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I'm...pretty sure unions would end up being heavily anti open source. "I'm sorry, the union is opposed to postgres. You can either roll your own DB or use Orac

I'm...pretty sure unions would end up being heavily anti open source. "I'm sorry, the union is opposed to postgres. You can either roll your own DB or use Oracle. Oh, and you're not allowed to store more than half a million rows without a Union Approved database administrator."

tptacek 8y ago
You think an organization composed of rank-and-file software developers would work to oppose open source? That seems extremely unlikely. When you form an organized labor bloc, it's not like the Teamsters come in and manage your field for you. The people deciding what workplace changes to push for are the developers themselves.
robert_foss 8y ago
That strikes me as being Anti-Union FUD.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean? I'm not the parent commenter, and personally have no reason to spread FUD, and yet the parent comment aligns with my (admittedly low-confidence) model of how institutions in general and unions in particular tend to work and have worked historically
Jim_Heckler 8y ago
Wait what? What does that even mean? An engineer's union wouldn't be dictating programming practices, it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Besides, unions would most certainly be more pro-open source than any corporate entity. Open source gives everyone the opportunity to be heard and have their feelings and thoughts actually affect outcomes; this is more or less the same goal of a workers union.
- chcknsammich 8y ago
  > it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Oh you sweet summer child..
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- rconti 8y ago
  An engineer's union would be whatever its members wanted it to be. Whether you like or agree with those members or not. Whether those members are at your organization or not. Whether the decision was made last week or 30 years ago and just never changed. Unions, like all organizations, have institutional inertia. And they do good things and bad things.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  No, I disagree. If unions REALLY wanted everyone to have the opportunity to be heard and respected feelings, there would be no violence and intimidation when people move to cross a picket line. It happens. It's ugly. And it shows unions are NOT about respect for anyone's feelings that don't align with the 'endorsed' way of thinking.
  - ABCLAW 8y ago
    >And it shows unions are NOT about respect for anyone's feelings that don't align with the 'endorsed' way of thinking. Crossing a picket line doesn't elicit an ugly response because people are upset about how others are thinking. It elicits a response because scabs directly undermine the union's main leverage with which they bargain collectively. It's about power, not thought control.
    - masonic 8y ago
      because scabs You just confirmed the comment to which you replied.
CydeWeys 8y ago
Huh??? What kind of software engineers do you work with that prefer proprietary software over FLOSS?!?! I'm quite sure tech unions would end up being heavily pro-open source, with the result of more code being open sourced throughout the industry. I say this as the TL of a team at Google that fought (and won) to open source our project. It wouldn't have happened were it not for me and a few other engineers pushing for it to happen.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Unions =/= the employees they supposedly represent. I can easily see a union boss say "Our Oracle employees' wages will be undercut by these unauthorized developers using FLOSS alternatives. This is unacceptable. It is our job as union representatives to insist on the highest standard of professional software, and demand that all unionized software houses use Oracle." Much of the opportunity in the software industry comes from software developers undercutting other software developers. You & I like it when we're the beneficiaries, and not the dinosaurs being undercut. There's no guarantee (and actually a pretty strong selection incentive against) the innovative developers being the ones with political power.
  - scarmig 8y ago
    Exactly like how all the unions representing ER nurses do their best to undermine road and workplace safety, in order to guarantee jobs for the nurses they represent. Oh, wait... ETA: more seriously, unions can push for or against bad practices, just as management also can. Broad generalizations almost always represent ideological campaigns more than an objective appraisal of the on-the-ground landscape.
    - el_nahual 8y ago
      More like how the reason buildings in the USA don't have waterless urinals is because of the plumber's union.
Barrin92 8y ago
that is the most incoherent thing I've ever heard. It literally sounds like one of these "if we allow gay marriage, we'll have sodomy in the streets" posts you find on boomer-generation facebook
koonsolo 8y ago
Hi, Europe here. We have unions, and it has basically nothing to do with open source. It has like, ZERO relation to unions.
michaelchisari 8y ago
An even mildly democratic union comprised of engineers would never stand for that.
el_nahual 8y ago
Replying to clarify my point for all the replies: Think of all the job descriptions that have become irrelevant, for most startups, in the last decade: "DBA", "sysadmin", "IT". Even in the past year or two, thanks to docker, there's less need for "devops". Unions exist to protect the interests of today's--not tomorrow's--workforce. So yes, I certainly believe that a union would say "companies that use docker hire 90% fewer sysadmins than those that do not. We have 70,000 members with that job description. The next collective bargaining agreement will forbid it. Labor unions have historically been anti automation. If you think software unions are somehow different then the burden of proof is on you. Imagine that 10 years from now someone invents an AI that can magically take a set of plain english specifications and output a working, high-quality CRUD web app, making a single engineer as efficient as 10. Do you think the software engineers union at BigEnterpriseCo would let them use it?
- scarmig 8y ago
  I mean, anyone can make up stories in their heads. You're the one making a very strong claim about unions universally being anti-automation. Support it before trying to shift the burden of argument simply because you're lazy. Thirty seconds of Googling got me this on the USW blog, from a week ago, celebrating automation: https://m.usw.org/blog/2018/automation-augmentation-enhances-workers-roles-in-factories https://m.usw.org/blog/2018/automation-augmentation-enhances...
  - dang 8y ago
    Getting personally nasty will get you banned here, so please don't do that, even when someone else is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Fortunately we don't need to rely on your hypothesis here; we can simply look at what's actually happening in the many countries where unions for software engineers are common. Do you have actual examples of irrelevant jobs in software engineering that have been kept on because of unions? How about unions advocating for proprietary software in order to keep out open source software? Given that many software unions already exist, the burden of proof is on you to prove that such things are actually happening. It's unreasonable to expect someone to prove the negative here.
Spooky23 8y ago
I was a unionized IT worker for about a decade. No such bullshit commenced. The closest thing was demanding that 24x7 oncall be compensated.
- masonic 8y ago
  In other words, the union went years without negotiating compensation for being on call. My nonunion companies over the years all did compensate.
  - purple_ducks 8y ago
    OP could just as likely mean..."when 24-7 was introduced, they demanded compensation." 24-7 isn't required if your org only depends on system between working hours.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    24x7 wasn’t a big thing in the era of “data processing”, and things like mainframes were staffed 24x7,

