4 ms·

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are you against the idea of companies letting their devs work on open source? There's this attitude in the open source world that somehow developers getting directly paid for open source is evil. This is -- excuse me -- fucking bullshit. I can't think of anything better than the idea of developers getting paid to write open source software. We need to grow the hell up and understand that paying developers to write open sourced software is a good thing -- open source devs get money, and the community gets software. Again, who loses? I don't use Rails, and I probably never will, yet I kicked in some money to help see this through. I can think of about a million worse ways I could have spent that cash.

wycats 15y ago
Thank you. That is really nice :D
tzumby 15y ago
The problem here is the ego, you have to notice how Yehuda put an accent on how important his contributions to rails 3 were. I'm not arguing they're not, but as Plato put it, when you think you reached the absolute wisdom you couldnt be further from it
- jacobian 15y ago
  Oh, I see. So the problem isn't that Yehuda's asking for money, but that he had the temerity to state his qualifications. Again, we gotta grow up. Yehuda's contributions to Rails 3 were important. What's wrong with taking credit for that? I'm often critical of the Rails community for an excess of ego, but this is not one of those cases. It seems pretty clear that the idea of an open source developer asking for money seems vaguely filthy to a bunch of people. I think this is unhealthy and poisonous. It condemns open source to be the provence of academics, the unemployed, those able to snatch free time away from their friends and familier, or those working at the largess of their corporate employers. That's a shitty limit on the scope of free software.
- matt_yoho 15y ago
  I read the accent as being on his track record of delivering on open source software efforts. In other words, he's demonstrating the soundness of investing your money toward his goal. Regardless, count me in.
- BHSPitMonkey 15y ago
  Part of using Kickstarter (and IndieGoGo, and the others) is establishing that you're qualified to do what you say you'll do with the crowd's money. He did exactly what he was supposed to do.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
NSMeta 15y ago
I, for once, don't see a problem with getting paid doing open-source software. With kickstarter I get an assumption that if for some reason he won't raise enough money - he won't work on the project. That, in my opinion, is wrong. It shouldn't matter if one raises money or not, as long as you like what you're doing. Otherwise why bother in the first place?
- dpritchett 15y ago
  Opportunity cost. If the world can't come up with $25k to fund this project, then it must not actually have enough of a market to be worth Yehuda's time. He can go find something else to do for $25k worth of his time that will likely benefit someone more than this would have. It's not like we're investing $25k of angel funds to have him build something that he is then going to sell for $500k without sharing the profits. We're simply paying the living expenses of someone who wants to solve a perceived need for the development community.
- chc 15y ago
  This might just be me, but here's my point of view: I like writing software. It's pretty enjoyable. But you know what's more enjoyable? Eating. Having a roof over my head. Being able to pay for my wedding without selling any major organs. If the time I spend writing software detracts from those other things, I'm sorry, but the software either has to go or has to pay for itself. If you want to be absurdly altruistic, you are free to do as you will, but I don't think it's reasonable to demand it from Yehuda, especially as he's already given so much.
viatropos 15y ago
There's no problem with open source contributors making money from their work. The problem is, there is a chance that this subtle change in perspective will evolve into an unhealthy culture. Especially since this is coming from Yehuda Katz. I've seen several people using things like Gun.io to fund patches and small additions to open source libraries, but it always seems to come from people you never see in the community - outsourcers, or people who just aren't that into coding but still code. But once a leader in the community does this... It's up in the air what this will do long term. Here's one possible outcome. It becomes "cool" to crowd fund open source projects, so a few of the up-and-coming coders with new open source projects start doing this too. In a year or two, a big chunk of the top coders are charging to do open source work. It's a badge of worthiness... Coderwall.com get's it's "$25k+ achievement" badge. Then one of two things can happen. The unlikely thing is, it evens out, there's a happy balance - some people charge, some people don't. Much more likely is people either start charging ridiculous amounts, the quality of free open source projects drastically decreases, or people start keeping their projects to themselves. This eventually leads to rebellion, and the true ones left start ANOTHER Free Software Foundation that gets back to the roots. This kind of stuff happens, out of seemingly innocent and well-intentioned moves. Like everyone's said, companies like 37signals and all the companies we work at fund open source projects, so one way or another we're getting some sort of payment. It's totally cool to make money off your open source work like this, nobody really sees it even though we all know. It's this indirectness that keeps the community healthy. It creates a feeling of open-ness. A culture. Asking for money directly like this doesn't make things feel open anymore, and like everything it will spiral.
wilmoore 15y ago
I agree...I don't use Rails for production work (yet); however, I dig what is going on here and I've also donated. The Rails community definitely takes care of business and seems to have a much more entrepreneurial spirit than most (if not all) other dev communities that I've witnessed. I'll have some of that please!

