6 ms·

But Intel didn't pay billions in payroll for trees to photosynthesise.

teddyh 4y ago
Trees are just part of another country with a different currency. If you would convert it, I’m sure you would find that trees have spent more money than Intel.
- rglullis 4y ago
  If there is any point you are trying to make here, I am failing to get it. Can you please try again, preferably with a less sarcastic tone?
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Certainly. Everything (oxygen, software) is produced by someone (trees, programmers) at great cost, for their own reasons. If they then make their products available for free to you, then those producs are free. It does not matter if the original production was costly. The producers presumably got their money’s worth already, since otherwise they would not have spent the cost and created the thing in the first place.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Your analogy is broken in many different ways: - Trees produce O2 as a byproduct of the work they need to live, whether it is available for you or not is irrelevant to them. People working in Free Software are doing with the primary purpose of getting it available to people, and a secondary purpose of getting more people involved, collaborating, improving it, etc. - Much like we need to keep the environment healthy and not just take the O2 produced by trees for granted, we need to foment an economy where developers can choose to develop Free Software without sacrificing themselves. People working in F/OSS need to to have their livelihood secured somehow. This does not mean that all F/OSS developers need to turn it into a profession, but it does mean that we as consumers should understand that if we want to see an increased global output of FOSS, we need to contribute and support its economy. - Software is never finished. I've been using Emacs for almost 25 years of my life, but do you think I'd still be using it if it got stuck on version 17? The worst part though is this: > The producers presumably got their money’s worth already That is a terribly wrong assumption. Just like startups can go for a long time without being profitable, a lot of people working on F/OSS projects might be doing for the future expectation of turning it into a profitable venture. Personally speaking, if I were to bill for all the time that I've put into my own open source project [0] I'd would have stopped about two years ago, and if I stopped then it would never reach the stage that is reaching now where I can actually try to market it properly. Mind you, this does not mean that people should be forced to pay, but it means that it would help a lot if more people started to realize that it could be economically interesting for them to pay for some F/OSS projects. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io
      - teddyh 4y ago
        You seem to believe that it should be the normal and expected behavior of Free Software developers to overextend themselves, to go above and beyond their own needs for developing the software, and that society then ought to somehow repay these selfless acts of sacrifice. However, like the “thousand points of light” approach to social welfare, I don’t think this is ever sustainable, or even reasonable to expect. I do think it’s a worthy goal of having developers looking further than their own immediate goals, but our means of getting there differ. You seem to advocate some sort of outreach program with individuals getting recognition from companies (who make the actual money), and the companies for some reason investing that money in selected individuals. I instead want to improve society to the point that developers have enough spare time and resources to spend on improving the software enough that the software becomes valuable to society at large, merely for the miniscule rewards of minor recognition within their small community of developers and the self-satisfaction of knowing that their work is useful. This, I think, is the only sustainable and workable model to avoid developer burnout.
        rglullis 4y ago
        > You seem to believe that (...) Free Software developers to overextend themselves, (...) and that society then ought to somehow repay these selfless acts of sacrifice. No, the exact opposite. I'd like to have a society that values sustainability and their civil liberties more than they value consumerism and short-term thinking based on immediate conveniences. Software is increasingly a crucial part of everyone's lives and we can not just wait that others will make stuff for us out of goodness of their hearts. As consumers, we should be more selective about what kind of business we patronize and we should vote with our wallets to indicate what should be at premium. If we wait for Companies to develop a conscience or "The Government" to fix these problems, it's never going to happen. But we can collective take action and start demanding F/OSS alternatives and software that does not lock us into any trap and we should be ready to pay for it. > I instead want to improve society to the point that developers have enough spare time This is the worldview that implies that F/OSS is something that should be only a hobby, and something to be practiced only by amateurs (in the good sense of the word). Apologies for the language, but fuck that worldview. I do not want to do FOSS in my spare time. I want to use my spare time with my family, pursuing other interests and hobbies, do something else besides writing software. This is not to say that all software should be written only in a "professional" context. If there are people that want to write software for their own interests and self-expression, great. If they want to make that F/OSS, even better! But if the majority of software being written is meant to solve actual problems that people/business are willing to pay actual money for it, why can't that be F/OSS as well?

