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> There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a
by Swizec 10y ago
> There's something fundamentally broken about the open-source model when you can invest so much time and npt get any sort of economic return. This seems like a huge limiting factor on open-source development.
The problem we have is that OSS creators don't realize, and often willfully ignore, the fact that nothing about opensource says you can't charge for delivering value to people. Sure, their ability to copy it themselves and do stuff might reduce your leverage, but I can almost promise you that a company which generates $10,000,000/year of revenue and relies on your software, will throw money at you if you ask. Especially if you say something like "You know, since you're not paying me for this, I can totally stop maintaining it at any point and then you'll be fucked because your business relies on this".
But many engineers don't like to be business people. So here we all are.
It's really not that hard: Do people's livelihoods and businesses rely on your work? Are you improving people's lives? Charge.
Doing it for fun and no interest in making a business? That's fine, but don't expect to make a living off of a thing you're not charging money for.
- josephagoss 10y agoYou're entirely correct here. These OSS creators have leverage but are either unaware or unwilling to take advantage of their advantageous position.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoIs there no middle ground between OSS maintainers/contributors going hungry and them holding businesses hostage for ransom?
- josephagoss 10y agoTo be honest I hope there is middle ground, I just cannot see it. I want OSSc creators to be well compensated. These people are providing the world with an incredible service.
- trome 10y agoEntire businesses like Red Hat & Suse are built on the middle ground. There is room in the market for OSS creators to be compensated for their work.
- anigbrowl 10y agoTrue, but not everyone wants to be part of a business. What if there were some umbrella nonprofit that collected funds for open source development and redistributed to various projects in approximate proportion to their deployment in production, as well as seed or micro-capital to encourage new contributions?
- tavert 10y agoYou mean like http://www.numfocus.org http://www.numfocus.org ? That's not quite how their fiscal sponsorship agreements work, but close enough.
- anigbrowl 10y agoDid not know about this. Thanks for sharing, this is very encouraging to see.
- krylon 10y agoI may have been misunderstanding the whole thing, but wasn't the FSF supposed to kind of do that (among other things, but still)?
- anigbrowl 10y agoI'm not sure, I haven't followed the topic closely enough in recent years to form an opinion.
- beambot 10y agoIndeed, there is: market segmentation.
- anigbrowl 10y agoI think this is maybe a reaction to the way AT&T made Unix so expensive and inaccessible to hackers for so long that the idea of charging $$$ for something whose marginal cost of production was effectively $0 that the idea of charging money was morally repulsive to a lot of key figures in the movement. In a way OSS seems like the sort of thing that would have worked great in some hypothetical enlightened communist system that didn't suppress liberty.
- Swizec 10y agoSure, marginal cost is $0, I agree. But building and maintaning huge swathes of million (billion?) dollar infrastructures/architectures for enterprises for free feels somehow more wrong than building a small business that supports a few maintainers' families. Or as a famous talk once said: fuck you, pay me. https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
- anigbrowl 10y agoIndeed. I'm just making a guess about the motivations of some OSS leaders, and a shallow one at that.
- pjmlp 10y ago> AT&T made Unix so expensive and inaccessible to hacker Actually you got it wrong, it was precisely because AT&T could not legally charge the prices other vendors were selling their OSes, that UNIX got adopted by universities and small business, thus spreading its use in the industry. The ones charging lots of money for UNIX clones were Sun, HP, Digital, HP, ...
- anigbrowl 10y agoI thought sun was in partnership with AT&T when system V came out, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix appears to support that idea, but my first-hand memories have dimmed with time (cause it's not something I care about that much) and you may well be right. I do remember, um, liberating an overlooked copy of system V/386 on 5.25" floppies that I found in a storage cupboard when I worked at PC Magazine in 1992 :-)
- dboreham 10y agoHave you actually tried this?
- Swizec 10y agoSimilar. I put out free technical blogs and charge for technical books. For a demographic that's allergic to paying, engineers are really profitable. An extra $30k/year is pretty nice for a sidehustle I think. Mostly on track to do double that this year. And of course, if a company asks for consulting, I charge. But I'm not focusing on consulting these days. However a company is paying me to develop tech material for them as a content marketing strategy. At $600/article it's not a bad gig and I'm probably undercharging. So .. uh .. the answer to your question is Yes, sortof. You can read more about it here: https://swizec.com/blog/learned-6x-income-4-years/swizec/7340 https://swizec.com/blog/learned-6x-income-4-years/swizec/734...