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I'm cognizant that I'm replying to someone named CaptArmchair. Based on your handle, I say: well-named. Look, I'm sure you remember the heartbleed scenario a f

I'm cognizant that I'm replying to someone named CaptArmchair. Based on your handle, I say: well-named. Look, I'm sure you remember the heartbleed scenario a few years back... the moment when we all realized that the human behind one of the most critical pieces of our infrastructure stack was a slave to his sense of responsibility, but he lacked charisma and hustle and social presence such that he wasn't able to keep it together. His mental and emotional health were sorely suffering. Once people realized what was happening, the plate got passed around and from what I understand, things are a lot better now, for that one guy on that one project. Maybe it's wrong to over-focus on one guy, but his example is top of mind as I say the following: You could not write the above if you weren't in a position of being privileged to do so. You can wax poetic about how writing free software is an expression of the divine all you want, but meanwhile the entire world is reconfiguring itself around software and a lot of those folks are going to need a source of income even if you're already doing well enough that you don't care to push the issue. Essentially: you are not factoring in the way the world is changing. Most people building software and publishing it on Github, by numbers, are people who are using their Github profile as a resume. It's not been about RMS and ESR for a long time. It's cool if you don't need to pay the bills, but don't demonize people who are hoping all of this energy invested in learning to code need to eat.

CaptArmchair 6y ago
Hm... that's not at all what I intended to convey. And I think you're putting things in quite extreme terms. The field of software / digital engineering has grown an exploitative side. This is absolutely true. To be crystal clear, without diving into detail and derailing the thread: I find this evolution reprehensible and not how humans ought to be treated. Is that dynamic then the result of Open Source as a princple of intellectual rights? Is it really, truly an inevitability that taking on Open Source projects and pushing code on Github now singularly serves as a resume of sorts for applying for a paid job? Is giving up your intellectual rights by default really the only way to ensure that you can make a living from writing code? Because of it is, well, that should rather lead to bleak conclusions about the state of the value that developers are willing to attribute to the time and effort they pour into their craft, the labour market, labour protection, and societal values as a whole. Instead of concluding that Open Source itself is the problem (it is not) and people ought to donate a buck-and-a-half to anyone who has a repo with an arbitrary number of stars on Github. You could draw parallels with other fields such as academics, film, music, games, books, fashion and so on. So, exploitation is not an entirely new dynamic either. Plenty of aspiring graduates, actors, writers, musicians, models, graphic designers,... are scrounging by, and get exploited in the process, while relatively few end up in a good place. Usually, their complaints are met with a short, unsympathetic "should have chosen a real career/job instead!" quip. If I'm allowed to play the devil's advocate: Should we add software developers to that list as well? Of course not! In fact, nobody deserves to be outright reviled for the professional career they pursue. The problems you describe are societal. They are the net result of larger economic dynamics in a rapidly globalized, free and unregulated marketplace. A markpetlace in which a few smart people understood how to leverage open source software in order to accumulate enough leverage to enter the financial market, moving on to accrue even far greater wealth. And what you describe is just another take on the Tragedy of the Commons. Like I said, if the world is reconfiguring around software, it should be held to pay the true price of maintaining that infrastructure. Much as is pointed out exactly by Eghbal's study. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or as Mike Monteiro puts it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa6PdOG2ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa6PdOG2ts
- peteforde 6y ago
  You're making some good, if aspirational points, but I'm still not convinced. After all, artists have had patrons for a long time. The gallery system is a relatively new invention. Do I believe that artistic creators are a net-win to society? 100% Do I wish that artistic professions were seen as worthy of support? Yes I do. But in actual today reality, most artists can announce that they are doing a show, staging a production, what have you, and make some money. I would argue that the only way for someone to approximate this in 2020 as a developer of creative but not economy-driving things is for Github to adopt a pool as described by the OP. One thing I want to be really clear about is that people shouldn't support projects with lots of stars just because they have lots of stars. Stars are a passible metric for evaluating which tool to choose, perhaps. But I think the power of the pool concept is that Github could hit you up when you git clone, or maybe even occasionally ping you with a "hey, are you finding this useful? consider adding it to your pool". Or how about opt-in reminders like "hey, you're about to add your 80th project to the pool, but at $80 pledged that would put your contribution below $1 for each project. no shade intended, but how cool would it be if you kept your pool >$2/project? it'll be the best value for $160 this month."
  - CaptArmchair 6y ago
    Let's agree to disagree. It's perfectly valid to leverage Github and open source as a means to an end: either to secure an income as an employee through public exposure of your work, or secure patronage through donations in order to attain a type of (partial) financial independence that allows for creative freedom. Either way, every line of code that gets pushed in this way, was never directly commissioned nor sold to a paying customer. And that, well, that's a choice between different business models. It's not an inevitability as you make it seem. It's wonderful to see how open source has flourished, and people ought to be compensated for the work they willingly and consciously distribute u free. I'm more then happy to pledge a small donation left or right, or contribute a patch, a piece of documentation or do a bit of mouth-to-mouth promotion. Lamenting then that you can't cover your living expenses through donations and shifting the responsibility towards Github e.g. they should provide more affordances to funnel more people towards donating? That's quite an explicit take on monetization which is deserving of critique. Especially if the alternative entails, well, starting to properly value, market and sell your work, which is how the market essentially works. As I said, that doesn't exclude me from acknowledging wealth disparity, and the fact that loads of people try to use open source and Github as a jumping board to secure a steady wage. I think that's really important: I've hired people in the past for enthusiastically showing and discussing their work, as it shows so much over who they are a a person, what drives them, and how they think. Finally, let's not forget that Github isn't a charity nor a public administration: it's a private company with a profit motive as well. Which is a can of worm into itself if you start considering centralization, walled gardens and the nefarious consequences of those dynamics. (By the way, patronage or philanthropy, as you mentioned, historically wasn't driven by purel altruistic motives: nobility employed artists as a way to flaunt their wealth and their power towards their peers.)

