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I find the author's attitude maddening. People writing open-source software are not being exploited. People writing open-source software have alternatives. T

by JackFr 7y ago

I find the author's attitude maddening. People writing open-source software are not being exploited. People writing open-source software have alternatives. They can simply stop writing open-source software. It does a disservice to the millions of people on the planet who do not have alternatives, and who are truly being exploited.

ozim 7y ago
Author also comes from perspective that somehow "project" in itself is good and should be sustained. Open source projects are not endengered species to keep it alive. If no one is interested in paying for project, then people don't need it. Simple as that, when project breaks like open ssh companies will chip in...
- ghaff 7y ago
  >when project breaks like open ssh companies will chip in... Although, in that case, they really didn't. At least not enough. That's why you ended up with a Core Infrastructure Initiative. (Which, to be sure, is indirectly companies chipping in because that's mostly how the Linux Foundation gets funded but it's not individual companies bankrolling critical infrastructure software.)
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    Good example. People expect FLOSS developers to contribute work on their weekends and never complain about not being paid. Meanwhile Linux runs the power plants that keep the lights on.
    - ozim 7y ago
      That is the problem that devs are nice people who are doing it for free on weekends. This should end, and pointy haired bosses should deal with fallout at best from their own pockets.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  Let's try replacing FLOSS with scientific research and see how wrong it sounds: "Author also comes from perspective that somehow research in itself is good and should be sustained. Scientific research projects are not endengered species to keep it alive. If no one is interested in paying for research, then people don't need it. Simple as that, when science breaks like open ssh companies will chip in... "
  - ozim 7y ago
    All those crap papers that people write just to get PHD should vanish. On the other hand how much science went into SpaceX and reusable rockets? How much science is in chemistry to get new drugs because there are tons of people who would pay for that. Somehow LHC got funded and it was not cheap. In past inventors were guys that had too much free time and too much money.
vijaybritto 7y ago
I think he means to say that companies who are benefiting from someone's work must pay them.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
Exploitation does not require people to be forced to work. Also claiming that people can "simply stop writing open-source software" is a false dichotomy and quite patronizing.
staltz 7y ago
Author here. "People writing open source software are not being exploited." Well, I got the curiosity to check the data after having just met with people writing open source software. So I think if you make that claim, you should back it up with at least non-zero evidence. I have done my part.
- Insanity 7y ago
  I guess the parent means that some people don't have a choice in their situation (or not as much). Open source maintainers do have this choice. I like contributing to OSS and do so frequently for fun. But the idea of it being a (sole) source of income is scary unfortunately.
- justin66 7y ago
  This is not responsive to the parent poster's point. You appear to have a disagreement about the meaning of "exploited," not about the data.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  Okay. You claim that Electron is a below-the-poverty-line project - one of the projects where people are being 'exploited'. Electron is a GitHub project and GitHub got acquired for $7.5B. That doesn't seem particularly 'exploited' to me. (Why you compare GitHub's acquisition price to the amount of money being put into open-source instead of seeing it as money being put into open-source is beyond me)
  - staltz 7y ago
    On Electron, I wrote this in my article: > ... such as Prettier, Curl, Jekyll, Electron. This doesn’t mean the people working on those projects are poor, because in several cases the maintainers have jobs at companies that allow open source contributions. Then, > Why you compare GitHub's acquisition price to the amount of money being put into open-source instead of seeing it as money being put into open-source is beyond me. Because Microsoft, as a public company, cannot make an acquisition the size of 20% their profit that year without a clear plan for ROI on that cost, and this will likely happen through some integration with Azure, since the GitHub CEO reports to Microsoft's VP of Cloud and Enterprise. And even if GitHub is seen as a platform that supports open source (therefore money into the platform being a positive for open source), it is weird and unfair for a support partner to earn significantly more money than the core persons involved in open source.
mythrwy 7y ago
Maybe "exploited" is a little strong but some of these projects are essential components of modern development stacks. So it's not just the injustice of people toiling away and eating ramen that is at issue here. What happens if people take you up on your advice? What is incentive for quality people to keep churning out open source tooling?
pluma 7y ago
They're being "exploited" in the sense the word is used in the critique of capitalism. They're producing immense value but other people monetise that value while they're barely receiving any meaningful compensation if at all. It comes more easily if you accept the definition that working as an employee is inherently exploitative as you need to produce more value than you are paid in wages for your employment to be profitable to the employer (who ideally profits so much from the difference that they are compensated for the economical risk they carry and their initial investment, i.e. capital). Certainly calling it exploitation carries a value judgement but objectively this is how open source works: in a capitalist system, most labor is exploited and because it's largely uncompensated open source is being particularly exploited.
- staltz 7y ago
  Yes, and what I meant by exploitation is this: open source is a culture of gifting, either in the form of new projects, or pull requests, donations, or other forms of volunteering. Companies (not all) quite often consciously do not participate in that culture, but still use the code and community to create their surpluses.
  - pluma 7y ago
    Well, that's why the GPL was created: to make it impossible to siphon off profits by building on open source. Of course that is wildly incompatible with how most businesses operate, so the corporate world pushed open source authors towards more business-friendly licenses like MIT and Apache. Of course what most people overlook with GPL in businesses (as an individual) is that as using the GPL excludes you from large sections of the economy and thus carries a cost not everyone can afford. In turn companies frequently use the GPL for "open source washing" via public/private licensing. In the 90s I used to hear a lot of people joking that the GPL view on open source is communism. After having shifted politically to the left I now think that joke is actually truer than most people realise. And the incompatibility of a communist "gift economy" (i.e. take what you need, give what you can) with the capitalist host system lies at the core of most of the problems we see with open source sustainability. In other words: open source "economics" (voluntary mutual exchange with no strings attached) is entirely alien to capitalism because in capitalism this behavior is essentially economic suicide except for a few scenarios (e.g. general marketing like Google, onboarding and recruiting like Facebook or promoting commercial services like Microsoft). Much like how CJ characterised npm Inc in her JSConf EU talk, these companies aren't walking all over open source authors because they're evil, they're doing it because they have no useful way to interact with them except for marketing. Your piece reads mostly like it's trying to get employees to force their employers to support open source via the usual means of labor struggle (i.e. threatening to withhold their labor, shame them so others withhold their labor) but that to me looks more like a band-aid.
verttii 7y ago
I have to agree with you here, I find no exploitation in committing to open source projects. I believe nobody does that for money and the expectations are clear in that regard to begin with. That said, of course I'd like to see good open source maintainers enjoy a comfortable life. However, the author appears to live in Finland. Accepting donations is illegal in Finland, so that income model would not work there anyway.

