CII report linked upthread has an NTPD section in which the director of the NT Foundation is quoted praising Harlan Stenn, right after the NTPSec section. So not only does CII compete with ICEI, but NTF competes w/ NTPSec within CII.
felixgallo 10y ago
ahem: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999121000105NWLF http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999121000105NWLF
- wmf 10y ago
  Ah, VA Linux. Their main achievement that I can remember was hiring the developers of Enlightenment. Good times. IIRC the stock dropped before ESR sold and he did not become absurdly rich in real money.
  - no_protocol 10y ago
    From [0]: > By the time Raymond could legally sell his VA Linux shares in June 2000, they had plunged $31 million in value to a still-impressive $5.5 million. > Thanks to the dot-com bust -- fed in large part by big-hype, no-hope companies like VA Linux, the worth of Raymond's shares had dropped to $195,000, a loss of more than $5 million. From [1]: > Back at IPO time I wrote an essay called "Surprised By Wealth" in which I tried to deal with how weird it felt to have a theoretical net worth of $41 million. Am I upset that all that "wealth" is gone, at least until the stock bounces back? Well...yes and no. As a member of VA's Board, it's my job to worry about our stock price, on behalf of all of our stockholders. So I care about that. > But personally? Nah. I wasn't in this for the bucks then, and I'm not now. [0] http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3149/eric-s-raymond-bazaar-financial-advisor http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3149/eric-s-raymond-baza... [1] http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2001022100120OPBZCY http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2001022100120OPBZCY
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  It was under $1 two and a half years later. I assume he didn't get out when he had the opportunity.
brandur 10y ago
A little off topic, but this is the first time I've heard of this particular set of grievances with the ACA (that it's "job destroying"). If anything I would have thought that it left too many jobs in place by fully institutionalizing the role of the very expensive middle man insurance companies, and thus ensuring that it'll always be fundamentally more costly than a more pure universal healthcare system.
- triangleman 10y ago
  The ACA mandated that anyone employing someone more than 30 hours per week must provide them with health insurance (small businesses excepted). This led to businesses cutting hours and eliminating jobs.
  - jonstewart 10y ago
    Triangleman, triangleman, please support your posts with data, if you can.
    - triangleman 10y ago
      I found this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/yes-some-companies-are-cutting-hours-in-response-to-obamacare/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/yes-some-companies-are-... At the very least, the ACA does mandate what I said it does. I am not saying it necessarily leads to job losses, nor am I saying that the costs outweigh the benefits.
  - jnwatson 10y ago
    Right, but in this case his wife does "legal piecework". This work is by definition easier to distribute among many people. If a provider was accustomed to distributing 120 hours of work to 3 people, it should be nearly as easy to distribute the same work to 4 people, staying under the 30 hours. I don't understand the connection between legal piecework and ACA.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  To expand slightly on what triangleman said, many employees who were working 40 hour/week jobs suddenly found themselves only working 29 hours/week. This allowed the company to not provide them insurance while, at the same time, reducing their income by ~25%.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sfeng 10y ago
I generally wouldn't criticize someone's situation, but he decided to make this a political argument. He bemoans the government deciding that 11 million people not having health insurance was more important than his right to not have a job. You don't have a moral right to work on open source projects all day, people do arguably have a moral right to healthcare. The government did exactly what it was supposed to, move money from people who were existing extravagantly to people who desperately needed it. All due credit to his wife, but generally if the marginal cost of insurance was what was keeping you employed, how much value were you delivering?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Making this "a political argument" might be his best possible strategy (although not necessarily a good one) for encouraging donations? ESR is a fairly divisive persona anyway, so it might be best to embrace that and really appeal to some potential donors even if that repels others.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  I would just like to point out that working on open source software does not prevent one from having a job. For many years my job was, precisely, to write free and open source software. I too don't want to criticize ESR for his personal choices - we all make mistakes - but he should really consider getting a more common work arrangement. He's neither young nor rich and he should start thinking about retirement by now.
- hapless 10y ago
  Notably his wife was a partner in her law firm. It is typically _very difficult_ to get yourself ejected from a legal partnership. Obamacare-related costs do not pass the smell test.
scandox 10y ago
> and Cathy – who grew up poor and thus finds a state of no income viscerally terrifying in a way I do not I had to laugh - somewhat grimly - at that. My wife is the same. She came from an unusually tough background and it has a profound impact on the way she feels about being short of cash. I'd say Mr Raymond's going to find himself in a job whether he likes it or not - unless he really pulls off a coup.
deadlyllama 10y ago
