4 ms·

It is interesting, that the lack of a feature that would cost $629 to add is significant enough to make it the the HN front page. Makes me feel like I would li

by mg 3y ago

It is interesting, that the lack of a feature that would cost $629 to add is significant enough to make it the the HN front page. Makes me feel like I would like to learn more about open source. What drives it's development and what the business models are. There are 152 contributors to this project who wrote 21,686 commits. If each commit took an hour of work, and we value each hour at $50, that is $1,084,300 worth of time. How can a project gather over a million dollars worth of work time, but not $629 for a certification service?

_ink_ 3y ago
Because the contributers do the work (the coding) for fun. If they would need to pay $50 so someone else does the work (the fun part) they wouldn't do it.
mananaysiempre 3y ago
(Contributions amounting to $1e6 over 33 years, assuming there is no history-losing VCS migration in the statistics you quoted, and a service that costs $630 per year. While 2% of development cost is still not a lot, it’s not vanishingly small, either.) The economics are probably pretty simple: you can have fun contributing your time to a project, but you can’t have fun contributing money. It’s also easier to get your employer to okay your spending time to upstream bugfixes or even features than to get them to pay money to what’s likely a very vaguely defined organization for a very fuzzily defined service as opposed to straightforwardly buying a thing. (The money itself would be negligible—the accountants’ and lawyers’ time will cost more.)
uxp8u61q 3y ago
> If each commit took an hour of work > we value each hour at $50 If you start with fantasy hypotheses like these, you're going to obtain fantasy conclusions.
- charles_f 3y ago
  In this specific case the estimate is likely a vast underestimation of the cost of work.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    The cost of work is based on the cost of finding someone to do the work. These people did the work for free. This specific work cost $0. The value the work provides may be higher, and I'd wager that ImageMagick has provided far more than $1,000,000 in value.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
> Makes me feel like I would like to learn more about open source. What drives it's development and what the business models are. Simple: there is no business model. Open Source is not a business. It is a philosophy and hobby, where people help each other and give away their labor with no expectation of a return. (Some youngsters that have grown up in the social media age have developed a kind of entitlement complex where they focus more on the popularity of their contribution than its utility; they may be developing it just to see a lot of stars on a GitHub page. But largely it's a community driven by people who just needed some code to exist and then released it for free when it worked) (Some businesses do release code with an open source license and even accept some contributions from the public, but largely they are doing so for various business reasons and the project is more a reflection of the business than the needs of a community. Since those projects are financed and organized by the business, they tend to end when the business abandons them; whereas a grassroots community project is often just maintained by a new stranger on the internet if the old maintainer gives it up)
- andyfleming 3y ago
  I'm not sure whether or not there's an issue of entitlement, but there's certainly incentives to develop a popular package (even if superficially). One big one is career development. For people early in their career, it's something they can proactively invest in, as where they can't magically materialize years of experience overnight.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  There is definitely an argument to be made that open source should be viewed and treated as a business model, particularly if there are financial costs involved which must be paid one way or another. Dogma and fervor don't pay the bills.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  Still, high profile projects should be able to raise this type of money with ease. If they would say “Would match our ‘donation’ and donate $10 each year that we put in $1k in labor to this project?” that sounds like some commercial users would accept. But the first problem with medium scale OSS like this is that it’s no one’s hobby to manage projects or beg for money. It’s also a problem that OSS contribution/sponsorship isn’t normalized in corporations. I could much easier get permission to buy a $5k piece of software than donate $5 to an OSS project that powers out largest project and has been maintained for 10 years by a single person.
smokel 3y ago
By that logic, reading a classic novel such as Anna Karenina would set you back $720. [1] [1] https://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-0143035002 https://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-0143035002
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Only a very small number of people are ordinarily paid to read Russian literature. The typical observation with OSS is that we would otherwise pay large amounts of money for equivalent labor in the software market.
- labster 3y ago
  That’s why you hire a 10x reader at $200/hour.
rtpg 3y ago
The classic thing is that "nobody uses Windows". The real thing of course is that many people contributing to various projects end up using some *nix setup. So despite Windows being a big part of many userbases, ultimately maintainers often don't even have a Windows machine, let alone the knowledge to deal with some Windows-specific issues or bugs. Though here it seems to be mostly a money thing ($629/year is a real amount of "pocket change").
a1369209993 3y ago
> How can a project gather over a million dollars worth of work time, but not $629 for a certification service? Because the certification 'service' is a protection racket (as in criminal[0] racketeering) by Microsoft. Millions for defence (or in this case infrastucture), but not a cent for tribute. 0: Since I'm sure some pedant will nitpick this: yes, I'm aware that large corporations have likely purchased legislation misclassifying this as not officially a crime; you know perfectly well what I mean.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nwellinghoff 3y ago
It’s principle. A fundamental of the hacker mentality. A hacker will jump through hoops to do something based on principle. Something others legitimately have a hard time understanding. That being said why the HELL is it 629 dollars!?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by mg 3y ago

