7 ms·

The economics of open source needs to change if developers are going to be able to actually make a living spending most of their time on it. There are just too

The economics of open source needs to change if developers are going to be able to actually make a living spending most of their time on it. There are just too few dollars coming into the front end of the pipe. People who don't bat an eye at paying $10 for lunch will balk at paying $10 for a software license for some tool or app that saves them a ton of time and effort. Until this changes, open source contributors will continue to struggle to capture some of the few dollars floating around. Too many will just decide that it just isn't worth it.

bogwog 4y ago
> People who don't bat an eye at paying $10 for lunch will balk at paying $10 for a software license for some tool or app that saves them a ton of time and effort. Until this changes, open source contributors will continue to struggle to capture some of the few dollars floating around. Too many will just decide that it just isn't worth it. That's never going to change (how would it?). People have been saying similar things in every industry since the dawn of the dollar. It's just human nature, and anybody waiting for that change are going to die waiting.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  The psychology of “want” vs “need”. People need to eat and so the cost of it is justified and people will pay. The wants are weighed against the needs and are rarely justified unless the individual’s needs are met.
0xAFFFF 4y ago
End users are one thing, but what about multi-billion dollars companies that leverage high-quality open-source components mostly for free?
- bityard 4y ago
  Yes, what about them? If the open source licenses contained exceptions saying "you can't use this for free if you make more than x amount of money," then it isn't really open source...
PeterisP 4y ago
Open source will be perfectly fine if developers are not able to actually make a living spending most of their time on it, this is how this has always worked and nothing needs to change. People and organizations who want to make a particular improvement to some piece of open source software will. If there are no dollars comming into the front end of the pipe, then those who don't want or need that change, won't make it - and that is perfectly okay. Open source can be quite successful even living off of people writing that code as part of their job or as a hobby. There is no need for it to be a separate career path - if an open source tool can't do X well, then whenever somebody needs or wants or gets paid to do X, that can be committed to that tool by the people whose career involves applying that tool. Sure, extra money helps, but open source communities work reasonably well also without it.
- didgetmaster 4y ago
  Altruism is alive and well in all aspects of society and software development is no exception. Good developers are often willing to spend some time and effort to build something and give it away for nothing. A great deal of our software infrastructure is built on such contributions. But as a developer myself, I know that altruism only goes so far. There are many 'fun' tasks associated with making good software, but there are also many aspects that are quite unpleasant for the average developer. There is quite a bit of open source software out there with bugs, bad documentation, and bad design; simply because fixing those problems is a real hassle. Some people are willing to dig in and do some of the dirty work for no pay, but the majority will take a pass. Nothing gets you out of bed on a cold day to go work in the trenches like a steady paycheck. If we are satisfied with the status-quo, then you are right and 'nothing needs to change'; but if you want stable software with good documentation and quick bug fixes, then some improvements need to happen.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    > but if you want stable software with good documentation and quick bug fixes, then some improvements need to happen. If you want stable software with good documentation you can make do it yourself. If you don't want to do the work then you don't really want it that badly. Open source is about freedom. If a billion dollar company finds out they have a show stopping bug because of an Open Source library they are dependent on they can fix it. Nothing does need to change, what "status quo" are you talking about, if you don't like a piece of open source software don't use it, if you have to use it for your job then thank the stormfather that it is open source so you can go in and fix it. Honestly people seem to think that the software will become better if we just start paying for it and that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard, in fact often the crappiest software I've ever had to work with is proprietary. I always try and push my company to use open source not because I think it is always better but because if I run into a problem I can inspect the source and find out what is going on and why, and if I need to I can submit a patch. Open source != free as in beer Open source = free as in speech. The way things work now is fine, Linux works fine, Emacs works fine, if you're complaint is that some third party node library that you pulled off of Github to calculate the length of a string isn't working how you want my suggestion is submit a pull request or fork it. This idea that open source software should meet some sort of standard of quality is entitled and noxious, the only guarantee and promise you ever got with open source was that you had the source code, if you want more than that, then do it yourself.
tristor 4y ago
Some context, I am an open source advocate and someone that has contributed to open source software projects off and on for about 20 years. I disagree entirely with your proposition. The economics of open source are built directly into the license agreement structure of the model. When you give a user of your software free and complete permission to do whatever they wish with that software as long as they appropriately credit you (or similar terms), that is /exactly/ what you are doing. The economics of open source are exactly what they should be, pretty piss poor. Because you don't offer something for free if you have the expectation of being paid for it. This should be basic common sense. The challenge is that the software community has created a weird social order around this that open source is somehow ethically superior to commercial software, and so many developers feel socially obligated to open source software even when they have the expectation of being paid. This is a social challenge though, not an economic one. If