by JackFr 7y ago

ozim 7y ago

Author also comes from perspective that somehow "project" in itself is good and should be sustained. Open source projects are not endengered species to keep it alive. If no one is interested in paying for project, then people don't need it. Simple as that, when project breaks like open ssh companies will chip in...

ghaff 7y ago
>when project breaks like open ssh companies will chip in... Although, in that case, they really didn't. At least not enough. That's why you ended up with a Core Infrastructure Initiative. (Which, to be sure, is indirectly companies chipping in because that's mostly how the Linux Foundation gets funded but it's not individual companies bankrolling critical infrastructure software.)
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  Good example. People expect FLOSS developers to contribute work on their weekends and never complain about not being paid. Meanwhile Linux runs the power plants that keep the lights on.
  - ozim 7y ago
    That is the problem that devs are nice people who are doing it for free on weekends. This should end, and pointy haired bosses should deal with fallout at best from their own pockets.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
Let's try replacing FLOSS with scientific research and see how wrong it sounds: "Author also comes from perspective that somehow research in itself is good and should be sustained. Scientific research projects are not endengered species to keep it alive. If no one is interested in paying for research, then people don't need it. Simple as that, when science breaks like open ssh companies will chip in... "
- ozim 7y ago
  All those crap papers that people write just to get PHD should vanish. On the other hand how much science went into SpaceX and reusable rockets? How much science is in chemistry to get new drugs because there are tons of people who would pay for that. Somehow LHC got funded and it was not cheap. In past inventors were guys that had too much free time and too much money.

vijaybritto 7y ago

I think he means to say that companies who are benefiting from someone's work must pay them.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

Exploitation does not require people to be forced to work. Also claiming that people can "simply stop writing open-source software" is a false dichotomy and quite patronizing.

staltz 7y ago

Author here. "People writing open source software are not being exploited." Well, I got the curiosity to check the data after having just met with people writing open source software. So I think if you make that claim, you should back it up with at least non-zero evidence. I have done my part.