The problem of being unable to delegate, to let go of a task which you think that you are able to do better than anyone else can, is a problem with you, not the task, and not other people. I know because I can get that way. I'm one of those people who ends up knowing how everything works because I'm wired that way. And it's really hard to hand jobs off to colleagues who you perceive as less competent. That's perfectionism. It's a great way to not get things done that need doing. Because you don't have the time to do everything that needs doing. There isn't enough time available for you personally to do everything you feel you need to do, to the standard you feel it needs to be done, that you think no one else can achieve. Certainly not if you also need to feed your family and the things you need to do are not bringing in enough income. The solution, as annoying as it is, is to drop your standards, to realise some of those needs are actually wants. Having a cool, fulfilling job that pushes all your buttons and pays really well is a luxury many people don't get. Having random strangers pay for your living costs so you can do cool stuff is a massive, massive luxury only a few people get. What's really important to you: NTPsec or food & shelter? Sounds like you're choosing the former. Making these choices is hard. I've moved to a small town and as a one man band cannot get the sort of technically sophisticated work that I really enjoy doing. But hey, living here is cheap and people are friendly and laid back. We have a lovely house. Trees the kids can climb. I can cycle from suburbia to my office in 7 minutes. To get this, I had to give up my dreams of having top notch IT work. I don't have a Patreon. I could work on some cool infrastructure work, too, if I had one and people donated enough to keep my family afloat. But I don't. I have a job that is sometimes boring and sometimes not. And I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to good medical care, running water, electricity, broadband ... I'm doing better than most of the world's population. I can't complain.
myrandomcomment 10y ago
"That’s the real problem. Call it arrogant if you like, but I think the world needs my creativity where it’s going now, even if that need doesn’t readily translate into a flow of cash in my direction." Your right, that is just arrogant. We are all thankful for the work you have done but I promise the internet will still be here tomorrow if you stop. Get a job or figure out how to setup a foundation to fund your work (i.e., like Mozilla, OpenBSD, et.al.). As the foundation is something you should have put together years ago I would suggest that you should go the job route. When the bubble burst in 2001 I went from being on the top of the network stack to struggling to find work. I took every contract I was offered no matter how much is was below my skill set. I worked doing help desk contract work, etc. In the years before I designed and built a freaking backbone and did a HW company. I am back and successful now but I worked my ass off to get here and I never forget it. I am a better person for it. Before my last startup hit my family and I lived in a 2 bedroom place in Menlo/PA area. The rent was expensive but the schools were the most important thing. We had a neighbor, an Mexican family. They also lived in a 2 bedroom with 4 kids. I would hear the fathers car leave the garage at 5AM and here him come back at midnight. He worked 3 jobs to pay for that apartment in such an expensive area. I asked him why. "It is my job to provide for my family. The schools are the best here and I want my kids to have a good future, thats why." Get a job.
- wmf 10y ago
  The foundation already exists https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ but it's not clear why they stopped funding ESR.
  - dfc 10y ago
    Page 13 of the CII annual statement clearly places NTPSEC in the short term category. Who knows esr was under the same impression. https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/sites/cii/files/cii_annualreport_2016_fnl_digital.pdf https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/sites/cii/files/cii_annua...
qntty 10y ago
In which an outspoken libertarian asks for support from society.
- rhapsodic 10y ago
  >In which an outspoken libertarian asks for support from society. He's asking for voluntary contributions. That is not inconsistent with libertarianism. If he applied for a government grant to pay his bills, OTOH, that would IMO be inconsistent.
  - justin66 10y ago
    The comments section on the article indicates the soon-to-be 501c3 he's associated with, ICEI, will probably be sending grant proposals to The Evil Men With Guns Who Collect Your Tax Money While Holding Guns Or Something shortly. "Had I been able to wait until that kind of fundraising was producing results, I would have."
    - rhapsodic 10y ago
      Touché.
- zeveb 10y ago
  Correction: in which an outspoken libertarian asks for the freely-given support of his fellow free citizens, which is exactly in accordance with his principles. Libertarians don't object to charity: we object to robbing Peter to pay Paul and then congratulating oneself on one's charitable activities.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - qntty 10y ago
    Strictly speaking, libertarians wouldn't want to make this illegal, I agree, but that doesn't necessarily make it in accordance with libertarian principles. Much of the debate about libertarianism comes down to questions about how much we value work that benefits all of society but which doesn't directly create wealth for the people doing it. Many libertarians, for example, don't care too much about finding a way to pay women for doing the work of raising children, work that has a very positive impact on the economy overall. The work that Eric is doing is that kind of work.
Analemma_ 10y ago
Get a job, Eric. That is, if anyone will hire you after your long history of sub-par software, racism, and just generally being an asshole.
bykovich 10y ago
"Though I'm a techie, I'm in a situation similar to a fine artist because the market has not figured out how to value and reward the work I feel called to do." Keep jackin' it to the market, dude. "The meddling of the ACA destroyed my life! By the way, no one will pay me for my labor."
bborud 10y ago
Get a job, you bum.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - bborud 10y ago
    Actually, it needs to be said precisely because ESR is such a visible and well known person. This sense of entitlement stinks and people need to call it out. If he gets to go on a political rant, I get to rant about his sense of entitlement.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
M2Ys4U 10y ago
Aww, diddums. Get a job.

