11 ms·

> So, large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech. Companies usually have a reason to keep

by mfer 5y ago

> So, large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech. Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low. Sometimes they are a public company with fiscal responsibilities. A startup will only have so much runway and is likely trying to reduce expenses. Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free?

jbk 5y ago
> Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free? See the article...
- mfer 5y ago
  I was responding to the parent comment not the article. The article makes great point. It essentially talks about a services and support business around open source. Some have been doing this for decades. When you have contracts and support at a cost you aren't doing the work for free. The article is talking about running open source like a business rather than a volunteer situation. That means, you're not doing everything for free.
  - jbk 5y ago
    > It essentially talks about a services and support business around open source. Which is _exactly_ what we are doing...
    - cxr 5y ago
      This comment is pretty disingenuous. (I personally found it a bit obnoxious.) The person you're responding to made it very clear that they were responding to your conclusion that "large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech". The fact that you have support and services available isn't a "gotcha!" that refutes the point they are making, which is that given that there is also a zero-cost "product" available, then (unsurprisingly) prospective customers prefer that one instead.
skinkestek 5y ago
> Sometimes they are a public company with fiscal responsibilities. Public companies also have accounts for goodwill in their books, don't they? Also, I'd even say that depending on volunteers for everything when you aren't in dire straits isn't to responsible.
- watwut 5y ago
  No, the companies are supposed to generate value for shareholders. They are supposed to have infinite financial growth and that is pretty much it.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    That's how it is most of the time but I don't see how you can say it's "supposed to" be that way. It's pathological. Essentially it's a form of group sociopathy.
    - thedevelopnik 5y ago
      [flagged]
    - watwut 5y ago
      Supposed as per economical theory/ideology, legal expectations and also per "what kind of CEO will get the job". It is not like most of the time randomly. It is like that, because economic system is designed to work that way.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        That's a myth about legal expectations. "every state has enacted a corporate statute giving managers explicit authority to donate corporate funds for charitable purposes" https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3271&context=vlr https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...
wpietri 5y ago
It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? A while back I bought a cheap robot vacuum. Their scheduling feature didn't meet my needs, so I reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced a cron-friendly CLI tool and a library so people could do other things with it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks https://github.com/wpietri/sucks Honestly, this was a mistake on my part. It was a demanding audience of home-automation hobbyists mostly without programming skills. The company was thoroughly unhelpful. When my vacuum finally broke, I was relieved, as I had a good excuse for trying to hand off the project. Nobody stepped up, so I shut it down. I just ran out of interest in doing free work to support a company worth billions. I really admire the community spirit of open source But it's not sustainable if companies making their money off it keep depending on the niceness and generosity of others without giving back enough to keep them happy, healthy, productive people.
- bawolff 5y ago
  > It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? I think that's a pretty unfair characterization of the previous post.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  IMO, I think the golden age of completely FOSS apps (no open core) is ending/has ended as users expect more features and apps struggle to meet demands without effective monetization. I think open source will always have a place for libraries and tools, but end user applications will either become open core or no longer open source.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Entirely possible. Although I suspect more libraries and tools will go that way as well. Note that mine was in theory a library/tool. And the examples mentioned in the blog post were similarly infrastructural. Most of us work at such high levels of abstraction we couldn't even name all our dependencies. Which in effect makes us the same sort of consumers app users are: expecting a lot out but not putting anything in.
KarlKemp 5y ago
In strictly economic terms, it rarely makes sense for all but the largest users of some upstream project, putting that proposition squarely in tragedy-of-the-commons territory: it’s better to hope for others to support it. That applies even to existing sponsorships, however. Their existence thus points at more than cold-blooded short-term business interests being at play here. While corporations are in theory seeking only shareholder value, corporations happen to be (made up of) people, who are capable of altruism, and should be encouraged to use it. Just because US capitalism has managed to build a not-entirely-failing system on unadulterated selfishness does not turn that mindset into a virtue, or even reality: as far as I can tell, the dominant reason for sponsorship is that some person with a bit of authority likes the idea. They may consider it good for marketing, or recruitment, or to secure their supply chain, or just morally called for, or they want to be the fat cat at this years TINYTEC-CON. If you asked them, they’ll give you a reason that totally makes sense for a business and has little to do with reality. And, no, nobody ever got sued or fired for these decisions. So go ahead, do it! You got all the left-padding you needed, it’s right to pad their wallet in return. (recycled from earlier comment on the topic)
DarylZero 5y ago
Right. Mostly they wouldn't even pay employees if they could get away with it. We have to make laws about it.
- imachine1980_ 5y ago
  like dual licensees?qt?
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    I mean just ordinary employees really wouldn't get paid at all if not for labor regulations. Just look into the amount of simple "wage theft" (employers forcing employees to work off the clock, etc.) that exists in the USA. Of course, this country fought a war over the issue of free labor from black slaves.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      What you say is nonsense. Companies will try to pay as little as possible to make more profit. They won't pay you more than you can make them. Employees will try to get paid as much as possible. They won't work for something they can't live on. All is good and dandy. If employees are not getting paid, they'll go and do something else (like another job or growing food themselves) or steal and starve if there are no jobs or resources. They would never work for free because they can't live without eating.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        > They would never work for free because they can't live without eating. Except, slavery. Sure, the master pays as little as they can to keep the person alive, but staying alive is about the only good thing they get out of life.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dilyevsky 5y ago
> Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low No they don’t. That’s why they keep plowing billions into cloud infra and gazillion of saas products. They have an excuse when they think they can get it for free anyway like is the case with OSS but not an actual reason
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  Why should the companies pay more than $0 for code with a price tag of $0? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy?
  - MadcapJake 5y ago
    It costs me $0 to walk to work but i pay for transportation because it gets me there faster and more comfortably. You just are looking at cost too narrowly.
    - mbrodersen 5y ago
      I don't understand your argument at all. Companies and people in general only pay for things they have to pay for. So if you ask for $0 that is exactly what they will pay. It is not a difficult point I am making.
      - MadcapJake 5y ago
        You're making a simple point when this is a complex issue. Software costs more than just the price tag on the box.
      - MadcapJake 5y ago
        Let's assume that I did decide to walk to work for $0. Even though the cost is free, I may have to pay for better walking shoes. Additionally, I may have to buy a umbrella to prevent getting rained on. I also may want to think about the safety and security of the streets that I walk down. And lastly, I may after some time walking, have a foot/leg injury that requires either medical attention or physical therapy. My point is that even though the cost was $0 up-front there is additional costs that show up because of my prior decision to walk. These indirect/future costs need to be considered especially as a business deciding to utilize OSS for some operational need. In a way, you should evaluate each OSS tool/library as if it was a business which further corroborates the blog post's point.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Companies routinely make investments to guarantee their future revenue. Sometimes they could keep hiring for cheap a provider for one of their core needs, but choose to pay much more to have an exclusive contract and guarantee the provider doesn’t get scooped or goes under. There can be any rationale applied to paying more money than the minimum they could get away with.