_ink_ 3y ago

Because the contributers do the work (the coding) for fun. If they would need to pay $50 so someone else does the work (the fun part) they wouldn't do it.

mananaysiempre 3y ago

(Contributions amounting to $1e6 over 33 years, assuming there is no history-losing VCS migration in the statistics you quoted, and a service that costs $630 per year. While 2% of development cost is still not a lot, it’s not vanishingly small, either.) The economics are probably pretty simple: you can have fun contributing your time to a project, but you can’t have fun contributing money. It’s also easier to get your employer to okay your spending time to upstream bugfixes or even features than to get them to pay money to what’s likely a very vaguely defined organization for a very fuzzily defined service as opposed to straightforwardly buying a thing. (The money itself would be negligible—the accountants’ and lawyers’ time will cost more.)

uxp8u61q 3y ago

> If each commit took an hour of work > we value each hour at $50 If you start with fantasy hypotheses like these, you're going to obtain fantasy conclusions.

charles_f 3y ago
In this specific case the estimate is likely a vast underestimation of the cost of work.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  The cost of work is based on the cost of finding someone to do the work. These people did the work for free. This specific work cost $0. The value the work provides may be higher, and I'd wager that ImageMagick has provided far more than $1,000,000 in value.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

> Makes me feel like I would like to learn more about open source. What drives it's development and what the business models are. Simple: there is no business model. Open Source is not a business. It is a philosophy and hobby, where people help each other and give away their labor with no expectation of a return. (Some youngsters that have grown up in the social media age have developed a kind of entitlement complex where they focus more on the popularity of their contribution than its utility; they may be developing it just to see a lot of stars on a GitHub page. But largely it's a community driven by people who just needed some code to exist and then released it for free when it worked) (Some businesses do release code with an open source license and even accept some contributions from the public, but largely they are doing so for various business reasons and the project is more a reflection of the business than the needs of a community. Since those projects are financed and organized by the business, they tend to end when the business abandons them; whereas a grassroots community project is often just maintained by a new stranger on the internet if the old maintainer gives it up)

andyfleming 3y ago
I'm not sure whether or not there's an issue of entitlement, but there's certainly incentives to develop a popular package (even if superficially). One big one is career development. For people early in their career, it's something they can proactively invest in, as where they can't magically materialize years of experience overnight.
Dalewyn 3y ago
There is definitely an argument to be made that open source should be viewed and treated as a business model, particularly if there are financial costs involved which must be paid one way or another. Dogma and fervor don't pay the bills.
alkonaut 3y ago
Still, high profile projects should be able to raise this type of money with ease. If they would say “Would match our ‘donation’ and donate $10 each year that we put in $1k in labor to this project?” that sounds like some commercial users would accept. But the first problem with medium scale OSS like this is that it’s no one’s hobby to manage projects or beg for money. It’s also a problem that OSS contribution/sponsorship isn’t normalized in corporations. I could much easier get permission to buy a $5k piece of software than donate $5 to an OSS project that powers out largest project and has been maintained for 10 years by a single person.

smokel 3y ago

By that logic, reading a classic novel such as Anna Karenina would set you back $720. [1] [1] https://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-0143035002 https://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-0143035002

woodruffw 3y ago
Only a very small number of people are ordinarily paid to read Russian literature. The typical observation with OSS is that we would otherwise pay large amounts of money for equivalent labor in the software market.
labster 3y ago
That’s why you hire a 10x reader at $200/hour.

rtpg 3y ago

The classic thing is that "nobody uses Windows". The real thing of course is that many people contributing to various projects end up using some *nix setup. So despite Windows being a big part of many userbases, ultimately maintainers often don't even have a Windows machine, let alone the knowledge to deal with some Windows-specific issues or bugs. Though here it seems to be mostly a money thing ($629/year is a real amount of "pocket change").

a1369209993 3y ago

> How can a project gather over a million dollars worth of work time, but not $629 for a certification service? Because the certification 'service' is a protection racket (as in criminal[0] racketeering) by Microsoft. Millions for defence (or in this case infrastucture), but not a cent for tribute. 0: Since I'm sure some pedant will nitpick this: yes, I'm aware that large corporations have likely purchased legislation misclassifying this as not officially a crime; you know perfectly well what I mean.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nwellinghoff 3y ago

It’s principle. A fundamental of the hacker mentality. A hacker will jump through hoops to do something based on principle. Something others legitimately have a hard time understanding. That being said why the HELL is it 629 dollars!?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]