wycats 15y ago

Thank you. That is really nice :D

tzumby 15y ago

The problem here is the ego, you have to notice how Yehuda put an accent on how important his contributions to rails 3 were. I'm not arguing they're not, but as Plato put it, when you think you reached the absolute wisdom you couldnt be further from it

jacobian 15y ago
Oh, I see. So the problem isn't that Yehuda's asking for money, but that he had the temerity to state his qualifications. Again, we gotta grow up. Yehuda's contributions to Rails 3 were important. What's wrong with taking credit for that? I'm often critical of the Rails community for an excess of ego, but this is not one of those cases. It seems pretty clear that the idea of an open source developer asking for money seems vaguely filthy to a bunch of people. I think this is unhealthy and poisonous. It condemns open source to be the provence of academics, the unemployed, those able to snatch free time away from their friends and familier, or those working at the largess of their corporate employers. That's a shitty limit on the scope of free software.
matt_yoho 15y ago
I read the accent as being on his track record of delivering on open source software efforts. In other words, he's demonstrating the soundness of investing your money toward his goal. Regardless, count me in.
BHSPitMonkey 15y ago
Part of using Kickstarter (and IndieGoGo, and the others) is establishing that you're qualified to do what you say you'll do with the crowd's money. He did exactly what he was supposed to do.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

NSMeta 15y ago

I, for once, don't see a problem with getting paid doing open-source software. With kickstarter I get an assumption that if for some reason he won't raise enough money - he won't work on the project. That, in my opinion, is wrong. It shouldn't matter if one raises money or not, as long as you like what you're doing. Otherwise why bother in the first place?

dpritchett 15y ago
Opportunity cost. If the world can't come up with $25k to fund this project, then it must not actually have enough of a market to be worth Yehuda's time. He can go find something else to do for $25k worth of his time that will likely benefit someone more than this would have. It's not like we're investing $25k of angel funds to have him build something that he is then going to sell for $500k without sharing the profits. We're simply paying the living expenses of someone who wants to solve a perceived need for the development community.
chc 15y ago
This might just be me, but here's my point of view: I like writing software. It's pretty enjoyable. But you know what's more enjoyable? Eating. Having a roof over my head. Being able to pay for my wedding without selling any major organs. If the time I spend writing software detracts from those other things, I'm sorry, but the software either has to go or has to pay for itself. If you want to be absurdly altruistic, you are free to do as you will, but I don't think it's reasonable to demand it from Yehuda, especially as he's already given so much.

viatropos 15y ago

There's no problem with open source contributors making money from their work. The problem is, there is a chance that this subtle change in perspective will evolve into an unhealthy culture. Especially since this is coming from Yehuda Katz. I've seen several people using things like Gun.io to fund patches and small additions to open source libraries, but it always seems to come from people you never see in the community - outsourcers, or people who just aren't that into coding but still code. But once a leader in the community does this... It's up in the air what this will do long term. Here's one possible outcome. It becomes "cool" to crowd fund open source projects, so a few of the up-and-coming coders with new open source projects start doing this too. In a year or two, a big chunk of the top coders are charging to do open source work. It's a badge of worthiness... Coderwall.com get's it's "$25k+ achievement" badge. Then one of two things can happen. The unlikely thing is, it evens out, there's a happy balance - some people charge, some people don't. Much more likely is people either start charging ridiculous amounts, the quality of free open source projects drastically decreases, or people start keeping their projects to themselves. This eventually leads to rebellion, and the true ones left start ANOTHER Free Software Foundation that gets back to the roots. This kind of stuff happens, out of seemingly innocent and well-intentioned moves. Like everyone's said, companies like 37signals and all the companies we work at fund open source projects, so one way or another we're getting some sort of payment. It's totally cool to make money off your open source work like this, nobody really sees it even though we all know. It's this indirectness that keeps the community healthy. It creates a feeling of open-ness. A culture. Asking for money directly like this doesn't make things feel open anymore, and like everything it will spiral.

wilmoore 15y ago

I agree...I don't use Rails for production work (yet); however, I dig what is going on here and I've also donated. The Rails community definitely takes care of business and seems to have a much more entrepreneurial spirit than most (if not all) other dev communities that I've witnessed. I'll have some of that please!