Trees are just part of another country with a different currency. If you would convert it, I’m sure you would find that trees have spent more money than Intel.

rglullis 4y ago
If there is any point you are trying to make here, I am failing to get it. Can you please try again, preferably with a less sarcastic tone?
- teddyh 4y ago
  Certainly. Everything (oxygen, software) is produced by someone (trees, programmers) at great cost, for their own reasons. If they then make their products available for free to you, then those producs are free. It does not matter if the original production was costly. The producers presumably got their money’s worth already, since otherwise they would not have spent the cost and created the thing in the first place.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Your analogy is broken in many different ways: - Trees produce O2 as a byproduct of the work they need to live, whether it is available for you or not is irrelevant to them. People working in Free Software are doing with the primary purpose of getting it available to people, and a secondary purpose of getting more people involved, collaborating, improving it, etc. - Much like we need to keep the environment healthy and not just take the O2 produced by trees for granted, we need to foment an economy where developers can choose to develop Free Software without sacrificing themselves. People working in F/OSS need to to have their livelihood secured somehow. This does not mean that all F/OSS developers need to turn it into a profession, but it does mean that we as consumers should understand that if we want to see an increased global output of FOSS, we need to contribute and support its economy. - Software is never finished. I've been using Emacs for almost 25 years of my life, but do you think I'd still be using it if it got stuck on version 17? The worst part though is this: > The producers presumably got their money’s worth already That is a terribly wrong assumption. Just like startups can go for a long time without being profitable, a lot of people working on F/OSS projects might be doing for the future expectation of turning it into a profitable venture. Personally speaking, if I were to bill for all the time that I've put into my own open source project [0] I'd would have stopped about two years ago, and if I stopped then it would never reach the stage that is reaching now where I can actually try to market it properly. Mind you, this does not mean that people should be forced to pay, but it means that it would help a lot if more people started to realize that it could be economically interesting for them to pay for some F/OSS projects. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io
    - teddyh 4y ago
      You seem to believe that it should be the normal and expected behavior of Free Software developers to overextend themselves, to go above and beyond their own needs for developing the software, and that society then ought to somehow repay these selfless acts of sacrifice. However, like the “thousand points of light” approach to social welfare, I don’t think this is ever sustainable, or even reasonable to expect. I do think it’s a worthy goal of having developers looking further than their own immediate goals, but our means of getting there differ. You seem to advocate some sort of outreach program with individuals getting recognition from companies (who make the actual money), and the companies for some reason investing that money in selected individuals. I instead want to improve society to the point that developers have enough spare time and resources to spend on improving the software enough that the software becomes valuable to society at large, merely for the miniscule rewards of minor recognition within their small community of developers and the self-satisfaction of knowing that their work is useful. This, I think, is the only sustainable and workable model to avoid developer burnout.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        > You seem to believe that (...) Free Software developers to overextend themselves, (...) and that society then ought to somehow repay these selfless acts of sacrifice. No, the exact opposite. I'd like to have a society that values sustainability and their civil liberties more than they value consumerism and short-term thinking based on immediate conveniences. Software is increasingly a crucial part of everyone's lives and we can not just wait that others will make stuff for us out of goodness of their hearts. As consumers, we should be more selective about what kind of business we patronize and we should vote with our wallets to indicate what should be at premium. If we wait for Companies to develop a conscience or "The Government" to fix these problems, it's never going to happen. But we can collective take action and start demanding F/OSS alternatives and software that does not lock us into any trap and we should be ready to pay for it. > I instead want to improve society to the point that developers have enough spare time This is the worldview that implies that F/OSS is something that should be only a hobby, and something to be practiced only by amateurs (in the good sense of the word). Apologies for the language, but fuck that worldview. I do not want to do FOSS in my spare time. I want to use my spare time with my family, pursuing other interests and hobbies, do something else besides writing software. This is not to say that all software should be written only in a "professional" context. If there are people that want to write software for their own interests and self-expression, great. If they want to make that F/OSS, even better! But if the majority of software being written is meant to solve actual problems that people/business are willing to pay actual money for it, why can't that be F/OSS as well?