your software produces a significant enough ROI above it's cost, you can sell it and be economically fruitful, otherwise you can't, this is is the basic nature of any business. Where I do agree to some extent with you is that this has a negative impact on open source contributions, because the BATNA (Best Alternative to the Negotiated Agreement) for a software developer between contributing their time and energy to open source vs working for a big tech company for $$$$ is to ditch open source if it isn't economically viable for them. That said, I think this is an extraordinarily privileged position to be in, that a lot of developers lack perspective on. The average person, even in Western economies, makes nowhere near what the average software developer makes in income, and the expectation that you can clear $100k/yr+ by giving away software for free is a bit daft and entitled in a world where the average person in "wealthy countries" makes less than half of that. Open source partly results in innovative, creative, and valuable ideas being implemented exactly because the relationship provides no real expectations of value on either side and allows developers the freedom to experiment and throw something out there. The reward for you releasing your software to the world for free is that someone found it useful which validated your idea and your creative expression as being valuable. It is not, and should not be, a job, other than as an employee of a company maintaining said project because they rely on it in their core infrastructure and necessarily and rightly take the cost upon themselves to maintain those things which they rely on without any expectation on the original author to do so for their hobby project.
- 4y ago
photochemsyn 4y ago
Licenses imply Software-As-A-Service and that's a ridiculous model. If I buy a tool at a hardware store, I don't need to 'renew the license' on a monthly or yearly basis in order to keep using that tool. It's also designed to reduce the useful lifetime of hardware, as old software versions that work with old hardware lose support fairly quickly. That's why I quit Microsoft Office after they moved to a subscription model, for example. Open-source tools may have fewer bells and whistles, but they can be run on essentially any hardware that Linux can run on, there's always a minimalist solution, they don't have all the telemetry overhead, etc. As far as the economics, well, it's not a cash cow for investors, certainly, but individuals can make a living within the open source world by providing paid technical assistance.
- soiler 4y ago
  I don't love the proliferation of SAAS, but your analogy isn't very solid. You don't pay upkeep on your hammer because it doesn't change. If it gets damaged, you do pay for repairs (although you probably don't go to the manufacturer). And if the manufacturer came out every X months to replace the head with some new alloy, you'd have to pay for that, too. The point is that it's difficult to get software that is static anymore. The reason it's considered a service isn't _because_ it has a subscription model, it's because a product owner and an engineering team are constantly making bug fixes, improvements, security updates, etc. The problem with the model isn't that it exists - the problem is that we don't have a choice. When security is not an issue (like with MS Word), I'd take the single purchase almost every time.
  - mathgladiator 4y ago
    > You don't pay upkeep on your hammer because it doesn't change You do. Hammers rust, the handle may break. Practically all things have some kind of upkeep.
    - 9dev 4y ago
      And so what; the hammer manufacturer comes around and gives you fresh handles and a nice rust treatment every other month? That’s precisely the difference between tools that you buy once and SaaS subscriptions, and why the analogy is flawed.
somrand0 4y ago
counterpoint: open source is fine. what needs to change is economics themselves
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Open source and arts are two reasons why Universal Basic Income experiments are interesting...
riazrizvi 4y ago
Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines. They fail to show how developer's can protect price: > When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” There are two problem I see here, 1) totally free redistribution means price cannot be protected, as resellers can make a too-easy profit giving out discounts, and 2) unrestricted access leads to theft, people will eventually steal once they learn there are no impediments. I think Open Source needs to move to a Low Cost model similar to the modern media industry. A $10/month subscription to sites like Github. Limited access to projects for non-subscribers. Subscribers can download as much as they want. Fees are redistributed to projects based on subscriber downloads. License prohibits anyone but project owner from re-hosting on other sites. Developers are free to modify your source, and get compensated for it, but just because they touch a small part of it, they don't then get all your revenue, instead rather than project forks, they can do project patches or do their own rewrites. Copyright is protected but the definition for copyright of source code should be softened to be more aligned with standards for other media, so copyright for source should be simply defined as 'obviously equivalent to an average programmer'. So then any programmer is allowed to superficially rewrite code, just as authors superficially rewrite articles, it needs to have some originality to an average programmer. This would both incentivize/support developers and keep away restrictions from improving code.
- carapace 4y ago
  > Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines "Open Source" is not RMS's thing, he is the "Free" software guy. By getting that wrong you kinda disqualify yourself from being taken seriously by those of us who consider ourselves "Free" software fanatics and who see the whole "Open Source" movement as a distraction from the main point. Not that that matters, because effectively no one cares. Most people, like you, seem to not even realize there's any difference. Speaking as a self-described "Free" software fanatic, I feel like we failed nearly completely. At least socially and politically (technically GNU software runs half the planet, eh? You're using some right now, no doubt.) - - - - Still speaking as a "Free" software fanatic, it seems like there's no point in Open Source except to benefit people who don't want to share their improvements, and so this effort, coming from Microsoft, seems like a tricky way to get devs to work for them for free (paradoxically by dangling the idea of a paid career in front of them, eh?)