40 points by duncan_bayne 10y ago

> ...we’re fast approaching the point where if someone were to offer me a day job, I’d have to take it. And that would be unfortunate for the long term; the infrastructure work I’m doing and expect to do in the future is tremendously important. Somebody’s going to need to design and field NTPv5 to fully cover the IPv6 transition, and it looks increasingly like that somebody needs to be me. Eric, get a job. And let some air out of that ego.

bsder 10y ago
Unfortunately, ESR's personality is the absolute antithesis of somebody you would want to hire. And, in terms of software output, he's just not that productive.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  Those two can be quantified, so, there would be a price where ESR would be hireable.

jlgaddis 10y ago

> Thus, even with the Patreon, we’re fast approaching the point where if someone were to offer me a day job, I’d have to take it. Yes, that's the method that most of us implement in order to acquire money. > And that would be unfortunate for the long term; the infrastructure work I’m doing and expect to do in the future is tremendously important. Wow, that comes off as extremely arrogant and egotistical (to me). > Somebody’s going to need to design and field NTPv5 to fully cover the IPv6 transition, and it looks increasingly like that somebody needs to be me. Are we taking a vote on this? --- Let me be blunt: get a fucking job. To anyone who might be considering a donation in order to support NTP, allow me to recommend directing your donation at the NTP Foundation [0] instead. [0]: http://www.networktimefoundation.org/ http://www.networktimefoundation.org/

justin66 10y ago
Does NTP Foundation compete against the ICEI that Raymond mentions?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  ESR commented: ICEI is indeed rebooted. The reason for the long hiatus was that CII spun up just as the first version of the org was about to go public. That sucked all the oxygen out of the room for a while. So CII definitely competes! In addition the CII report linked upthread has an NTPD section in which the director of the NT Foundation is quoted praising Harlan Stenn, right after the NTPSec section. So not only does CII compete with ICEI, but NTF competes w/ NTPSec within CII.

felixgallo 10y ago

ahem: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999121000105NWLF http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999121000105NWLF

wmf 10y ago
Ah, VA Linux. Their main achievement that I can remember was hiring the developers of Enlightenment. Good times. IIRC the stock dropped before ESR sold and he did not become absurdly rich in real money.
- no_protocol 10y ago
  From [0]: > By the time Raymond could legally sell his VA Linux shares in June 2000, they had plunged $31 million in value to a still-impressive $5.5 million. > Thanks to the dot-com bust -- fed in large part by big-hype, no-hope companies like VA Linux, the worth of Raymond's shares had dropped to $195,000, a loss of more than $5 million. From [1]: > Back at IPO time I wrote an essay called "Surprised By Wealth" in which I tried to deal with how weird it felt to have a theoretical net worth of $41 million. Am I upset that all that "wealth" is gone, at least until the stock bounces back? Well...yes and no. As a member of VA's Board, it's my job to worry about our stock price, on behalf of all of our stockholders. So I care about that. > But personally? Nah. I wasn't in this for the bucks then, and I'm not now. [0] http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3149/eric-s-raymond-bazaar-financial-advisor http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3149/eric-s-raymond-baza... [1] http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2001022100120OPBZCY http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2001022100120OPBZCY
jlgaddis 10y ago
It was under $1 two and a half years later. I assume he didn't get out when he had the opportunity.

