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Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) There are studies where money ruins altruism and pure joy of creating sthg. has to be replaced with a payment

Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) There are studies where money ruins altruism and pure joy of creating sthg. has to be replaced with a payment which becomes according to Herzberg a hygiene factor and wears out. The --internet-- www as we know it - give it back!

chii 4y ago
> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) but it eventually had paid sponsorships from companies that make money off it.
linsomniac 4y ago
Linux is a VERY different thing than investigative journalism. I can't think of a single bit of investigative journalism someone did as a side project that has spawned an entire industry, but maybe I'm not thinking hard enough. Content costs money to make. Yes, sometimes give via self-funding of the content (without advertisement, like by working a job), and that's fantastic. But we also need a way to support the content that we like, and we can't expect everyone to be able to give.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  > Content costs money to make Some content costs money, other content - and how I dislike the word 'content' which turns that which makes the 'net interesting inside-out to make it into a money-making scheme - costs time to make. Not all time is money, lots of it is time spent on activities which people do without the need for payment since they enjoy it. Call it a 'hobby' or 'pastime' if you want, something to do when you're free to do what you want. Some people like to go and watch sports games, others like to sit on the sofa and watch televised drivel while others park themselves in front of a computer to create something. Much of what is created is interesting only to the creator for the act of creation but some of it has value beyond the experience of the creator. That is indeed how the Linux kernel got started, it is how a lot of music is made, artwork is created and more.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  > I can't think of a single bit of investigative journalism someone did as a side project that has spawned an entire industry Maybe not an entire industry, but Bellingcat has been impactful and it started with a guy commenting on the guardian comments section.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  Investigative journalism, (the media), sometimes referred to as "The Fourth Estate", is too important to be funded by advertising, and should be funded by the people, and be for the people. Just like the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our governments.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
Survivorship bias?
marcinzm 4y ago
>Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) Red Hat started in 1993 and SUSE in 1994. So you got 2 whole years before money entered the picture.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- b112 4y ago
  In the early years, these companies were tiny, struggled to not go out of business. And because they were so small, they contributed very little paid time... anywhere. Linux happened for free.
  - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    Yes, Linux was started for free as a student project, but the reason why it became the standard choice for data centers is because large corporations like Oracle, IBM and later Google united behind it in order to stop Microsoft from dominating servers. These corporations along with some commercial distributions have been funding Linux development for decades. Linux as we know it today is a child of corporate strategic thinking.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      IBM, DEC, Sun, HP and others already had commercial Unix offerings with support that corporate users wanted for servers. Why unite behind Linux, which at the time was inferior to all those others?
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        To attack Windows from the top and bottom simultaneously. It may seem excessive but MS was in a very strong position at the time. Many of us wondered if anything else would survive.
- tokai 4y ago
  I'm not against Red Hat but the sentiment that they are ruining Linux is not that uncommon.
strogonoff 4y ago
I believe “you create for free and live poor” vs. “you need to monetize your work via ads” is definitely the wrong dichotomy. You can simply create out of inspiration, while having a job that pays your bills (that is actually how a lot of OSS happened). Or you could publish some work openly, while suggesting the reader to buy your book, for example. Over-reliance on ad-based model and the resulting prevalence of double-sided “social” platforms where the advertiser is the customer, actual user needs count for nothing because no one will leave and no honest competitor can compete with “free”, most certainly seems to me to be at the root of a lot of dysfunction—if these platforms make more money from engagement thanks to aggravating inflammatory posts, regardless of whether they are well informed or in good faith, then that’s what they will promote and reward one way or another. The expectation of “free” is part of the problem, sure, but I don’t think that’s the cause. The cause can probably be distilled to “abuse of information asymmetry in free market enabled by regulatory inaction” (free market is great, but in presence of malicious actors it needs some regulation or it stops working). That leads to the aforementioned platforms, then the expectation of “free” and non-appreciation of work published completely for free just out of altruism or to feel pride/recognition, and generally goes counter to how the market is supposed to work.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  It's primarily a cultural difference. In print media ads were fairly tame. They weren't personally targeted and in some contexts they were quite welcome. Although print magazines made most of their money by selling ad pages, the content was largely firewalled. (Byte is a good example. The content was always hacker culture not ad culture.) On the internet, ad culture - not just ads themselves - has consumed everything. Whether it's a YouTube channel owner reminding everyone to like-and-subscribe, or some TikTok nonsense desperately trying to go viral, it's mostly about reach - defined entirely by potential ad spend - and not about the content, which is almost incidental to monetisation. And that's why it's so noisy, and often trivial. In fact I suspect there's a general Gresham's Law principle of cultural systems. As access and delivery become cheaper, content becomes noisier, more trivial, and less culturally valuable. As we go from manual content generation to automated AI content reach will increase, but cultural value - in the sense of challenging, original ideas and experiences that have lasting widespread relevance - will decrease even further.
unity1001 4y ago
> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) Linux happened mostly through the contributions of the paid developers of the Linux foundation. And still the majority of the commits belong to those developers. And it was possible to do so because the foundation received enough support from major donors, most of which were corporations. If you would want to choose an Open Source success story that wasnt backed by corporations, WordPress would be what you are looking for. But even then, the WordPress ecosystem found a way to fund itself directly through its users. Which means that they are also funded. In contrast, a gigantic amount of Open Source projects were abandoned when its contributors were no longer able to maintain them because life responsibilities started raining on them... Unfortunately any social paradigm, movement or setup must be able to sustain itself economically. The best way to do it is to do it through its users, directly, so that concentrated capital wont be able to take it over.
rchaud 4y ago
Linux is the exception that proves the rule. While it is completely free (beer + libre), Google and Facebook exploited numerous Linux-related technologies to turn the internet into a planet-scale ad machine.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  I apologise for my pedantry, but: > the exception that proves the rule To prove the rule is to test the rule; proof spirit is spirit that passes the test, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The exception that proves the rule is the exception that violates it (and shows that the rule is a heuristic, not a law).

