7 ms·

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usua

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small businesses) can use it for free. Everyone else needs to pony up. It's absurd that a ton of the software allowing giant corporations to run day-to-day is not only created but ACTIVELY MAINTAINED by an individual or groups of individuals for free, as if they were running a soup kitchen. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not homeless. They can, and should, pay the people that make the software that keeps them going. "But if it's open source, couldn't they just fork it and keep using that for free?" Yes, but a. not legally, if the terms forbid it and b. They would now have to find a new group of people to maintain the code, after just creating a bunch of ill-will in everyone in that space. In the end nothing is absolute: you can always just pirate closed-source commercial software too. But doing so has serious negative consequences.

zxzax 5y ago
I've never liked that approach, it's leading with the stick and not the carrot and IMO it defeats the purpose of open source. It cuts away one of the main benefits of open source -- that companies can use it and start contributing back to it right away with no friction. AFAIK Microsoft, Amazon and Google actually DO hire a lot of open source maintainers at this time, for exactly this reason.
- cnml123 5y ago
  Companies rarely contribute back except for very few projects like gcc and LLVM. FAANG does hire OSS devs, but a lot of them don't really do that much apart from being excellent politicians. To be fair, they don't get any time for OSS development in the first place. However, they do have time for politics and often ruin the projects. People play along because they want to get hired at GNAAF. As a result, these projects combine the worst of corporate and OSS development (horrible atmosphere and yet no money for development).
  - zksmk 5y ago
    A bit off topic, but instead of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) I much more prefer the MAAAF or FAAAM acronym (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft) because their monopolies basically make them a mafia family, and I don't really see Netflix belonging in the group.
    - rkntt 5y ago
      That's a good point, also Netflix rarely has bad press as far as I know. MAAAF for Mafia of MAGAF (Make Google Great Again, F...) are nicer.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        If you want to make the allusion to the Mafia more obvious, then Apple could be abbreviated "i" (as in iOS, iPhone, iPad, etc.).
  - dabockster 5y ago
    Not just politics, but often they'll couple OSS to their own build systems and stuff. Yeah, it might be 50ms faster on paper, but that whole project now depends on that company's OSS licensing allowing that dependency to exist publicly. That's some really scary power.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    That seems to be a mostly orthogonal concern -- you're talking about a general issue of "doing business with big corporations" and not really something I would say is specific to any given project. One way to help improve the situation would be to help them win those battles so they can negotiate for more time to upstream useful things.
spion 5y ago
The problem isn't the software but the discussion around it. With discussions, issues, feature requests etc you can be a contributor or you can be a user (beneficiary). There should be a possibility to distinguish between both and require compensation from beneficiaries. We already do this to an extent but the mechanisms are not strict enough. The stake on the ground needs to be put much earlier on, for much less demand than it typically is.
iLikeFreeData 5y ago
Not everyone needs more money. I've been struggling with the question, how do I want to spend all this money? I decided to diversify, but one of those places is a true to heart non profit charity that doesn't make a profit. I spend time on a business that if it becomes profitable, it's due to physical book sales while the same digital books are free. And I have for profit projects and investments. Each is different in my goals.
ItsMonkk 5y ago
pg has a good article on doing things that don't scale[0] and showed how the AirBnB guys went and setup the first listings manually, but it's actually far more general than just kicking off the network effect. Moats are things that don't scale. Open Source software scales perfectly. Billion dollar companies are billion dollar companies because they can use Open Source software wrapped around some Moat-able structure. The more Open Source Software that exists, the bigger the garden. When Google spends a billion dollars sending cars all around the world taking pictures, they are doing so in a way that the Open Source world can't centrally compete against, as they don't have the billions to get that done. This means that all Open Source mapping software will be missing a crucial feature that users rely on, and will therefore go unused. But meanwhile the libraries that those Open Source Software use, Google can freely use within their walled garden. On the other hand, Microsoft paid a great deal of money to researchers with Encarta and had this same exact structure and Wikipedia came in and disrupted them. It takes more time for the decentralized approach to come online, but as long as it's possible and the data is kept high quality Google Maps will slowly lose market share to OSM. So eventually decentralized open source software will catch up and these billion dollar