brandur 10y ago

A little off topic, but this is the first time I've heard of this particular set of grievances with the ACA (that it's "job destroying"). If anything I would have thought that it left too many jobs in place by fully institutionalizing the role of the very expensive middle man insurance companies, and thus ensuring that it'll always be fundamentally more costly than a more pure universal healthcare system.

triangleman 10y ago
The ACA mandated that anyone employing someone more than 30 hours per week must provide them with health insurance (small businesses excepted). This led to businesses cutting hours and eliminating jobs.
- jonstewart 10y ago
  Triangleman, triangleman, please support your posts with data, if you can.
  - triangleman 10y ago
    I found this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/yes-some-companies-are-cutting-hours-in-response-to-obamacare/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/yes-some-companies-are-... At the very least, the ACA does mandate what I said it does. I am not saying it necessarily leads to job losses, nor am I saying that the costs outweigh the benefits.
- jnwatson 10y ago
  Right, but in this case his wife does "legal piecework". This work is by definition easier to distribute among many people. If a provider was accustomed to distributing 120 hours of work to 3 people, it should be nearly as easy to distribute the same work to 4 people, staying under the 30 hours. I don't understand the connection between legal piecework and ACA.
jlgaddis 10y ago
To expand slightly on what triangleman said, many employees who were working 40 hour/week jobs suddenly found themselves only working 29 hours/week. This allowed the company to not provide them insurance while, at the same time, reducing their income by ~25%.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sfeng 10y ago

I generally wouldn't criticize someone's situation, but he decided to make this a political argument. He bemoans the government deciding that 11 million people not having health insurance was more important than his right to not have a job. You don't have a moral right to work on open source projects all day, people do arguably have a moral right to healthcare. The government did exactly what it was supposed to, move money from people who were existing extravagantly to people who desperately needed it. All due credit to his wife, but generally if the marginal cost of insurance was what was keeping you employed, how much value were you delivering?

jessaustin 10y ago
Making this "a political argument" might be his best possible strategy (although not necessarily a good one) for encouraging donations? ESR is a fairly divisive persona anyway, so it might be best to embrace that and really appeal to some potential donors even if that repels others.
rbanffy 10y ago
I would just like to point out that working on open source software does not prevent one from having a job. For many years my job was, precisely, to write free and open source software. I too don't want to criticize ESR for his personal choices - we all make mistakes - but he should really consider getting a more common work arrangement. He's neither young nor rich and he should start thinking about retirement by now.
hapless 10y ago
Notably his wife was a partner in her law firm. It is typically _very difficult_ to get yourself ejected from a legal partnership. Obamacare-related costs do not pass the smell test.

scandox 10y ago

> and Cathy – who grew up poor and thus finds a state of no income viscerally terrifying in a way I do not I had to laugh - somewhat grimly - at that. My wife is the same. She came from an unusually tough background and it has a profound impact on the way she feels about being short of cash. I'd say Mr Raymond's going to find himself in a job whether he likes it or not - unless he really pulls off a coup.

deadlyllama 10y ago

The problem of being unable to delegate, to let go of a task which you think that you are able to do better than anyone else can, is a problem with you, not the task, and not other people. I know because I can get that way. I'm one of those people who ends up knowing how everything works because I'm wired that way. And it's really hard to hand jobs off to colleagues who you perceive as less competent. That's perfectionism. It's a great way to not get things done that need doing. Because you don't have the time to do everything that needs doing. There isn't enough time available for you personally to do everything you feel you need to do, to the standard you feel it needs to be done, that you think no one else can achieve. Certainly not if you also need to feed your family and the things you need to do are not bringing in enough income. The solution, as annoying as it is, is to drop your standards, to realise some of those needs are actually wants. Having a cool, fulfilling job that pushes all your buttons and pays really well is a luxury many people don't get. Having random strangers pay for your living costs so you can do cool stuff is a massive, massive luxury only a few people get. What's really important to you: NTPsec or food & shelter? Sounds like you're choosing the former. Making these choices is hard. I've moved to a small town and as a one man band cannot get the sort of technically sophisticated work that I really enjoy doing. But hey, living here is cheap and people are friendly and laid back. We have a lovely house. Trees the kids can climb. I can cycle from suburbia to my office in 7 minutes. To get this, I had to give up my dreams of having top notch IT work. I don't have a Patreon. I could work on some cool infrastructure work, too, if I had one and people donated enough to keep my family afloat. But I don't. I have a job that is sometimes boring and sometimes not. And I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to good medical care, running water, electricity, broadband ... I'm doing better than most of the world's population. I can't complain.