Insanity 7y ago
I guess the parent means that some people don't have a choice in their situation (or not as much). Open source maintainers do have this choice. I like contributing to OSS and do so frequently for fun. But the idea of it being a (sole) source of income is scary unfortunately.
justin66 7y ago
This is not responsive to the parent poster's point. You appear to have a disagreement about the meaning of "exploited," not about the data.
solidasparagus 7y ago
Okay. You claim that Electron is a below-the-poverty-line project - one of the projects where people are being 'exploited'. Electron is a GitHub project and GitHub got acquired for $7.5B. That doesn't seem particularly 'exploited' to me. (Why you compare GitHub's acquisition price to the amount of money being put into open-source instead of seeing it as money being put into open-source is beyond me)
- staltz 7y ago
  On Electron, I wrote this in my article: > ... such as Prettier, Curl, Jekyll, Electron. This doesn’t mean the people working on those projects are poor, because in several cases the maintainers have jobs at companies that allow open source contributions. Then, > Why you compare GitHub's acquisition price to the amount of money being put into open-source instead of seeing it as money being put into open-source is beyond me. Because Microsoft, as a public company, cannot make an acquisition the size of 20% their profit that year without a clear plan for ROI on that cost, and this will likely happen through some integration with Azure, since the GitHub CEO reports to Microsoft's VP of Cloud and Enterprise. And even if GitHub is seen as a platform that supports open source (therefore money into the platform being a positive for open source), it is weird and unfair for a support partner to earn significantly more money than the core persons involved in open source.

mythrwy 7y ago

Maybe "exploited" is a little strong but some of these projects are essential components of modern development stacks. So it's not just the injustice of people toiling away and eating ramen that is at issue here. What happens if people take you up on your advice? What is incentive for quality people to keep churning out open source tooling?

pluma 7y ago

They're being "exploited" in the sense the word is used in the critique of capitalism. They're producing immense value but other people monetise that value while they're barely receiving any meaningful compensation if at all. It comes more easily if you accept the definition that working as an employee is inherently exploitative as you need to produce more value than you are paid in wages for your employment to be profitable to the employer (who ideally profits so much from the difference that they are compensated for the economical risk they carry and their initial investment, i.e. capital). Certainly calling it exploitation carries a value judgement but objectively this is how open source works: in a capitalist system, most labor is exploited and because it's largely uncompensated open source is being particularly exploited.

staltz 7y ago
Yes, and what I meant by exploitation is this: open source is a culture of gifting, either in the form of new projects, or pull requests, donations, or other forms of volunteering. Companies (not all) quite often consciously do not participate in that culture, but still use the code and community to create their surpluses.
- pluma 7y ago
  Well, that's why the GPL was created: to make it impossible to siphon off profits by building on open source. Of course that is wildly incompatible with how most businesses operate, so the corporate world pushed open source authors towards more business-friendly licenses like MIT and Apache. Of course what most people overlook with GPL in businesses (as an individual) is that as using the GPL excludes you from large sections of the economy and thus carries a cost not everyone can afford. In turn companies frequently use the GPL for "open source washing" via public/private licensing. In the 90s I used to hear a lot of people joking that the GPL view on open source is communism. After having shifted politically to the left I now think that joke is actually truer than most people realise. And the incompatibility of a communist "gift economy" (i.e. take what you need, give what you can) with the capitalist host system lies at the core of most of the problems we see with open source sustainability. In other words: open source "economics" (voluntary mutual exchange with no strings attached) is entirely alien to capitalism because in capitalism this behavior is essentially economic suicide except for a few scenarios (e.g. general marketing like Google, onboarding and recruiting like Facebook or promoting commercial services like Microsoft). Much like how CJ characterised npm Inc in her JSConf EU talk, these companies aren't walking all over open source authors because they're evil, they're doing it because they have no useful way to interact with them except for marketing. Your piece reads mostly like it's trying to get employees to force their employers to support open source via the usual means of labor struggle (i.e. threatening to withhold their labor, shame them so others withhold their labor) but that to me looks more like a band-aid.

verttii 7y ago

I have to agree with you here, I find no exploitation in committing to open source projects. I believe nobody does that for money and the expectations are clear in that regard to begin with. That said, of course I'd like to see good open source maintainers enjoy a comfortable life. However, the author appears to live in Finland. Accepting donations is illegal in Finland, so that income model would not work there anyway.