companies will go to 0, but in the interim period, and as innovation never truly ends so there is always a new horizon, we should consider creating a better incentive structure. The big problem with capitalism today is that we care very deeply about prices. Prices is where supply and demand match, but we no longer have any supplies. We have costs of 0 and values that can differ between people. Price is merely a negotiation between the two, with Open Source Software declaring 0% of the value, and Billion Dollar companies declaring 90% of the value. Price has become a flawed metric. What society truly cares about is the surplus. What we need is a way to do a sort of Incentive Compability system[1](i.e. a Vickrey Auction) so that these Open Source Software can show the value that they produce. If they can show that their development costs were offset by their users values, they should be funded for it. Linux would certainly have a much higher value than Microsoft in this view, and would therefore be able to fund their own data collection systems, and would likely leave those open to the world so that everyone could reuse the Linux Street Map data for themselves. [0]:http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_compatibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_compatibility
apocalypstyx 5y ago
> The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small businesses) can use it for free. Everyone else needs to pony up. It's absurd that a ton of the software allowing giant corporations to run day-to-day is not only created but ACTIVELY MAINTAINED by an individual or groups of individuals for free, as if they were running a soup kitchen. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not homeless. They can, and should, pay the people that make the software that keeps them going. > "But if it's open source, couldn't they just fork it and keep using that for free?" Yes, but a. not legally, if the terms forbid it and b. They would now have to find a new group of people to maintain the code, after just creating a bunch of ill-will in everyone in that space. In the end nothing is absolute: you can always just pirate closed-source commercial software too. But doing so has serious negative consequences. This is neither free nor open by either the OSI or the FSF's definitions. The real problem is that there is a fundamental crisis at the intersection of capitalism and human freedom/autonomy that may be impossible to resolve.
- dabockster 5y ago
  > This is neither free nor open by either the OSI or the FSF's definitions. In the famous words of Peter Griffin, "OH MY GOD WHO THE [expletive] CARES?!!" If someone isn't being paid for their work, then any version of OSS isn't really sustainable long term.
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    > In the famous words of Peter Griffin, "OH MY GOD WHO THE [expletive] CARES?!!" The definitions of these terms have existed for decades. Trying to confuse or conflate them is just a slight of hand to generally disingenuous ends. Very little stops people from selling products under whatever terms they want. If they are honest, they can call their product what it is: proprietary. Otherwise it is just using the term 'open' to virtue signal. So 'open' becomes the new 'green'. > If someone isn't being paid for their work, then any version of OSS isn't really sustainable long term. Exactly my point. FOSS (for the most part) can't achieve financial viability in the current economic system (along with several other things). Electronics are integral to contemporary existence in most of the world. Without full control over their tools, human beings cannot be free/autonomous.
dabockster 5y ago
> "open source" is for suckers First time I've heard that on HN ever. This needs to be common knowledge so more people realize how valuable they really are.
- CaptArmchair 5y ago
  "Opens source" isn't a business model. At the end of the day, it boils down to a choice as to how you setlle the intellectual property rights which derive from your creative work. Either you restrict the use, sharing and altering of your work by others; or you give a limitless license and anyone is free to do whatever. Putting your code out there for free redefines the relationship between you and the users of your code. And it does so at both sides at the same time. It's the latter part which usually tends to be forgotten. As a developer, sharing your work under an open source license is not an obligation to provide premium support. Or any a support at all, for that matter. All you did was share your work, others are free to either pick it up and use it, or walk past and choose something else. As a user, an open source license doesn't come with a warranty, nor does it imply that you are entitled to support from the maintainer. All you get from an open source license is the freedom to use, adapt and share the software under a similar license. It means that maintainers of open source projects are well within their rights to say "No. I'm not going to do that." to whatever request you submit to them. Whether that's an issue queue or an e-mail. When a maintainer receives a request to add a complex feature or fix a complex bug and the request starts with "We use your code at our business / company / organization..." then it's perfectly acceptable to reply with "I would love to. Please contact me at my e-mail address and I'll send you my offer." As a maintainer, open source still leaves you free to charge for any support people solicit with you. You're even free to differentiate between "this is what I'm willing