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Everyone thinks they deserve a dollar and can never imagine that the relative value of their code is effectively zero no matter how much it solves a particular

Everyone thinks they deserve a dollar and can never imagine that the relative value of their code is effectively zero no matter how much it solves a particular problem. >Big projects — operating systems, frameworks, CMSs, or fully self-hostable applications — are in a privileged position to extract more value from their users, especially corporate ones Big projects aren't privileged to extract more value. They're privileged to solve enough of a problem for enough people that the scraps thrown their way amount to a meaningful warchest. Corporate big projects are privileged to extract wealth. That's the part that pays crazy SWE salaries.

colinmcd 6y ago
You seem to be reacting against the term "privileged" in a way I didn't intend. I don't mean to say that they have some unfair advantage. They just have a more foundational role in the tech stack of the products built on top of them, so companies have a bigger incentive to keep the wheels turning.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jart 6y ago
  I'd love to learn more specific details about your leveraging strategy. Keep in mind even someone like Torvalds only serves at the pleasure of big corporations. Let's keep gift economies in alignment with public interest folks. It's difficult to imagine a competent developer needing to squeeze people, for cash money to pay rent, considering how much coders get paid.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Two-thirds of projects on GitHub have 1-2 maintainers, as of 2015.[1][2] I’m sure many of those people are in other areas or occupations, or in other countries, where these high-paying jobs may not exist. Some people simply don’t wish to work at a company, and those folks still may produce value to those other than themselves. Let’s not appeal to productivity too hard; learners and those of lesser coding capability also create value in the form of skills and knowledge. It’s hard to identify and quantify those whose contributions helped most, but I feel all contributions are worthwhile. Not all code may be tip-worthy, but I don’t feel chagrin toward those collecting, however they do so. > Only three projects—less than 3 percent of the study’s sample—had more than 50 contributors.[1] [1] https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer-projects/ https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308894462 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308894462
    - musingsole 6y ago
      > those folks still may produce value to those other than themselves. They may, but my point here is that the reason a corporate SWE's code is so valuable isn't because of the code itself. It's because of the ecosystem that the SWE and corp are a part of. That ecosystem serves to multiply a meaningless block of code into a couple million dollars that can be split nicely with all the non-coders who made it useful. Without that ecosystem, an open source project can never hope to monetize to the same level. That big open source projects have substantial funding is an effect of being so imminently usable in those million dollar ecosystems that the forgotten scraps of the corporations are enough to sustain them.
      - aspenmayer 6y ago
        I generally agree with your interpretation, but I don’t see what you’re advocating for. What do you think are the flaws/benefits of big open source projects receiving the lion’s share of open source donations? What funding model makes sense for those smaller projects? For many groups doing fundraising, the work of doing the fundraising itself is extremely labor and time intensive compared to the actual work the group does. Fundraising costs incentivize projects to become bigger and higher-profile to enhance their fundraising ability, but this increase in size and reach may not be helpful to all projects in all ways equally. More bugs may be squashed from more eyes; more cooks in the kitchen may make for lower quality standards of releases. It’s all a double-edged sword. I’m curious about your thoughts on this conundrum.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zelly 6y ago
Yeah, the market value for most of these open source packages is $0. There's nothing about charging for software that goes against the spirit of libre software. (In the 2000s, Debian and Ubuntu made money by charging for CDs of the installers.) The reason these npm-type packages can't charge is that they're extremely fungible. Left-pad, react-router, etc. are trivial and nearly identical to the next one that is given away for free. It's like news articles. The NYT article throws up a hard paywall? Then I'll just search for another story on Business Insider, Bloomberg, Reuters, some blog, etc. until I find one that's not paywalled. What kind of software are people actually willing to pay for? Microsoft Office, Qt, AAA games, Bloomberg Terminal. You need to step your game up significantly if you want to enforce payment.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  > The reason these npm-type packages can't charge is that they're extremely fungible. I'd say it's less that they're highly substitutable (which I was I think you mean, instead of fungible) and more that they are non-excludable goods. A seller has no way to exclude a buyer from consuming opensource; that is in fact part of the definition. But without excludability, there's no incentive for a buyer to buy, other than charitable feeling. Put another way, it's a textbook example of the free-rider problem or collective action problem. These are usually solved either with compulsion, such as taxes, subsidy or command-and-control; or they are solved by benefaction. Benefaction is what we have, as a rule. It's like how a rich patron of the arts donates to an opera company without capturing all of the subsequent value the opera creates (most is captured by the rest of the audience). Very large portions of OSS is developed by fulltime professionals whose time is essentially being given away without any meaningful way to exclude non-payers. The other means is bundling. Mix the non-excludable part with an excludable part, such as a services contract. But OSS can always be unbundled from services or packaging . In my experience, most unbundlers radically discount the cost of doing so.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    > non-excludable I think the term you're looking for is "public goods", which combines non-rivalrous and the author chooses not to exclude people through legal means. Running out of time to comment before I need to get to work so I'll just link our economics page here: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/economics https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/economics

