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>But! Maintainers need to be legible to the big company department that approves and processes those invoices. I imagine this could be a hard sell to people wh
by usrbinbash 5y ago
>But! Maintainers need to be legible to the big company department that approves and processes those invoices.
I imagine this could be a hard sell to people who just want to build some cool software and maintain it. Setting up an account, okay, that may be possible, but that's not the end of it. Companies pay invoices FOR something. That something means contracts, potentially about substantial sums, that means getting legal support to navigate said contracts & obligations.
- throwaway894345 5y agoWe have software licenses and yet every open source project doesn’t employ a lawyer. The solution is probably the same: canned, off-the-shelf contracts. If a company wants to negotiate a custom contract, then the maintainer can decide whether or not it’s worth hiring a lawyer.
- b3morales 5y agoEven if the contract itself might be commodified, the relationship won't be. Business will want what it wants, regardless of what the contract says. Maintainers will certainly be subject to influence campaigns by business, which will sometimes conflict with other "clients". Even saying "no, read the contract" to a persistent VP has a psychological and social cost. I can't really imagine this decreasing the pressure on maintainers: it's basically turning the project into a startup.
- throwaway894345 5y agoI think the idea is to provide a middle ground option between full-on startup and doing free work for corporations. That implies meeting in the middle both on compensation and on work delivered, but it's possible that we'll find new non-zero-sum opportunities.