to do in my spare time, this is what I'm willing to do for a price." The big question, then, is: Why don't open source maintainers do this? That's where the answer gets complex. For instance, the jump from side project to sustainable income is difficult. Not all projects would yield enough support / servicing work. And not all projects are interesting enough to turn into a full time job. Depending where you live, making a little extra income from a side project may even get taxed away, making it just not interesting to turn it into a side business. So, why don't maintainers then just refuse largish questions if they can only work on a project in their spare time? I suppose that's the hard part: publish creative work means putting a part of yourself out there. When facing an audience, being able to take a step back from criticism and feedback is probably the hardest part to creative work. There's all sorts of rationalizations one makes to defend a perceived requirement or obligation to keep working on open source projects, even when it's to one's own detriment. Learning how to deal with that in a healthy manner takes time and experience.
mixedCase 5y ago
"Sharing stuff you want to share with other people is for suckers" Ok man. I mean, I'm quite capitalist myself but I draw the line before "don't share things with everyone because sharing free things like that is for suckers/commies/whatever". If you don't like doing open source, don't do open source. There was never a requirement for you to do open source. Doing open source doesn't mean tending to other people's feature request, or even looking at pull requests. It's just releasing code under a certain list of licenses. Which you can do, if you want to, or don't. If you want to discriminate between your users, you do you, that's not open source but unless you run afoul of the law you can go and do that.
galimaufry 5y ago
GPL is also a possible alternative. Big companies pay you back by contributing to the project, insofar as it is worth it to them to maintain a fork and add features for their own use.
- ludamad 5y ago
  This unfortunately worked much better before it was feasible to hide everything behind a server, having no releases so to speak at all
  - zacmps 5y ago
    Is this not the purpose of AGPL?
    - rodgerd 5y ago
      The purpose of AGPL is to have a bunch of people harass you about you daring to have the temerity of not letting them run their business on your code for free.
      - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
        But isn’t it cathartic when you tell those people to fuck off?
- phh 5y ago
  Sadly, GPL doesn't give you that. It only gives users the modified source code. No history, no time of fork. And nothing to the developer. I think it might be time to upgrade GPL to the age of modern internet, and have licenses requiring that modification are actually PR-ed (or sent by mail or whatever) to the author. Hell I'd even think that there could be licenses where you are required to use mainline for anything remotely looking like production, and you are not allowed to fork, you're only allowed to use as-is, and to contribute. This one would definitely not be considered FLOSS, but some components really would benefit from not having an infinite number of forks, like the Linux kernel.
jags 5y ago
I like this idea! Free for small and paid for medium/big. I think the real wisdom lies in taking the middle path (mostly). I recently read how babel, a project used by millions, struggled to keep few full-time developers. It was heart-breaking. Great developers gets glued to the idea of open-for-all at the cost of practicality. It's kind of like how people say "follow your passion" but realistically this approach only works for a a very tiny percentage and rest just struggle to pay their bills. But I am sure some projects out there must have taken this middle path. It would be interesting to know how it worked out for them.
WalterBright 5y ago
A lot of open source developers leverage their contributions into high paying jobs they never could have gotten otherwise.
- duxup 5y ago
  I don't doubt it could help but these are pretty talented people in the first place. I'm not sure they need an OSS project to succeed, or that they would do any differently than if they hadn't.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    OSS is a shortcut to career advancement if your resume is not the best. I know people who have done very, very well via contributing to Open Source.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Just like a couple of street musicians happen to hit gold, the large majority doesn't.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The implication is that the OSS contributor has to be good. The same with street musicians. I once had the pleasure of encountering some street musicians that were very, very good. I bought their CD out of their suitcase. It remains one my favorite CDs. Pludo's "The Only Thing Certain Is The Future". Sadly, they never made it. The large majority of street musicians are worthy of a tip, but I'll pass on their CD. P.S. It's a lot easier to make money as programmer than a musician. You don't have to be anywhere near the top 0.01% to have a good career.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Only if living in tier 1 countries, I can assure you there are countries where both professions have equal chances of success, and probably the musicians get the upper hand on opportunities. In many of such places you will probably live better from tourist tips than trying to make it as programmer.

