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Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using yo

by sneak 2y ago

Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything.

coldbrewed 2y ago
Open source is a gift within a gift economy. The software may be freely used but the labor needs to come from somewhere, and donations of either direct labor or compensation help ensure that the overall gift economy can continue to function.
anticorporate 2y ago
Do they owe anything today, in the sense of a legal obligation? No. But we've regulated the tragedy of the commons in all sorts of other instances. There's no reason, for example, that a small percentage of corporate income tax couldn't be allocated to a grant program for free and open source software projects.
- badsectoracula 2y ago
  That's a good thought in isolation. The problem however is how are you going to ensure the money collected for that purpose go to the projects that actually need it and there wont be any corruption involved? It isn't hard to notice, for example, that in EU where gamedev companies often receive grants for various nebulous reasons tend to be companies that do not need the money in the first place (and yes, of course there are devs who received money that needed them, somehow people have to excuse the existence things they benefit from).
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    I don't think you're going to solve corruption perfectly in any system, but isn't that a bit of a red herring? We manage to do this within other fields of endeavor, at least in the United States, by using an intermediary. Examples: National Science Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      It's definitely not a red herring. Software is there to do something. Art isn't. If you're spending money on software, it's to do something, and if it's the wrong thing it's a waste of people's money.
    - sneak 2y ago
      Redistributing tax money to economically unproductive (and usually worthless, as evidenced by the fact that people wouldn’t pay for it voluntarily) endeavors is a whole debate that has nothing to do with open source software. Ultimately if people value things, they will buy them. Forcing people to pay for things they don’t want to buy simply because you think it would be good for them is a special kind of tyranny.
      - anticorporate 2y ago
        > Forcing people to pay for things they don’t want to buy simply because you think it would be good for them is a special kind of tyranny. Wait until you learn where the rest of your tax dollars get spent.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  That's honestly the sneakiest suggestion for implementation of communism I've heard so far in my life. Give away low quality software for free, then later demand that the government force people who want nothing to do with you or your code to pay you for your efforts. It's parasitic on several different levels. Then all FOSS hackers will be like Khrushchev, wondering why Western industry always outproduced his own, even though the Soviets "where doing everything right".
- creato 2y ago
  > There's no reason There definitely is a reason, and it's the same reason this problem exists in the first place: it's hard to measure the value a library or tool generates, whether it's open source or not. How are you going to allocate this tax to projects at scale? Companies already can barely solve this problem internally, and often fail completely at it. Just imagine how many times you read a comment on HN lamenting the lack of investment in IT infrastructure. The idea that you'll solve it at society scale as a government, for things much more nebulous than even IT infrastructure, is laughable.
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    Grants don't need to be given on the basis of usage alone. Generally speaking, the people on a grants committee would be knowledgeable industry experts who make allocation based on a number of factors like impact, ability of the organization receiving the funds the utilize them well, the sustainability of the project as a whole, the success of previous grant projects, etc.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      This just creates a cottage industry of people who are good at writing OSS grant applications and demonstrating "progress". It also keeps incumbents in place. Central funding is the worst idea unless there really is no alternative.
munificent 2y ago
> because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything. Tell me you've never been an open source maintainer without telling me you've never been an open source maintainer. :)
- jefftk 2y ago
  I've been an open source maintainer (and still am to a smaller degree) and I think sneak is right. I'm happy for people to use things I create and release, and their use doesn't impose costs on me.
  - seam_carver 2y ago
    Tech support still takes time.
    - badsectoracula 2y ago
      When you release an open source project you are not obligated to provide tech support. My project might be given to you for free but if you want my time you'll have to pay for it - and i get to decide if i'll sell it to you.
      - layer8 2y ago
        Just seeing the issue submissions can have a cost in terms of emotional impact. Of course, you can shield yourself from any feedback, but that has its costs as well (e.g. not getting genuine high-quality error reports). One has to live with those trade-offs.
        toast0 2y ago
        I have 37k unread messages in my in email inbox. I can ignore issues on github that don't interest me, too. :p Or, as the case may be, claim that I'll look at them soon, and never make it back.
    - jefftk 2y ago
nu11ptr 2y ago
100%. This new trend of maintaining or starting an open source project and then getting upset when people don't send you money is seriously weird. If you want compensation, start a company, otherwise consider anything you receive a gift.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Yeah, though I have sympathies for single devs or projects like perl that are obviously non profit. Like, I get the frustrations for actual volunteers and people who survive on building OSS at a small scale. What really annoys me is when someone decides to build a corporation around an open source project, and then you get the usual blog post around users not paying or OSS not being sustainable. Yes, using OSS as your marketing and adoption strategy is probably not very reliable and can cause users to use your OSS as if it was OSS, that is, without giving anything back. But usually those projects succeed because they are OSS, and would've had basically no users otherwise. Who would've used MongoDB, elastic search, or redis if they were proprietary and required a paid license from the get go? In a way, that's also true in this case (success came from being OSS) but again, I get why it seems unfair for some when it's a non profit not being able to sustain itself or get contributions for corporate users.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    The problem is, if their software had cost what it needed to from the start then that would've put it in a totally different competition with other companies. Bypassing that competition doesn't mean they can suddenly start complaining about how many customers they have vs how much they get.
    - mardifoufs 2y ago
      Yeah I completely agree and that's exactly why the most annoying part of the OSS sustainability conversation. Most of the big OSS players (not individual devs, I'm referring more to the open core type of corporations) would just not exist at all, much less make more money, without OSS. No matter how much money elastic search lost to Amazon for example, they would've made basically nothing without OSS.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mistrial9 2y ago
> Releasing free software is a gift to the world. definite maybe, but it is not only that.
kamaal 2y ago
Part of the reasons why developers are so common is because starting is easy thanks to these 'free' tools. They better pay, or some body 15 years from now will have to spend $10,000 just to being learning how to code. That not only reduces number of programmers that you can hire, that will create a serious general programmer crunch, that will likely increase the cost of making software 1000x.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
The stronger claim is that not giving back is short-sighted rather than unethical: using a volunteer product in your business without doing anything to ensure it's long-term longevity risks regression bugs and dependency hell.