by mfer 5y ago

jbk 5y ago

> Given this situation, why will they pay for what they can get for free? See the article...

mfer 5y ago
I was responding to the parent comment not the article. The article makes great point. It essentially talks about a services and support business around open source. Some have been doing this for decades. When you have contracts and support at a cost you aren't doing the work for free. The article is talking about running open source like a business rather than a volunteer situation. That means, you're not doing everything for free.
- jbk 5y ago
  > It essentially talks about a services and support business around open source. Which is _exactly_ what we are doing...
  - cxr 5y ago
    This comment is pretty disingenuous. (I personally found it a bit obnoxious.) The person you're responding to made it very clear that they were responding to your conclusion that "large SV companies and startup should also start agreeing to pay for open source, when it's the core of the tech". The fact that you have support and services available isn't a "gotcha!" that refutes the point they are making, which is that given that there is also a zero-cost "product" available, then (unsurprisingly) prospective customers prefer that one instead.

skinkestek 5y ago

> Sometimes they are a public company with fiscal responsibilities. Public companies also have accounts for goodwill in their books, don't they? Also, I'd even say that depending on volunteers for everything when you aren't in dire straits isn't to responsible.

watwut 5y ago
No, the companies are supposed to generate value for shareholders. They are supposed to have infinite financial growth and that is pretty much it.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  That's how it is most of the time but I don't see how you can say it's "supposed to" be that way. It's pathological. Essentially it's a form of group sociopathy.
  - thedevelopnik 5y ago
    [flagged]
  - watwut 5y ago
    Supposed as per economical theory/ideology, legal expectations and also per "what kind of CEO will get the job". It is not like most of the time randomly. It is like that, because economic system is designed to work that way.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      That's a myth about legal expectations. "every state has enacted a corporate statute giving managers explicit authority to donate corporate funds for charitable purposes" https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3271&context=vlr https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...

wpietri 5y ago

It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? A while back I bought a cheap robot vacuum. Their scheduling feature didn't meet my needs, so I reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced a cron-friendly CLI tool and a library so people could do other things with it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks https://github.com/wpietri/sucks Honestly, this was a mistake on my part. It was a demanding audience of home-automation hobbyists mostly without programming skills. The company was thoroughly unhelpful. When my vacuum finally broke, I was relieved, as I had a good excuse for trying to hand off the project. Nobody stepped up, so I shut it down. I just ran out of interest in doing free work to support a company worth billions. I really admire the community spirit of open source But it's not sustainable if companies making their money off it keep depending on the niceness and generosity of others without giving back enough to keep them happy, healthy, productive people.