chii 4y ago

> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) but it eventually had paid sponsorships from companies that make money off it.

linsomniac 4y ago

Linux is a VERY different thing than investigative journalism. I can't think of a single bit of investigative journalism someone did as a side project that has spawned an entire industry, but maybe I'm not thinking hard enough. Content costs money to make. Yes, sometimes give via self-funding of the content (without advertisement, like by working a job), and that's fantastic. But we also need a way to support the content that we like, and we can't expect everyone to be able to give.

the_third_wave 4y ago
> Content costs money to make Some content costs money, other content - and how I dislike the word 'content' which turns that which makes the 'net interesting inside-out to make it into a money-making scheme - costs time to make. Not all time is money, lots of it is time spent on activities which people do without the need for payment since they enjoy it. Call it a 'hobby' or 'pastime' if you want, something to do when you're free to do what you want. Some people like to go and watch sports games, others like to sit on the sofa and watch televised drivel while others park themselves in front of a computer to create something. Much of what is created is interesting only to the creator for the act of creation but some of it has value beyond the experience of the creator. That is indeed how the Linux kernel got started, it is how a lot of music is made, artwork is created and more.
mejutoco 4y ago
> I can't think of a single bit of investigative journalism someone did as a side project that has spawned an entire industry Maybe not an entire industry, but Bellingcat has been impactful and it started with a guy commenting on the guardian comments section.
jay_kyburz 4y ago
Investigative journalism, (the media), sometimes referred to as "The Fourth Estate", is too important to be funded by advertising, and should be funded by the people, and be for the people. Just like the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our governments.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

Survivorship bias?

