4 ms·
Your view of the "nativity of open source developers" is itself naïve. To my understanding, most people who want to get paid a reasonable amount to develop FOS
by dalke 5y ago
Your view of the "nativity of open source developers" is itself naïve.
To my understanding, most people who want to get paid a reasonable amount to develop FOSS go one of two routes.
1) Service-oriented, à la the Cygnus Solutions (now Red Hat) approach. FOSS developers get paid to fix bugs, add features, answer questions, and provide training. This has been my approach.
2) Employer cost savings. Work as an employee for a company which saves money by developing software, but where the employer is not interested in bringing it to market.
See the section "Professionalizing the role of maintainer" of the linked-to essay for other examples of what a company might get through funding a FOSS project. ("security practices, like two-factor authentication and mandatory code review", etc.)
None of this is "work with a price tag of $0", and the very essay we're talking about gives counter-examples to your interpretation.
Furthermore, I tried selling FOSS software for a fee ($30K, not $0), and simple commercial licensing doesn't work either. Commercial proprietary licensing addressed certain economic problems that commercial FOSS licensing didn't resolve.
- mbrodersen 5y agoI think you are slightly misunderstanding my point. I love OSS. I am a big fan. What I am not a fan of is maintainers giving their work away for $0 and then complaining that nobody pays them $ for their work. That is what I call naive. It shows a complete lack of understanding of how humans and markets work. If you want to be paid $ for your OSS work then make it part of the license and sue companies that doesn't pay. Or (as you say yourself) sell it as a service. Or perhaps an entrepreneur will start a business that specialize in enforcing OSS payments as a service to OSS developers (taking a % fee in return).
- dalke 5y agoAnd what I am complaining about is that NOTHING in my comment had anything do with "giving their work away for $0 and then complaining that nobody pays them $ for their work." Moreover, the linked-to essay even called out services which companies COULD pay for.