bogwog 4y ago

> People who don't bat an eye at paying $10 for lunch will balk at paying $10 for a software license for some tool or app that saves them a ton of time and effort. Until this changes, open source contributors will continue to struggle to capture some of the few dollars floating around. Too many will just decide that it just isn't worth it. That's never going to change (how would it?). People have been saying similar things in every industry since the dawn of the dollar. It's just human nature, and anybody waiting for that change are going to die waiting.

gabereiser 4y ago
The psychology of “want” vs “need”. People need to eat and so the cost of it is justified and people will pay. The wants are weighed against the needs and are rarely justified unless the individual’s needs are met.

0xAFFFF 4y ago

End users are one thing, but what about multi-billion dollars companies that leverage high-quality open-source components mostly for free?

bityard 4y ago
Yes, what about them? If the open source licenses contained exceptions saying "you can't use this for free if you make more than x amount of money," then it isn't really open source...

PeterisP 4y ago

Open source will be perfectly fine if developers are not able to actually make a living spending most of their time on it, this is how this has always worked and nothing needs to change. People and organizations who want to make a particular improvement to some piece of open source software will. If there are no dollars comming into the front end of the pipe, then those who don't want or need that change, won't make it - and that is perfectly okay. Open source can be quite successful even living off of people writing that code as part of their job or as a hobby. There is no need for it to be a separate career path - if an open source tool can't do X well, then whenever somebody needs or wants or gets paid to do X, that can be committed to that tool by the people whose career involves applying that tool. Sure, extra money helps, but open source communities work reasonably well also without it.

didgetmaster 4y ago
Altruism is alive and well in all aspects of society and software development is no exception. Good developers are often willing to spend some time and effort to build something and give it away for nothing. A great deal of our software infrastructure is built on such contributions. But as a developer myself, I know that altruism only goes so far. There are many 'fun' tasks associated with making good software, but there are also many aspects that are quite unpleasant for the average developer. There is quite a bit of open source software out there with bugs, bad documentation, and bad design; simply because fixing those problems is a real hassle. Some people are willing to dig in and do some of the dirty work for no pay, but the majority will take a pass. Nothing gets you out of bed on a cold day to go work in the trenches like a steady paycheck. If we are satisfied with the status-quo, then you are right and 'nothing needs to change'; but if you want stable software with good documentation and quick bug fixes, then some improvements need to happen.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  > but if you want stable software with good documentation and quick bug fixes, then some improvements need to happen. If you want stable software with good documentation you can make do it yourself. If you don't want to do the work then you don't really want it that badly. Open source is about freedom. If a billion dollar company finds out they have a show stopping bug because of an Open Source library they are dependent on they can fix it. Nothing does need to change, what "status quo" are you talking about, if you don't like a piece of open source software don't use it, if you have to use it for your job then thank the stormfather that it is open source so you can go in and fix it. Honestly people seem to think that the software will become better if we just start paying for it and that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard, in fact often the crappiest software I've ever had to work with is proprietary. I always try and push my company to use open source not because I think it is always better but because if I run into a problem I can inspect the source and find out what is going on and why, and if I need to I can submit a patch. Open source != free as in beer Open source = free as in speech. The way things work now is fine, Linux works fine, Emacs works fine, if you're complaint is that some third party node library that you pulled off of Github to calculate the length of a string isn't working how you want my suggestion is submit a pull request or fork it. This idea that open source software should meet some sort of standard of quality is entitled and noxious, the only guarantee and promise you ever got with open source was that you had the source code, if you want more than that, then do it yourself.

tristor 4y ago

Some context, I am an open source advocate and someone that has contributed to open source software projects off and on for about 20 years. I disagree entirely with your proposition. The economics of open source are built directly into the license agreement structure of the model. When you give a user of your software free and complete permission to do whatever they wish with that software as long as they appropriately credit you (or similar terms), that is /exactly/ what you are doing. The economics of open source are exactly what they should be, pretty piss poor. Because you don't offer something for free if you have the expectation of being paid for it. This should be basic common sense. The challenge is that the software community has created a weird social order around this that open source is somehow ethically superior to commercial software, and so many developers feel socially obligated to open source software even when they have the expectation of being paid. This is a social challenge though, not an economic one. If your software produces a significant enough ROI above it's cost, you can sell it and be economically fruitful, otherwise you can't, this is is the basic nature of any business. Where I do agree to some extent with you is that this has a negative impact on open source contributions, because the BATNA (Best Alternative to the Negotiated Agreement) for a software developer between contributing their time and energy to open source vs working for a big tech company for $$$$ is to ditch open source if it isn't economically viable for them. That said, I think this is an extraordinarily privileged position to be in, that a lot of developers lack perspective on. The average person, even in Western economies, makes nowhere near what the average software developer makes in income, and the expectation that you can clear $100k/yr+ by giving away software for free is a bit daft and entitled in a world where the average person in "wealthy countries" makes less than half of that. Open source partly results in innovative, creative, and valuable ideas being implemented exactly because the relationship provides no real expectations of value on either side and allows developers the freedom to experiment and throw something out there. The reward for you releasing your software to the world for free is that someone found it useful which validated your idea and your creative expression as being valuable. It is not, and should not be, a job, other than as an employee of a company maintaining said project because they rely on it in their core infrastructure and necessarily and rightly take the cost upon themselves to maintain those things which they rely on without any expectation on the original author to do so for their hobby project.