tptacek 8y ago

You think an organization composed of rank-and-file software developers would work to oppose open source? That seems extremely unlikely. When you form an organized labor bloc, it's not like the Teamsters come in and manage your field for you. The people deciding what workplace changes to push for are the developers themselves.

robert_foss 8y ago

That strikes me as being Anti-Union FUD.

wutbrodo 8y ago
Can you elaborate on what you mean? I'm not the parent commenter, and personally have no reason to spread FUD, and yet the parent comment aligns with my (admittedly low-confidence) model of how institutions in general and unions in particular tend to work and have worked historically

Jim_Heckler 8y ago

Wait what? What does that even mean? An engineer's union wouldn't be dictating programming practices, it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Besides, unions would most certainly be more pro-open source than any corporate entity. Open source gives everyone the opportunity to be heard and have their feelings and thoughts actually affect outcomes; this is more or less the same goal of a workers union.

chcknsammich 8y ago
> it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Oh you sweet summer child..
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
rconti 8y ago
An engineer's union would be whatever its members wanted it to be. Whether you like or agree with those members or not. Whether those members are at your organization or not. Whether the decision was made last week or 30 years ago and just never changed. Unions, like all organizations, have institutional inertia. And they do good things and bad things.
RickJWagner 8y ago
No, I disagree. If unions REALLY wanted everyone to have the opportunity to be heard and respected feelings, there would be no violence and intimidation when people move to cross a picket line. It happens. It's ugly. And it shows unions are NOT about respect for anyone's feelings that don't align with the 'endorsed' way of thinking.
- ABCLAW 8y ago
  >And it shows unions are NOT about respect for anyone's feelings that don't align with the 'endorsed' way of thinking. Crossing a picket line doesn't elicit an ugly response because people are upset about how others are thinking. It elicits a response because scabs directly undermine the union's main leverage with which they bargain collectively. It's about power, not thought control.
  - masonic 8y ago
    because scabs You just confirmed the comment to which you replied.

