4 ms·
Each country have its own taxes to sustain fundamentals, same thing must apply in software industry. Software engineers might be paid +100k$ while developing ov
by abousara 9y ago
Each country have its own taxes to sustain fundamentals, same thing must apply in software industry. Software engineers might be paid +100k$ while developing over open source languages/frameworks or libraries. That's is not fair, it is like riding a starving horse.
A French point of view (after all, France invented VAT...) would suggest to introduce a taxe on software engineers salaries (1% ?) and redistribute this fund on most used languages/frameworks/libraries and use a part to sustain a new projects.
- adrianN 9y agoHow about instead of taxing the workers we tax the companies that profit from open source efforts.
- dagw 9y agoHow would you measure how much of the profits a company makes come from open source efforts?
- adrianN 9y agoYou don't, you just use a fixed percentage of whatever business tax they pay to fund open source development.
- dagw 9y agoHow are you going to separate out companies that profit from open source software, from those that don't? Would the fixed percentage be same for a company that is built 100% on open source software as it would for one where a handful of people in one department occasionally use VS Code to write some python scripts? If you want to fund open source using tax money, then fund open source using tax money. Trying to implement a special Open Source Tax and apply it only to those that "profit from" open source seems both counterproductive and virtually impossible.
- adrianN 9y agoI think everybody profits from open source, since a large part of the Internet runs on open source, so there is no big need to discriminate.
- dagw 9y agoSo why make a special separate tax that has to be calculated and administered? Just use the tax money you already collect to fund open source projects.
- adrianN 9y agoIf you want to spend more money you have to increase taxes. I don't mind whether we just increase an existing tax or create a new one.
- abousara 9y agoLet me explain better, no software engineer (SE) would be paid above 30k$ if he always starts from scratch (walking). He is paid its economic value for being fast. And he is fast because he rides a horse (building over open source language/framework/library). So while a part of SE are maintaining stables, other part of SE don't want to pay for horse. I think this last part of SE are killing their own jobs.
- adrianN 9y agoThe software engineer is paid because they produce value for they employer. It's upon the employer, not the employee to pay for the technological infrastructure.
- abousara 9y agoThat's right. But when your employer will ask to shift infrastructure because old one is no more maintained, and to be as productive as before, you'll be very slow at development and get fired. If the employee is paying for the infrastructure, this is because SE are not solidary to open source projects.
- Scea91 9y agoI find it stupid to offer something for free and then cry when someone does not pay you for it.
- abousara 9y agoDevelopers who take free time to create projects are not crying for money, they are crying for not having enough time to do more! Not everybody is made to only work for money.
- heavenlyblue 9y agoHow do you decide which projects receive more funding than others?