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I think all contributors should be paid once a big company starts using the project. The current state of play in my view is unethical. Developers do the hard w

I think all contributors should be paid once a big company starts using the project. The current state of play in my view is unethical. Developers do the hard work in hope they will be hired some day in the future and that not always happens and they won't be reimbursed for their time spent prior to being hired. In many cases these projects are also developed by privileged developers who can afford to work without pay because they have wealthy parents and so on. This indirectly creates a disadvantage for people from poor backgrounds as in the open source world you are expected to work for free and people who cannot afford to do that are excluded.

steveklabnik 6y ago
Rust has had almost six thousand unique contributors, with about 300 to 350 contributing to any given release these days. And that only counts commits landed in rust-lang/rust, none of our other repos, or non-commit contrutbions. Rust is larger than a lot of companies, at this point. That being said, you’re not wrong that people deserve to be paid for their work, and the foundation was created in part to help work on this topic, to help the project pay bills and encourage employment, but I’m not aware of many, if any, open source projects as large as ours where everyone or even the majority is paid.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Companies that use this software have billions at their disposal (often through creative accounting), and there is no excuse to not pay. Perhaps this could be based on % of the company revenue and then split similarly how artists are being paid their royalties. I think there is an opportunity for some big companies to redeem themselves and create such system and amend licenses so that it is ensured all developers are paid if company that is using the projects has revenue above certain threshold. Ideally this could be included in Github and other platforms on a opt-in basis (for developers), but in the future it should be enshrined in law. I'll vote for any party that will look into exploitation of developers.
zozbot234 6y ago
> I think all contributors should be paid once a big company starts using the project. Wait, why would we want to deter big companies from using and supporting Rust? That makes no sense to me. This pervasive big-company-envy is something that I just can't grok here at HN.
- varispeed 6y ago
  For me it is not only about Rust but any open-source software. Companies essentially get labour for free and they don't have to commit their own resources to take on employees and they don't pay salaries and tax. This creates advantage for privileged developers who can work for free and "show off" and there are less jobs for developers from poorer backgrounds as there is nothing like Rust to develop, because companies can just snatch an open source project. Do you not think this is weird that these companies have billions and billions of cash lying around and developers who helped them make that money probably still live in a rental shoebox?

steveklabnik 6y ago

Rust has had almost six thousand unique contributors, with about 300 to 350 contributing to any given release these days. And that only counts commits landed in rust-lang/rust, none of our other repos, or non-commit contrutbions. Rust is larger than a lot of companies, at this point. That being said, you’re not wrong that people deserve to be paid for their work, and the foundation was created in part to help work on this topic, to help the project pay bills and encourage employment, but I’m not aware of many, if any, open source projects as large as ours where everyone or even the majority is paid.

varispeed 6y ago
Companies that use this software have billions at their disposal (often through creative accounting), and there is no excuse to not pay. Perhaps this could be based on % of the company revenue and then split similarly how artists are being paid their royalties. I think there is an opportunity for some big companies to redeem themselves and create such system and amend licenses so that it is ensured all developers are paid if company that is using the projects has revenue above certain threshold. Ideally this could be included in Github and other platforms on a opt-in basis (for developers), but in the future it should be enshrined in law. I'll vote for any party that will look into exploitation of developers.

zozbot234 6y ago

> I think all contributors should be paid once a big company starts using the project. Wait, why would we want to deter big companies from using and supporting Rust? That makes no sense to me. This pervasive big-company-envy is something that I just can't grok here at HN.

varispeed 6y ago
For me it is not only about Rust but any open-source software. Companies essentially get labour for free and they don't have to commit their own resources to take on employees and they don't pay salaries and tax. This creates advantage for privileged developers who can work for free and "show off" and there are less jobs for developers from poorer backgrounds as there is nothing like Rust to develop, because companies can just snatch an open source project. Do you not think this is weird that these companies have billions and billions of cash lying around and developers who helped them make that money probably still live in a rental shoebox?