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Markets approximate an algorithm where you line up everyone who can do a job by willingness to do it, then pick the cheapest if someone is willing to pay that m
by roenxi 3y ago
Markets approximate an algorithm where you line up everyone who can do a job by willingness to do it, then pick the cheapest if someone is willing to pay that much.
In the case of open source, that algorithm usually identifies volunteers. Sometimes it identifies businesses. Sometimes people come up with clever ways of funding projects (Red Hat the enterprise was genius from this perspective, they organised a solution to tragedy of the commons in core infrastructure and made a lot of money doing that).
I suspect there does need to be a regular social renewal to resolve the tragedy of the commons problem. I expect that the network of OSS foundations and companies will regularly becomes corrupt and ineffective and need to be purged then replaced. That implies there is a fine line of healthy complaining - people need to communicate where the problems are by complaining, but it is useless trying to blame people like kernel maintainers for poor testing. It is good to stop and appreciate how beautiful the dance is; this is one of the purest free markets we have in the world and it is pretty amazing how well it hangs together since it looks like a hearty sneeze could bring the whole thing down.
- morelisp 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jorvi 3y ago> I suspect there does need to be a regular social renewal to resolve the tragedy of the commons problem. Wouldn’t the solution offered on LWN work great? Just excise a tax (well, I guess a licensing cost) for open source use to any corporation that is above x$ amounts of revenue. Make it a tiny percentage (0.1%?). 2022 revenue: - $400 billion, Apple - $200 billion, Microsoft - $120 billion, Meta - $80 billion, AWS $800 billion * 0.01 = €800 million of “sovereign OSS fund” funding. And that’s just the big ones. Bing tells me the 2022 combined revenue of all NASDAQ listed companies is ~$6900 billion. That’s $6.9 billion in OSS funding you’d skim off! What’s more, with how much that would improve open source projects, those companies would see enough productivity improvement that despite the 0.1% in skimmed revenue, they’d see a net benefit.
- ninkendo 3y agoWho will receive the funding from this tax? What criteria would you use to distribute funding? Windfall for the NPM leftpad module I guess.
- jorvi 3y agoI’m sure you could set up a non-profit organization with smart people that are passionate (but not dogmatic) about open source, that could selectively fund projects or even just GitHub sponsoring / bug bounties.
- marcosdumay 3y agoSo, you just solved general governance? No, you absolutely can't set such an organization and expect it to work. You are marginally better giving the task to some government body, but expect failure either way.
- jorvi 3y agoYea right man, based on a single comment let me just bash out a 500-page governance manifest + structure real quick. I don’t know what you were expecting.
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoOr, give a tax deduction for contributions to open source. This is America, new taxes are nearly impossible to pass, tax cuts are much easier to pass.
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoI would already declare any OSS contributions as a business cost and deduct them from my taxes? What above that is the suggestion?
- _ph_ 3y agoI think this is a great idea and it just feels right. If you tax something, you have the challenge on how to distribute the money in a proper manner if it isn't repurposed to something else in the first place. But having tax deductions solves the problem. There is an incentive to support open source, but the companies can decide themselves where the effort goes.
- dehrmann 3y agoIt might not be corruption. It could just be that there are unsexy problems neither volunteers nor companies want to work on.
- hammock 3y ago>Markets approximate an algorithm where you line up everyone who can do a job by willingness to do it, then pick the cheapest if someone is willing to pay that much. That's an auction, not a market. Markets are two sided, there are differentiated (multidimensional) offers and bids that are seeking to get matched. Much more complex
- nly 3y agoThe difference is only one of time. At any given _instant_ in time there is a steady state where there is queue of people willing to buy and a queue of people willing to sell time. There are no market makers in the job market. What OP says is true
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoThe job market is full of market makers. For example contractor companies, any business providing services, etc
- airstrike 3y ago> That's an auction, not a market. Markets are two sided, there are differentiated (multidimensional) offers and bids that are seeking to get matched. Much more complex None of that necessarily invalidates the point that people are paid the minimum amount possible for a given pool of labor supply