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The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the

The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software.

varispeed 4y ago
> The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. There is no evidence for that. If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. > Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software. This is great to see that more and more projects offer dual licensing, but this really should be regulated, so that developers won't be bullied into giving up fruits of their work for free. This would also create the level playing field where developers from disadvantaged background could participate in OSS knowing they'll be able to put food on their table if they commit time and their skill into it. Currently, OSS is really a domain of people with privilege, who have the luxury of being able to spend time doing unpaid work. They then often get advantage when being hired, by having OSS projects in their CV, whereas someone who is struggling financially can't afford to work on OSS. Many employers look for OSS contributions and that gives people with privilege an edge.
- wakeupcall 4y ago
  Relicensing is a big problem is the OSS world too. To work at all, it requires copyright attribution. For small projects this really hampers collaboration. But if you don't do it early it might become impossible to do later.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  That would not level the field. Someone who is disadvantaged would not be able to dedicate as much time to writing software as someone who is not. So while someone who is disadvantaged may be able to dedicate, let's say, two hours a day and get paid for it, someone else may be able to get paid for two hours and then do it some more for two more hours for free.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    The whole point of level playing field is that they must be remunerated, so there is no instance of someone doing something for free. We had similar problem in my country with apprenticeships, that used to be unpaid. The good ones where snapped up white middle class children, while children from ethnic minorities had to work for money, not necessarily in their field of interest. That amplified the lack of diversity in the space of white collar jobs. Now unpaid apprenticeships are illegal and that has vastly improved the access to jobs for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It's exactly the same situation with OSS.
- WJW 4y ago
  > If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. Sure, but "free" is frictionless for most developers at any business while "cheap" would still incur going through the purchasing process (at bigger corporations and/or governments) or asking your manager to pull out the company creditcard. From my experience with bigger orgs, it would be MUCH cheaper for the organization to write most dependencies in-house than to go through the process of buying it off the shelf. Even if the OSS dependency would only cost 1 USD for lifetime use or something. This goes for most small-ish dependencies like test runners, API clients and even simple ORMs. Very small things like left-pad or faker.js would be much simpler to write in-house.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    > Sure, but "free" is frictionless for most developers at any business while "cheap" would still incur going through the purchasing process (at bigger corporations and/or governments) or asking your manager to pull out the company creditcard. This is really a non issue. Developers can evaluate whether the product meets needs and then get whoever is responsible to pay. In every company I worked, when I needed a commercial product, I put my case forward and most of the time got the company card to pay without issue. I simply can't see how this is a valid excuse. No amount of friction can justify people not being paid for their work. After all we can say why pay workers at all if there need to go through payroll, it's such a hassle...

varispeed 4y ago

> The hard truth is that these "for profit businesses" wouldn't use many of the projects if they weren't free and open source in the first place. This is why the moral argument falls on deaf ears. There is no evidence for that. If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. > Relicensing is an increasingly popular choice for OSS devs to to try to monetize usage, and it works since it is oftentimes cheaper to just pay than to rewrite software. This is great to see that more and more projects offer dual licensing, but this really should be regulated, so that developers won't be bullied into giving up fruits of their work for free. This would also create the level playing field where developers from disadvantaged background could participate in OSS knowing they'll be able to put food on their table if they commit time and their skill into it. Currently, OSS is really a domain of people with privilege, who have the luxury of being able to spend time doing unpaid work. They then often get advantage when being hired, by having OSS projects in their CV, whereas someone who is struggling financially can't afford to work on OSS. Many employers look for OSS contributions and that gives people with privilege an edge.

wakeupcall 4y ago
Relicensing is a big problem is the OSS world too. To work at all, it requires copyright attribution. For small projects this really hampers collaboration. But if you don't do it early it might become impossible to do later.
fluoridation 4y ago
That would not level the field. Someone who is disadvantaged would not be able to dedicate as much time to writing software as someone who is not. So while someone who is disadvantaged may be able to dedicate, let's say, two hours a day and get paid for it, someone else may be able to get paid for two hours and then do it some more for two more hours for free.
- varispeed 4y ago
  The whole point of level playing field is that they must be remunerated, so there is no instance of someone doing something for free. We had similar problem in my country with apprenticeships, that used to be unpaid. The good ones where snapped up white middle class children, while children from ethnic minorities had to work for money, not necessarily in their field of interest. That amplified the lack of diversity in the space of white collar jobs. Now unpaid apprenticeships are illegal and that has vastly improved the access to jobs for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It's exactly the same situation with OSS.
WJW 4y ago
> If something is good for business and cheaper to buy than develop in-house, business will buy. Sure, but "free" is frictionless for most developers at any business while "cheap" would still incur going through the purchasing process (at bigger corporations and/or governments) or asking your manager to pull out the company creditcard. From my experience with bigger orgs, it would be MUCH cheaper for the organization to write most dependencies in-house than to go through the process of buying it off the shelf. Even if the OSS dependency would only cost 1 USD for lifetime use or something. This goes for most small-ish dependencies like test runners, API clients and even simple ORMs. Very small things like left-pad or faker.js would be much simpler to write in-house.
- varispeed 4y ago
  > Sure, but "free" is frictionless for most developers at any business while "cheap" would still incur going through the purchasing process (at bigger corporations and/or governments) or asking your manager to pull out the company creditcard. This is really a non issue. Developers can evaluate whether the product meets needs and then get whoever is responsible to pay. In every company I worked, when I needed a commercial product, I put my case forward and most of the time got the company card to pay without issue. I simply can't see how this is a valid excuse. No amount of friction can justify people not being paid for their work. After all we can say why pay workers at all if there need to go through payroll, it's such a hassle...