marcinzm 4y ago

>Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) Red Hat started in 1993 and SUSE in 1994. So you got 2 whole years before money entered the picture.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
b112 4y ago
In the early years, these companies were tiny, struggled to not go out of business. And because they were so small, they contributed very little paid time... anywhere. Linux happened for free.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  Yes, Linux was started for free as a student project, but the reason why it became the standard choice for data centers is because large corporations like Oracle, IBM and later Google united behind it in order to stop Microsoft from dominating servers. These corporations along with some commercial distributions have been funding Linux development for decades. Linux as we know it today is a child of corporate strategic thinking.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    IBM, DEC, Sun, HP and others already had commercial Unix offerings with support that corporate users wanted for servers. Why unite behind Linux, which at the time was inferior to all those others?
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      To attack Windows from the top and bottom simultaneously. It may seem excessive but MS was in a very strong position at the time. Many of us wondered if anything else would survive.
tokai 4y ago
I'm not against Red Hat but the sentiment that they are ruining Linux is not that uncommon.

strogonoff 4y ago

I believe “you create for free and live poor” vs. “you need to monetize your work via ads” is definitely the wrong dichotomy. You can simply create out of inspiration, while having a job that pays your bills (that is actually how a lot of OSS happened). Or you could publish some work openly, while suggesting the reader to buy your book, for example. Over-reliance on ad-based model and the resulting prevalence of double-sided “social” platforms where the advertiser is the customer, actual user needs count for nothing because no one will leave and no honest competitor can compete with “free”, most certainly seems to me to be at the root of a lot of dysfunction—if these platforms make more money from engagement thanks to aggravating inflammatory posts, regardless of whether they are well informed or in good faith, then that’s what they will promote and reward one way or another. The expectation of “free” is part of the problem, sure, but I don’t think that’s the cause. The cause can probably be distilled to “abuse of information asymmetry in free market enabled by regulatory inaction” (free market is great, but in presence of malicious actors it needs some regulation or it stops working). That leads to the aforementioned platforms, then the expectation of “free” and non-appreciation of work published completely for free just out of altruism or to feel pride/recognition, and generally goes counter to how the market is supposed to work.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
It's primarily a cultural difference. In print media ads were fairly tame. They weren't personally targeted and in some contexts they were quite welcome. Although print magazines made most of their money by selling ad pages, the content was largely firewalled. (Byte is a good example. The content was always hacker culture not ad culture.) On the internet, ad culture - not just ads themselves - has consumed everything. Whether it's a YouTube channel owner reminding everyone to like-and-subscribe, or some TikTok nonsense desperately trying to go viral, it's mostly about reach - defined entirely by potential ad spend - and not about the content, which is almost incidental to monetisation. And that's why it's so noisy, and often trivial. In fact I suspect there's a general Gresham's Law principle of cultural systems. As access and delivery become cheaper, content becomes noisier, more trivial, and less culturally valuable. As we go from manual content generation to automated AI content reach will increase, but cultural value - in the sense of challenging, original ideas and experiences that have lasting widespread relevance - will decrease even further.

unity1001 4y ago

> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning) Linux happened mostly through the contributions of the paid developers of the Linux foundation. And still the majority of the commits belong to those developers. And it was possible to do so because the foundation received enough support from major donors, most of which were corporations. If you would want to choose an Open Source success story that wasnt backed by corporations, WordPress would be what you are looking for. But even then, the WordPress ecosystem found a way to fund itself directly through its users. Which means that they are also funded. In contrast, a gigantic amount of Open Source projects were abandoned when its contributors were no longer able to maintain them because life responsibilities started raining on them... Unfortunately any social paradigm, movement or setup must be able to sustain itself economically. The best way to do it is to do it through its users, directly, so that concentrated capital wont be able to take it over.

rchaud 4y ago

Linux is the exception that proves the rule. While it is completely free (beer + libre), Google and Facebook exploited numerous Linux-related technologies to turn the internet into a planet-scale ad machine.

denton-scratch 4y ago
I apologise for my pedantry, but: > the exception that proves the rule To prove the rule is to test the rule; proof spirit is spirit that passes the test, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The exception that proves the rule is the exception that violates it (and shows that the rule is a heuristic, not a law).