zxzax 5y ago

I've never liked that approach, it's leading with the stick and not the carrot and IMO it defeats the purpose of open source. It cuts away one of the main benefits of open source -- that companies can use it and start contributing back to it right away with no friction. AFAIK Microsoft, Amazon and Google actually DO hire a lot of open source maintainers at this time, for exactly this reason.

cnml123 5y ago
Companies rarely contribute back except for very few projects like gcc and LLVM. FAANG does hire OSS devs, but a lot of them don't really do that much apart from being excellent politicians. To be fair, they don't get any time for OSS development in the first place. However, they do have time for politics and often ruin the projects. People play along because they want to get hired at GNAAF. As a result, these projects combine the worst of corporate and OSS development (horrible atmosphere and yet no money for development).
- zksmk 5y ago
  A bit off topic, but instead of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) I much more prefer the MAAAF or FAAAM acronym (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft) because their monopolies basically make them a mafia family, and I don't really see Netflix belonging in the group.
  - rkntt 5y ago
    That's a good point, also Netflix rarely has bad press as far as I know. MAAAF for Mafia of MAGAF (Make Google Great Again, F...) are nicer.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      If you want to make the allusion to the Mafia more obvious, then Apple could be abbreviated "i" (as in iOS, iPhone, iPad, etc.).
- dabockster 5y ago
  Not just politics, but often they'll couple OSS to their own build systems and stuff. Yeah, it might be 50ms faster on paper, but that whole project now depends on that company's OSS licensing allowing that dependency to exist publicly. That's some really scary power.
- zxzax 5y ago
  That seems to be a mostly orthogonal concern -- you're talking about a general issue of "doing business with big corporations" and not really something I would say is specific to any given project. One way to help improve the situation would be to help them win those battles so they can negotiate for more time to upstream useful things.

spion 5y ago

The problem isn't the software but the discussion around it. With discussions, issues, feature requests etc you can be a contributor or you can be a user (beneficiary). There should be a possibility to distinguish between both and require compensation from beneficiaries. We already do this to an extent but the mechanisms are not strict enough. The stake on the ground needs to be put much earlier on, for much less demand than it typically is.

iLikeFreeData 5y ago

Not everyone needs more money. I've been struggling with the question, how do I want to spend all this money? I decided to diversify, but one of those places is a true to heart non profit charity that doesn't make a profit. I spend time on a business that if it becomes profitable, it's due to physical book sales while the same digital books are free. And I have for profit projects and investments. Each is different in my goals.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

pg has a good article on doing things that don't scale[0] and showed how the AirBnB guys went and setup the first listings manually, but it's actually far more general than just kicking off the network effect. Moats are things that don't scale. Open Source software scales perfectly. Billion dollar companies are billion dollar companies because they can use Open Source software wrapped around some Moat-able structure. The more Open Source Software that exists, the bigger the garden. When Google spends a billion dollars sending cars all around the world taking pictures, they are doing so in a way that the Open Source world can't centrally compete against, as they don't have the billions to get that done. This means that all Open Source mapping software will be missing a crucial feature that users rely on, and will therefore go unused. But meanwhile the libraries that those Open Source Software use, Google can freely use within their walled garden. On the other hand, Microsoft paid a great deal of money to researchers with Encarta and had this same exact structure and Wikipedia came in and disrupted them. It takes more time for the decentralized approach to come online, but as long as it's possible and the data is kept high quality Google Maps will slowly lose market share to OSM. So eventually decentralized open source software will catch up and these billion dollar companies will go to 0, but in the interim period, and as innovation never truly ends so there is always a new horizon, we should consider creating a better incentive structure. The big problem with capitalism today is that we care very deeply about prices. Prices is where supply and demand match, but we no longer have any supplies. We have costs of 0 and values that can differ between people. Price is merely a negotiation between the two, with Open Source Software declaring 0% of the value, and Billion Dollar companies declaring 90% of the value. Price has become a flawed metric. What society truly cares about is the surplus. What we need is a way to do a sort of Incentive Compability system[1](i.e. a Vickrey Auction) so that these Open Source Software can show the value that they produce. If they can show that their development costs were offset by their users values, they should be funded for it. Linux would certainly have a much higher value than Microsoft in this view, and would therefore be able to fund their own data collection systems, and would likely leave those open to the world so that everyone could reuse the Linux Street Map data for themselves. [0]:http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_compatibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_compatibility

