3 ms·

I think this is the exact point of the article. Executives don’t think like you, so if you want to make it big with your software, you have to change how you th

I think this is the exact point of the article. Executives don’t think like you, so if you want to make it big with your software, you have to change how you think. Even if it means annoying middle management and their direct reports.

trimbo 7y ago
That might be the point of the article, but the point of the grandparent is that the only method to get this data is to be seedy as hell. And that we should aspire to use our talents for better things.
- zanny 7y ago
  Better things don't pay, at all. The most betterest things you can do as a developer - make infrastructure that makes other developers more efficient, or invent protocols or fundamentals to build ecosystems and industries on - often you get nothing for it. Because you made it open source, because you wanted it to be useful. But to try to make it proprietary would have been to make it useless. Theres a reason probably 95% of software developers are employed to write redundant repetitive corporate business software over and over and over again. Everything else is being done philanthropically because anyone outside the perview of a budget department at a big co recognizes the value in reaching a consensus solution everyone uses because its a lot of work to make and is good enough. Even corporate-adjacent software like databases, game engines, etc are trending this way - Unreal, Unity, and Godot are all varying degrees of open now in ways engines weren't even a half decade ago. The world is coalescing around Postgres in a way unexpectable a decade ago under the tyranny of SQL Server and Oracle SQL alongside a half dozen "competing" open source databases. Do you think those who contribute the most to Postgres get anything close to "reasonable" compensation for having architected the database engine that is now running likely trillions in business infrastructure and data management? Their software is maximally useful - "the betterest things" - but you can't survive being maximally useful. You have to sacrifice how useful what you make is to not be homeless in 99.99% of cases. You have to make worse, often redundant things, wasting your time and the time of others in the process, because thats the only (feasible and/or reliable) way corporations will pay you to write software.
  - zomglings 7y ago
    Why do we have such an emphasis on making our tools open source? How much does the license matter? Would it be feasible to release source code for inspection while simultaneously retaining exclusive rights to operate the software? Would that garner a negative response from the developer community?
    - lukevp 7y ago
      This is like a source available license and we’re trending to that. elastic, redis, I believe mongo, are all making versions of this that allow the source to be public and even used for commercial purposes, but not for commercial purposes that compete with the company.
opportune 7y ago
I guess the mental calculus depends on how much you value positively impacting society vs just wanting money

trimbo 7y ago

That might be the point of the article, but the point of the grandparent is that the only method to get this data is to be seedy as hell. And that we should aspire to use our talents for better things.

zanny 7y ago
Better things don't pay, at all. The most betterest things you can do as a developer - make infrastructure that makes other developers more efficient, or invent protocols or fundamentals to build ecosystems and industries on - often you get nothing for it. Because you made it open source, because you wanted it to be useful. But to try to make it proprietary would have been to make it useless. Theres a reason probably 95% of software developers are employed to write redundant repetitive corporate business software over and over and over again. Everything else is being done philanthropically because anyone outside the perview of a budget department at a big co recognizes the value in reaching a consensus solution everyone uses because its a lot of work to make and is good enough. Even corporate-adjacent software like databases, game engines, etc are trending this way - Unreal, Unity, and Godot are all varying degrees of open now in ways engines weren't even a half decade ago. The world is coalescing around Postgres in a way unexpectable a decade ago under the tyranny of SQL Server and Oracle SQL alongside a half dozen "competing" open source databases. Do you think those who contribute the most to Postgres get anything close to "reasonable" compensation for having architected the database engine that is now running likely trillions in business infrastructure and data management? Their software is maximally useful - "the betterest things" - but you can't survive being maximally useful. You have to sacrifice how useful what you make is to not be homeless in 99.99% of cases. You have to make worse, often redundant things, wasting your time and the time of others in the process, because thats the only (feasible and/or reliable) way corporations will pay you to write software.
- zomglings 7y ago
  Why do we have such an emphasis on making our tools open source? How much does the license matter? Would it be feasible to release source code for inspection while simultaneously retaining exclusive rights to operate the software? Would that garner a negative response from the developer community?
  - lukevp 7y ago
    This is like a source available license and we’re trending to that. elastic, redis, I believe mongo, are all making versions of this that allow the source to be public and even used for commercial purposes, but not for commercial purposes that compete with the company.

opportune 7y ago

I guess the mental calculus depends on how much you value positively impacting society vs just wanting money