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The maintainer says they have to pay for rent. Whether advertising in your open source project is good or not, wanting money to pay your landlord for rent isn't

by lal 7y ago

The maintainer says they have to pay for rent. Whether advertising in your open source project is good or not, wanting money to pay your landlord for rent isn't rent-seeking just because you saw the word rent in it. I'm assuming you hadn't heard of the term rent-seeking before and just read the two words and decided it must mean "looking for money to pay your rent". Rent-seeking is a term with a specific definition [0] and "I need to pay my rent" isn't it. In simple terms, rent-seeking refers to the behavior of the landlord, not the behavior of a tenant. It may even be a term that applies to this situation, but the dev saying they need to pay their rent is entirely unrelated. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

sokoloff 7y ago
Note that even the landlord is not "rent seeking" in the economics sense, even though they do literally "seek rent" as an essential element of their job. A landlord is seeking compensation for a mutually beneficial transaction ("you get shelter; I get money") and is providing value to the tenant. If I block off a river and charge you a toll to pass, I'm rent seeking. If I dig the Panama Canal and charge you a toll to pass, I'm not rent seeking.
aastronaut 7y ago
Thanks for the link, I was indeed unaware of the term. By looking through the ongoing discussion, it was interesting to find a reference to the core-js issue [0] from earlier this year. Its maintainer, with his established position in the npm community, makes use of a similar post-install script to open up a discussion and communicate his situation. This gives him a more direct communication channel to its users without directly helping his situation. What I assume can be understood as a rent-seeking practice, is how fooreys intention, with the same political power in maintaining a popular package, seems not to be solely to raise awareness to his situation. But instead he's forced a solution to his problem by advertising unrelated 3rd party products. Whereas he interestingly also uses the term experiment, it did already render npm as a space for advertisement. [0] https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548

by lal 7y ago

sokoloff 7y ago

Note that even the landlord is not "rent seeking" in the economics sense, even though they do literally "seek rent" as an essential element of their job. A landlord is seeking compensation for a mutually beneficial transaction ("you get shelter; I get money") and is providing value to the tenant. If I block off a river and charge you a toll to pass, I'm rent seeking. If I dig the Panama Canal and charge you a toll to pass, I'm not rent seeking.

aastronaut 7y ago

Thanks for the link, I was indeed unaware of the term. By looking through the ongoing discussion, it was interesting to find a reference to the core-js issue [0] from earlier this year. Its maintainer, with his established position in the npm community, makes use of a similar post-install script to open up a discussion and communicate his situation. This gives him a more direct communication channel to its users without directly helping his situation. What I assume can be understood as a rent-seeking practice, is how fooreys intention, with the same political power in maintaining a popular package, seems not to be solely to raise awareness to his situation. But instead he's forced a solution to his problem by advertising unrelated 3rd party products. Whereas he interestingly also uses the term experiment, it did already render npm as a space for advertisement. [0] https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548