apocalypstyx 5y ago

> The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small businesses) can use it for free. Everyone else needs to pony up. It's absurd that a ton of the software allowing giant corporations to run day-to-day is not only created but ACTIVELY MAINTAINED by an individual or groups of individuals for free, as if they were running a soup kitchen. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not homeless. They can, and should, pay the people that make the software that keeps them going. > "But if it's open source, couldn't they just fork it and keep using that for free?" Yes, but a. not legally, if the terms forbid it and b. They would now have to find a new group of people to maintain the code, after just creating a bunch of ill-will in everyone in that space. In the end nothing is absolute: you can always just pirate closed-source commercial software too. But doing so has serious negative consequences. This is neither free nor open by either the OSI or the FSF's definitions. The real problem is that there is a fundamental crisis at the intersection of capitalism and human freedom/autonomy that may be impossible to resolve.

dabockster 5y ago
> This is neither free nor open by either the OSI or the FSF's definitions. In the famous words of Peter Griffin, "OH MY GOD WHO THE [expletive] CARES?!!" If someone isn't being paid for their work, then any version of OSS isn't really sustainable long term.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  > In the famous words of Peter Griffin, "OH MY GOD WHO THE [expletive] CARES?!!" The definitions of these terms have existed for decades. Trying to confuse or conflate them is just a slight of hand to generally disingenuous ends. Very little stops people from selling products under whatever terms they want. If they are honest, they can call their product what it is: proprietary. Otherwise it is just using the term 'open' to virtue signal. So 'open' becomes the new 'green'. > If someone isn't being paid for their work, then any version of OSS isn't really sustainable long term. Exactly my point. FOSS (for the most part) can't achieve financial viability in the current economic system (along with several other things). Electronics are integral to contemporary existence in most of the world. Without full control over their tools, human beings cannot be free/autonomous.

dabockster 5y ago

> "open source" is for suckers First time I've heard that on HN ever. This needs to be common knowledge so more people realize how valuable they really are.

CaptArmchair 5y ago
"Opens source" isn't a business model. At the end of the day, it boils down to a choice as to how you setlle the intellectual property rights which derive from your creative work. Either you restrict the use, sharing and altering of your work by others; or you give a limitless license and anyone is free to do whatever. Putting your code out there for free redefines the relationship between you and the users of your code. And it does so at both sides at the same time. It's the latter part which usually tends to be forgotten. As a developer, sharing your work under an open source license is not an obligation to provide premium support. Or any a support at all, for that matter. All you did was share your work, others are free to either pick it up and use it, or walk past and choose something else. As a user, an open source license doesn't come with a warranty, nor does it imply that you are entitled to support from the maintainer. All you get from an open source license is the freedom to use, adapt and share the software under a similar license. It means that maintainers of open source projects are well within their rights to say "No. I'm not going to do that." to whatever request you submit to them. Whether that's an issue queue or an e-mail. When a maintainer receives a request to add a complex feature or fix a complex bug and the request starts with "We use your code at our business / company / organization..." then it's perfectly acceptable to reply with "I would love to. Please contact me at my e-mail address and I'll send you my offer." As a maintainer, open source still leaves you free to charge for any support people solicit with you. You're even free to differentiate between "this is what I'm willing to do in my spare time, this is what I'm willing to do for a price." The big question, then, is: Why don't open source maintainers do this? That's where the answer gets complex. For instance, the jump from side project to sustainable income is difficult. Not all projects would yield enough support / servicing work. And not all projects are interesting enough to turn into a full time job. Depending where you live, making a little extra income from a side project may even get taxed away, making it just not interesting to turn it into a side business. So, why don't maintainers then just refuse largish questions if they can only work on a project in their spare time? I suppose that's the hard part: publish creative work means putting a part of yourself out there. When facing an audience, being able to take a step back from criticism and feedback is probably the hardest part to creative work. There's all sorts of rationalizations one makes to defend a perceived requirement or obligation to keep working on open source projects, even when it's to one's own detriment. Learning how to deal with that in a healthy manner takes time and experience.