colinmcd 6y ago

You seem to be reacting against the term "privileged" in a way I didn't intend. I don't mean to say that they have some unfair advantage. They just have a more foundational role in the tech stack of the products built on top of them, so companies have a bigger incentive to keep the wheels turning.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jart 6y ago
I'd love to learn more specific details about your leveraging strategy. Keep in mind even someone like Torvalds only serves at the pleasure of big corporations. Let's keep gift economies in alignment with public interest folks. It's difficult to imagine a competent developer needing to squeeze people, for cash money to pay rent, considering how much coders get paid.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Two-thirds of projects on GitHub have 1-2 maintainers, as of 2015.[1][2] I’m sure many of those people are in other areas or occupations, or in other countries, where these high-paying jobs may not exist. Some people simply don’t wish to work at a company, and those folks still may produce value to those other than themselves. Let’s not appeal to productivity too hard; learners and those of lesser coding capability also create value in the form of skills and knowledge. It’s hard to identify and quantify those whose contributions helped most, but I feel all contributions are worthwhile. Not all code may be tip-worthy, but I don’t feel chagrin toward those collecting, however they do so. > Only three projects—less than 3 percent of the study’s sample—had more than 50 contributors.[1] [1] https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer-projects/ https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308894462 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308894462
  - musingsole 6y ago
    > those folks still may produce value to those other than themselves. They may, but my point here is that the reason a corporate SWE's code is so valuable isn't because of the code itself. It's because of the ecosystem that the SWE and corp are a part of. That ecosystem serves to multiply a meaningless block of code into a couple million dollars that can be split nicely with all the non-coders who made it useful. Without that ecosystem, an open source project can never hope to monetize to the same level. That big open source projects have substantial funding is an effect of being so imminently usable in those million dollar ecosystems that the forgotten scraps of the corporations are enough to sustain them.
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      I generally agree with your interpretation, but I don’t see what you’re advocating for. What do you think are the flaws/benefits of big open source projects receiving the lion’s share of open source donations? What funding model makes sense for those smaller projects? For many groups doing fundraising, the work of doing the fundraising itself is extremely labor and time intensive compared to the actual work the group does. Fundraising costs incentivize projects to become bigger and higher-profile to enhance their fundraising ability, but this increase in size and reach may not be helpful to all projects in all ways equally. More bugs may be squashed from more eyes; more cooks in the kitchen may make for lower quality standards of releases. It’s all a double-edged sword. I’m curious about your thoughts on this conundrum.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zelly 6y ago

Yeah, the market value for most of these open source packages is $0. There's nothing about charging for software that goes against the spirit of libre software. (In the 2000s, Debian and Ubuntu made money by charging for CDs of the installers.) The reason these npm-type packages can't charge is that they're extremely fungible. Left-pad, react-router, etc. are trivial and nearly identical to the next one that is given away for free. It's like news articles. The NYT article throws up a hard paywall? Then I'll just search for another story on Business Insider, Bloomberg, Reuters, some blog, etc. until I find one that's not paywalled. What kind of software are people actually willing to pay for? Microsoft Office, Qt, AAA games, Bloomberg Terminal. You need to step your game up significantly if you want to enforce payment.

jacques_chester 6y ago
> The reason these npm-type packages can't charge is that they're extremely fungible. I'd say it's less that they're highly substitutable (which I was I think you mean, instead of fungible) and more that they are non-excludable goods. A seller has no way to exclude a buyer from consuming opensource; that is in fact part of the definition. But without excludability, there's no incentive for a buyer to buy, other than charitable feeling. Put another way, it's a textbook example of the free-rider problem or collective action problem. These are usually solved either with compulsion, such as taxes, subsidy or command-and-control; or they are solved by benefaction. Benefaction is what we have, as a rule. It's like how a rich patron of the arts donates to an opera company without capturing all of the subsequent value the opera creates (most is captured by the rest of the audience). Very large portions of OSS is developed by fulltime professionals whose time is essentially being given away without any meaningful way to exclude non-payers. The other means is bundling. Mix the non-excludable part with an excludable part, such as a services contract. But OSS can always be unbundled from services or packaging . In my experience, most unbundlers radically discount the cost of doing so.
- smichel17 6y ago
  > non-excludable I think the term you're looking for is "public goods", which combines non-rivalrous and the author chooses not to exclude people through legal means. Running out of time to comment before I need to get to work so I'll just link our economics page here: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/economics https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/economics