CydeWeys 8y ago

Huh??? What kind of software engineers do you work with that prefer proprietary software over FLOSS?!?! I'm quite sure tech unions would end up being heavily pro-open source, with the result of more code being open sourced throughout the industry. I say this as the TL of a team at Google that fought (and won) to open source our project. It wouldn't have happened were it not for me and a few other engineers pushing for it to happen.

nostrademons 8y ago
Unions =/= the employees they supposedly represent. I can easily see a union boss say "Our Oracle employees' wages will be undercut by these unauthorized developers using FLOSS alternatives. This is unacceptable. It is our job as union representatives to insist on the highest standard of professional software, and demand that all unionized software houses use Oracle." Much of the opportunity in the software industry comes from software developers undercutting other software developers. You & I like it when we're the beneficiaries, and not the dinosaurs being undercut. There's no guarantee (and actually a pretty strong selection incentive against) the innovative developers being the ones with political power.
- scarmig 8y ago
  Exactly like how all the unions representing ER nurses do their best to undermine road and workplace safety, in order to guarantee jobs for the nurses they represent. Oh, wait... ETA: more seriously, unions can push for or against bad practices, just as management also can. Broad generalizations almost always represent ideological campaigns more than an objective appraisal of the on-the-ground landscape.
  - el_nahual 8y ago
    More like how the reason buildings in the USA don't have waterless urinals is because of the plumber's union.

Barrin92 8y ago

that is the most incoherent thing I've ever heard. It literally sounds like one of these "if we allow gay marriage, we'll have sodomy in the streets" posts you find on boomer-generation facebook

koonsolo 8y ago

Hi, Europe here. We have unions, and it has basically nothing to do with open source. It has like, ZERO relation to unions.

michaelchisari 8y ago

An even mildly democratic union comprised of engineers would never stand for that.

el_nahual 8y ago

Replying to clarify my point for all the replies: Think of all the job descriptions that have become irrelevant, for most startups, in the last decade: "DBA", "sysadmin", "IT". Even in the past year or two, thanks to docker, there's less need for "devops". Unions exist to protect the interests of today's--not tomorrow's--workforce. So yes, I certainly believe that a union would say "companies that use docker hire 90% fewer sysadmins than those that do not. We have 70,000 members with that job description. The next collective bargaining agreement will forbid it. Labor unions have historically been anti automation. If you think software unions are somehow different then the burden of proof is on you. Imagine that 10 years from now someone invents an AI that can magically take a set of plain english specifications and output a working, high-quality CRUD web app, making a single engineer as efficient as 10. Do you think the software engineers union at BigEnterpriseCo would let them use it?

scarmig 8y ago
I mean, anyone can make up stories in their heads. You're the one making a very strong claim about unions universally being anti-automation. Support it before trying to shift the burden of argument simply because you're lazy. Thirty seconds of Googling got me this on the USW blog, from a week ago, celebrating automation: https://m.usw.org/blog/2018/automation-augmentation-enhances-workers-roles-in-factories https://m.usw.org/blog/2018/automation-augmentation-enhances...
- dang 8y ago
  Getting personally nasty will get you banned here, so please don't do that, even when someone else is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
CydeWeys 8y ago
Fortunately we don't need to rely on your hypothesis here; we can simply look at what's actually happening in the many countries where unions for software engineers are common. Do you have actual examples of irrelevant jobs in software engineering that have been kept on because of unions? How about unions advocating for proprietary software in order to keep out open source software? Given that many software unions already exist, the burden of proof is on you to prove that such things are actually happening. It's unreasonable to expect someone to prove the negative here.

Spooky23 8y ago

I was a unionized IT worker for about a decade. No such bullshit commenced. The closest thing was demanding that 24x7 oncall be compensated.

masonic 8y ago
In other words, the union went years without negotiating compensation for being on call. My nonunion companies over the years all did compensate.
- purple_ducks 8y ago
  OP could just as likely mean..."when 24-7 was introduced, they demanded compensation." 24-7 isn't required if your org only depends on system between working hours.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  24x7 wasn’t a big thing in the era of “data processing”, and things like mainframes were staffed 24x7,