mixedCase 5y ago

"Sharing stuff you want to share with other people is for suckers" Ok man. I mean, I'm quite capitalist myself but I draw the line before "don't share things with everyone because sharing free things like that is for suckers/commies/whatever". If you don't like doing open source, don't do open source. There was never a requirement for you to do open source. Doing open source doesn't mean tending to other people's feature request, or even looking at pull requests. It's just releasing code under a certain list of licenses. Which you can do, if you want to, or don't. If you want to discriminate between your users, you do you, that's not open source but unless you run afoul of the law you can go and do that.

galimaufry 5y ago

GPL is also a possible alternative. Big companies pay you back by contributing to the project, insofar as it is worth it to them to maintain a fork and add features for their own use.

ludamad 5y ago
This unfortunately worked much better before it was feasible to hide everything behind a server, having no releases so to speak at all
- zacmps 5y ago
  Is this not the purpose of AGPL?
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    The purpose of AGPL is to have a bunch of people harass you about you daring to have the temerity of not letting them run their business on your code for free.
    - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
      But isn’t it cathartic when you tell those people to fuck off?
phh 5y ago
Sadly, GPL doesn't give you that. It only gives users the modified source code. No history, no time of fork. And nothing to the developer. I think it might be time to upgrade GPL to the age of modern internet, and have licenses requiring that modification are actually PR-ed (or sent by mail or whatever) to the author. Hell I'd even think that there could be licenses where you are required to use mainline for anything remotely looking like production, and you are not allowed to fork, you're only allowed to use as-is, and to contribute. This one would definitely not be considered FLOSS, but some components really would benefit from not having an infinite number of forks, like the Linux kernel.

jags 5y ago

I like this idea! Free for small and paid for medium/big. I think the real wisdom lies in taking the middle path (mostly). I recently read how babel, a project used by millions, struggled to keep few full-time developers. It was heart-breaking. Great developers gets glued to the idea of open-for-all at the cost of practicality. It's kind of like how people say "follow your passion" but realistically this approach only works for a a very tiny percentage and rest just struggle to pay their bills. But I am sure some projects out there must have taken this middle path. It would be interesting to know how it worked out for them.

WalterBright 5y ago

A lot of open source developers leverage their contributions into high paying jobs they never could have gotten otherwise.

duxup 5y ago
I don't doubt it could help but these are pretty talented people in the first place. I'm not sure they need an OSS project to succeed, or that they would do any differently than if they hadn't.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  OSS is a shortcut to career advancement if your resume is not the best. I know people who have done very, very well via contributing to Open Source.
pjmlp 5y ago
Just like a couple of street musicians happen to hit gold, the large majority doesn't.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The implication is that the OSS contributor has to be good. The same with street musicians. I once had the pleasure of encountering some street musicians that were very, very good. I bought their CD out of their suitcase. It remains one my favorite CDs. Pludo's "The Only Thing Certain Is The Future". Sadly, they never made it. The large majority of street musicians are worthy of a tip, but I'll pass on their CD. P.S. It's a lot easier to make money as programmer than a musician. You don't have to be anywhere near the top 0.01% to have a good career.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Only if living in tier 1 countries, I can assure you there are countries where both professions have equal chances of success, and probably the musicians get the upper hand on opportunities. In many of such places you will probably live better from tourist tips than trying to make it as programmer.