bawolff 5y ago
> It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last? I think that's a pretty unfair characterization of the previous post.
candiddevmike 5y ago
IMO, I think the golden age of completely FOSS apps (no open core) is ending/has ended as users expect more features and apps struggle to meet demands without effective monetization. I think open source will always have a place for libraries and tools, but end user applications will either become open core or no longer open source.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Entirely possible. Although I suspect more libraries and tools will go that way as well. Note that mine was in theory a library/tool. And the examples mentioned in the blog post were similarly infrastructural. Most of us work at such high levels of abstraction we couldn't even name all our dependencies. Which in effect makes us the same sort of consumers app users are: expecting a lot out but not putting anything in.

KarlKemp 5y ago

In strictly economic terms, it rarely makes sense for all but the largest users of some upstream project, putting that proposition squarely in tragedy-of-the-commons territory: it’s better to hope for others to support it. That applies even to existing sponsorships, however. Their existence thus points at more than cold-blooded short-term business interests being at play here. While corporations are in theory seeking only shareholder value, corporations happen to be (made up of) people, who are capable of altruism, and should be encouraged to use it. Just because US capitalism has managed to build a not-entirely-failing system on unadulterated selfishness does not turn that mindset into a virtue, or even reality: as far as I can tell, the dominant reason for sponsorship is that some person with a bit of authority likes the idea. They may consider it good for marketing, or recruitment, or to secure their supply chain, or just morally called for, or they want to be the fat cat at this years TINYTEC-CON. If you asked them, they’ll give you a reason that totally makes sense for a business and has little to do with reality. And, no, nobody ever got sued or fired for these decisions. So go ahead, do it! You got all the left-padding you needed, it’s right to pad their wallet in return. (recycled from earlier comment on the topic)

DarylZero 5y ago

Right. Mostly they wouldn't even pay employees if they could get away with it. We have to make laws about it.

imachine1980_ 5y ago
like dual licensees?qt?
- DarylZero 5y ago
  I mean just ordinary employees really wouldn't get paid at all if not for labor regulations. Just look into the amount of simple "wage theft" (employers forcing employees to work off the clock, etc.) that exists in the USA. Of course, this country fought a war over the issue of free labor from black slaves.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    What you say is nonsense. Companies will try to pay as little as possible to make more profit. They won't pay you more than you can make them. Employees will try to get paid as much as possible. They won't work for something they can't live on. All is good and dandy. If employees are not getting paid, they'll go and do something else (like another job or growing food themselves) or steal and starve if there are no jobs or resources. They would never work for free because they can't live without eating.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      > They would never work for free because they can't live without eating. Except, slavery. Sure, the master pays as little as they can to keep the person alive, but staying alive is about the only good thing they get out of life.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dilyevsky 5y ago

> Companies usually have a reason to keep their expenses low No they don’t. That’s why they keep plowing billions into cloud infra and gazillion of saas products. They have an excuse when they think they can get it for free anyway like is the case with OSS but not an actual reason

mbrodersen 5y ago
Why should the companies pay more than $0 for code with a price tag of $0? Do you normally pay more than the asking price for things you buy?
- MadcapJake 5y ago
  It costs me $0 to walk to work but i pay for transportation because it gets me there faster and more comfortably. You just are looking at cost too narrowly.
  - mbrodersen 5y ago
    I don't understand your argument at all. Companies and people in general only pay for things they have to pay for. So if you ask for $0 that is exactly what they will pay. It is not a difficult point I am making.
    - MadcapJake 5y ago
      You're making a simple point when this is a complex issue. Software costs more than just the price tag on the box.
    - MadcapJake 5y ago
      Let's assume that I did decide to walk to work for $0. Even though the cost is free, I may have to pay for better walking shoes. Additionally, I may have to buy a umbrella to prevent getting rained on. I also may want to think about the safety and security of the streets that I walk down. And lastly, I may after some time walking, have a foot/leg injury that requires either medical attention or physical therapy. My point is that even though the cost was $0 up-front there is additional costs that show up because of my prior decision to walk. These indirect/future costs need to be considered especially as a business deciding to utilize OSS for some operational need. In a way, you should evaluate each OSS tool/library as if it was a business which further corroborates the blog post's point.

makeitdouble 5y ago

Companies routinely make investments to guarantee their future revenue. Sometimes they could keep hiring for cheap a provider for one of their core needs, but choose to pay much more to have an exclusive contract and guarantee the provider doesn’t get scooped or goes under. There can be any rationale applied to paying more money than the minimum they could get away with.