myrandomcomment 10y ago

"That’s the real problem. Call it arrogant if you like, but I think the world needs my creativity where it’s going now, even if that need doesn’t readily translate into a flow of cash in my direction." Your right, that is just arrogant. We are all thankful for the work you have done but I promise the internet will still be here tomorrow if you stop. Get a job or figure out how to setup a foundation to fund your work (i.e., like Mozilla, OpenBSD, et.al.). As the foundation is something you should have put together years ago I would suggest that you should go the job route. When the bubble burst in 2001 I went from being on the top of the network stack to struggling to find work. I took every contract I was offered no matter how much is was below my skill set. I worked doing help desk contract work, etc. In the years before I designed and built a freaking backbone and did a HW company. I am back and successful now but I worked my ass off to get here and I never forget it. I am a better person for it. Before my last startup hit my family and I lived in a 2 bedroom place in Menlo/PA area. The rent was expensive but the schools were the most important thing. We had a neighbor, an Mexican family. They also lived in a 2 bedroom with 4 kids. I would hear the fathers car leave the garage at 5AM and here him come back at midnight. He worked 3 jobs to pay for that apartment in such an expensive area. I asked him why. "It is my job to provide for my family. The schools are the best here and I want my kids to have a good future, thats why." Get a job.

wmf 10y ago
The foundation already exists https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ but it's not clear why they stopped funding ESR.
- dfc 10y ago
  Page 13 of the CII annual statement clearly places NTPSEC in the short term category. Who knows esr was under the same impression. https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/sites/cii/files/cii_annualreport_2016_fnl_digital.pdf https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/sites/cii/files/cii_annua...

qntty 10y ago

In which an outspoken libertarian asks for support from society.

rhapsodic 10y ago
>In which an outspoken libertarian asks for support from society. He's asking for voluntary contributions. That is not inconsistent with libertarianism. If he applied for a government grant to pay his bills, OTOH, that would IMO be inconsistent.
- justin66 10y ago
  The comments section on the article indicates the soon-to-be 501c3 he's associated with, ICEI, will probably be sending grant proposals to The Evil Men With Guns Who Collect Your Tax Money While Holding Guns Or Something shortly. "Had I been able to wait until that kind of fundraising was producing results, I would have."
  - rhapsodic 10y ago
    Touché.
zeveb 10y ago
Correction: in which an outspoken libertarian asks for the freely-given support of his fellow free citizens, which is exactly in accordance with his principles. Libertarians don't object to charity: we object to robbing Peter to pay Paul and then congratulating oneself on one's charitable activities.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- qntty 10y ago
  Strictly speaking, libertarians wouldn't want to make this illegal, I agree, but that doesn't necessarily make it in accordance with libertarian principles. Much of the debate about libertarianism comes down to questions about how much we value work that benefits all of society but which doesn't directly create wealth for the people doing it. Many libertarians, for example, don't care too much about finding a way to pay women for doing the work of raising children, work that has a very positive impact on the economy overall. The work that Eric is doing is that kind of work.

Analemma_ 10y ago

Get a job, Eric. That is, if anyone will hire you after your long history of sub-par software, racism, and just generally being an asshole.

bykovich 10y ago

"Though I'm a techie, I'm in a situation similar to a fine artist because the market has not figured out how to value and reward the work I feel called to do." Keep jackin' it to the market, dude. "The meddling of the ACA destroyed my life! By the way, no one will pay me for my labor."

bborud 10y ago

Get a job, you bum.

dang 10y ago
Please don't do this here.
- bborud 10y ago
  Actually, it needs to be said precisely because ESR is such a visible and well known person. This sense of entitlement stinks and people need to call it out. If he gets to go on a political rant, I get to rant about his sense of entitlement.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

M2Ys4U 10y ago

Aww, diddums. Get a job.