CaptArmchair 6y ago

Hm... that's not at all what I intended to convey. And I think you're putting things in quite extreme terms. The field of software / digital engineering has grown an exploitative side. This is absolutely true. To be crystal clear, without diving into detail and derailing the thread: I find this evolution reprehensible and not how humans ought to be treated. Is that dynamic then the result of Open Source as a princple of intellectual rights? Is it really, truly an inevitability that taking on Open Source projects and pushing code on Github now singularly serves as a resume of sorts for applying for a paid job? Is giving up your intellectual rights by default really the only way to ensure that you can make a living from writing code? Because of it is, well, that should rather lead to bleak conclusions about the state of the value that developers are willing to attribute to the time and effort they pour into their craft, the labour market, labour protection, and societal values as a whole. Instead of concluding that Open Source itself is the problem (it is not) and people ought to donate a buck-and-a-half to anyone who has a repo with an arbitrary number of stars on Github. You could draw parallels with other fields such as academics, film, music, games, books, fashion and so on. So, exploitation is not an entirely new dynamic either. Plenty of aspiring graduates, actors, writers, musicians, models, graphic designers,... are scrounging by, and get exploited in the process, while relatively few end up in a good place. Usually, their complaints are met with a short, unsympathetic "should have chosen a real career/job instead!" quip. If I'm allowed to play the devil's advocate: Should we add software developers to that list as well? Of course not! In fact, nobody deserves to be outright reviled for the professional career they pursue. The problems you describe are societal. They are the net result of larger economic dynamics in a rapidly globalized, free and unregulated marketplace. A markpetlace in which a few smart people understood how to leverage open source software in order to accumulate enough leverage to enter the financial market, moving on to accrue even far greater wealth. And what you describe is just another take on the Tragedy of the Commons. Like I said, if the world is reconfiguring around software, it should be held to pay the true price of maintaining that infrastructure. Much as is pointed out exactly by Eghbal's study. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or as Mike Monteiro puts it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa6PdOG2ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa6PdOG2ts

peteforde 6y ago
You're making some good, if aspirational points, but I'm still not convinced. After all, artists have had patrons for a long time. The gallery system is a relatively new invention. Do I believe that artistic creators are a net-win to society? 100% Do I wish that artistic professions were seen as worthy of support? Yes I do. But in actual today reality, most artists can announce that they are doing a show, staging a production, what have you, and make some money. I would argue that the only way for someone to approximate this in 2020 as a developer of creative but not economy-driving things is for Github to adopt a pool as described by the OP. One thing I want to be really clear about is that people shouldn't support projects with lots of stars just because they have lots of stars. Stars are a passible metric for evaluating which tool to choose, perhaps. But I think the power of the pool concept is that Github could hit you up when you git clone, or maybe even occasionally ping you with a "hey, are you finding this useful? consider adding it to your pool". Or how about opt-in reminders like "hey, you're about to add your 80th project to the pool, but at $80 pledged that would put your contribution below $1 for each project. no shade intended, but how cool would it be if you kept your pool >$2/project? it'll be the best value for $160 this month."
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  Let's agree to disagree. It's perfectly valid to leverage Github and open source as a means to an end: either to secure an income as an employee through public exposure of your work, or secure patronage through donations in order to attain a type of (partial) financial independence that allows for creative freedom. Either way, every line of code that gets pushed in this way, was never directly commissioned nor sold to a paying customer. And that, well, that's a choice between different business models. It's not an inevitability as you make it seem. It's wonderful to see how open source has flourished, and people ought to be compensated for the work they willingly and consciously distribute u free. I'm more then happy to pledge a small donation left or right, or contribute a patch, a piece of documentation or do a bit of mouth-to-mouth promotion. Lamenting then that you can't cover your living expenses through donations and shifting the responsibility towards Github e.g. they should provide more affordances to funnel more people towards donating? That's quite an explicit take on monetization which is deserving of critique. Especially if the alternative entails, well, starting to properly value, market and sell your work, which is how the market essentially works. As I said, that doesn't exclude me from acknowledging wealth disparity, and the fact that loads of people try to use open source and Github as a jumping board to secure a steady wage. I think that's really important: I've hired people in the past for enthusiastically showing and discussing their work, as it shows so much over who they are a a person, what drives them, and how they think. Finally, let's not forget that Github isn't a charity nor a public administration: it's a private company with a profit motive as well. Which is a can of worm into itself if you start considering centralization, walled gardens and the nefarious consequences of those dynamics. (By the way, patronage or philanthropy, as you mentioned, historically wasn't driven by purel altruistic motives: nobility employed artists as a way to flaunt their wealth and their power towards their peers.)