4y ago

photochemsyn 4y ago

Licenses imply Software-As-A-Service and that's a ridiculous model. If I buy a tool at a hardware store, I don't need to 'renew the license' on a monthly or yearly basis in order to keep using that tool. It's also designed to reduce the useful lifetime of hardware, as old software versions that work with old hardware lose support fairly quickly. That's why I quit Microsoft Office after they moved to a subscription model, for example. Open-source tools may have fewer bells and whistles, but they can be run on essentially any hardware that Linux can run on, there's always a minimalist solution, they don't have all the telemetry overhead, etc. As far as the economics, well, it's not a cash cow for investors, certainly, but individuals can make a living within the open source world by providing paid technical assistance.

soiler 4y ago
I don't love the proliferation of SAAS, but your analogy isn't very solid. You don't pay upkeep on your hammer because it doesn't change. If it gets damaged, you do pay for repairs (although you probably don't go to the manufacturer). And if the manufacturer came out every X months to replace the head with some new alloy, you'd have to pay for that, too. The point is that it's difficult to get software that is static anymore. The reason it's considered a service isn't _because_ it has a subscription model, it's because a product owner and an engineering team are constantly making bug fixes, improvements, security updates, etc. The problem with the model isn't that it exists - the problem is that we don't have a choice. When security is not an issue (like with MS Word), I'd take the single purchase almost every time.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  > You don't pay upkeep on your hammer because it doesn't change You do. Hammers rust, the handle may break. Practically all things have some kind of upkeep.
  - 9dev 4y ago
    And so what; the hammer manufacturer comes around and gives you fresh handles and a nice rust treatment every other month? That’s precisely the difference between tools that you buy once and SaaS subscriptions, and why the analogy is flawed.

somrand0 4y ago

counterpoint: open source is fine. what needs to change is economics themselves

yencabulator 4y ago
Open source and arts are two reasons why Universal Basic Income experiments are interesting...

riazrizvi 4y ago

Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines. They fail to show how developer's can protect price: > When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” There are two problem I see here, 1) totally free redistribution means price cannot be protected, as resellers can make a too-easy profit giving out discounts, and 2) unrestricted access leads to theft, people will eventually steal once they learn there are no impediments. I think Open Source needs to move to a Low Cost model similar to the modern media industry. A $10/month subscription to sites like Github. Limited access to projects for non-subscribers. Subscribers can download as much as they want. Fees are redistributed to projects based on subscriber downloads. License prohibits anyone but project owner from re-hosting on other sites. Developers are free to modify your source, and get compensated for it, but just because they touch a small part of it, they don't then get all your revenue, instead rather than project forks, they can do project patches or do their own rewrites. Copyright is protected but the definition for copyright of source code should be softened to be more aligned with standards for other media, so copyright for source should be simply defined as 'obviously equivalent to an average programmer'. So then any programmer is allowed to superficially rewrite code, just as authors superficially rewrite articles, it needs to have some originality to an average programmer. This would both incentivize/support developers and keep away restrictions from improving code.

carapace 4y ago
> Open Source is usually $0 cost because I believe there is a problem with Stallman's guidelines "Open Source" is not RMS's thing, he is the "Free" software guy. By getting that wrong you kinda disqualify yourself from being taken seriously by those of us who consider ourselves "Free" software fanatics and who see the whole "Open Source" movement as a distraction from the main point. Not that that matters, because effectively no one cares. Most people, like you, seem to not even realize there's any difference. Speaking as a self-described "Free" software fanatic, I feel like we failed nearly completely. At least socially and politically (technically GNU software runs half the planet, eh? You're using some right now, no doubt.) - - - - Still speaking as a "Free" software fanatic, it seems like there's no point in Open Source except to benefit people who don't want to share their improvements, and so this effort, coming from Microsoft, seems like a tricky way to get devs to work for them for free (paradoxically by dangling the idea of a paid career in front of them, eh?)