by sneak 2y ago

coldbrewed 2y ago

Open source is a gift within a gift economy. The software may be freely used but the labor needs to come from somewhere, and donations of either direct labor or compensation help ensure that the overall gift economy can continue to function.

anticorporate 2y ago

Do they owe anything today, in the sense of a legal obligation? No. But we've regulated the tragedy of the commons in all sorts of other instances. There's no reason, for example, that a small percentage of corporate income tax couldn't be allocated to a grant program for free and open source software projects.

badsectoracula 2y ago
That's a good thought in isolation. The problem however is how are you going to ensure the money collected for that purpose go to the projects that actually need it and there wont be any corruption involved? It isn't hard to notice, for example, that in EU where gamedev companies often receive grants for various nebulous reasons tend to be companies that do not need the money in the first place (and yes, of course there are devs who received money that needed them, somehow people have to excuse the existence things they benefit from).
- anticorporate 2y ago
  I don't think you're going to solve corruption perfectly in any system, but isn't that a bit of a red herring? We manage to do this within other fields of endeavor, at least in the United States, by using an intermediary. Examples: National Science Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    It's definitely not a red herring. Software is there to do something. Art isn't. If you're spending money on software, it's to do something, and if it's the wrong thing it's a waste of people's money.
  - sneak 2y ago
    Redistributing tax money to economically unproductive (and usually worthless, as evidenced by the fact that people wouldn’t pay for it voluntarily) endeavors is a whole debate that has nothing to do with open source software. Ultimately if people value things, they will buy them. Forcing people to pay for things they don’t want to buy simply because you think it would be good for them is a special kind of tyranny.
    - anticorporate 2y ago
      > Forcing people to pay for things they don’t want to buy simply because you think it would be good for them is a special kind of tyranny. Wait until you learn where the rest of your tax dollars get spent.
carlosjobim 2y ago
That's honestly the sneakiest suggestion for implementation of communism I've heard so far in my life. Give away low quality software for free, then later demand that the government force people who want nothing to do with you or your code to pay you for your efforts. It's parasitic on several different levels. Then all FOSS hackers will be like Khrushchev, wondering why Western industry always outproduced his own, even though the Soviets "where doing everything right".
creato 2y ago
> There's no reason There definitely is a reason, and it's the same reason this problem exists in the first place: it's hard to measure the value a library or tool generates, whether it's open source or not. How are you going to allocate this tax to projects at scale? Companies already can barely solve this problem internally, and often fail completely at it. Just imagine how many times you read a comment on HN lamenting the lack of investment in IT infrastructure. The idea that you'll solve it at society scale as a government, for things much more nebulous than even IT infrastructure, is laughable.
- anticorporate 2y ago
  Grants don't need to be given on the basis of usage alone. Generally speaking, the people on a grants committee would be knowledgeable industry experts who make allocation based on a number of factors like impact, ability of the organization receiving the funds the utilize them well, the sustainability of the project as a whole, the success of previous grant projects, etc.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    This just creates a cottage industry of people who are good at writing OSS grant applications and demonstrating "progress". It also keeps incumbents in place. Central funding is the worst idea unless there really is no alternative.

munificent 2y ago

> because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything. Tell me you've never been an open source maintainer without telling me you've never been an open source maintainer. :)

jefftk 2y ago
I've been an open source maintainer (and still am to a smaller degree) and I think sneak is right. I'm happy for people to use things I create and release, and their use doesn't impose costs on me.
- seam_carver 2y ago
  Tech support still takes time.
  - badsectoracula 2y ago
    When you release an open source project you are not obligated to provide tech support. My project might be given to you for free but if you want my time you'll have to pay for it - and i get to decide if i'll sell it to you.
    - layer8 2y ago
      Just seeing the issue submissions can have a cost in terms of emotional impact. Of course, you can shield yourself from any feedback, but that has its costs as well (e.g. not getting genuine high-quality error reports). One has to live with those trade-offs.
      - toast0 2y ago
        I have 37k unread messages in my in email inbox. I can ignore issues on github that don't interest me, too. :p Or, as the case may be, claim that I'll look at them soon, and never make it back.
  - jefftk 2y ago

nu11ptr 2y ago

100%. This new trend of maintaining or starting an open source project and then getting upset when people don't send you money is seriously weird. If you want compensation, start a company, otherwise consider anything you receive a gift.

mardifoufs 2y ago
Yeah, though I have sympathies for single devs or projects like perl that are obviously non profit. Like, I get the frustrations for actual volunteers and people who survive on building OSS at a small scale. What really annoys me is when someone decides to build a corporation around an open source project, and then you get the usual blog post around users not paying or OSS not being sustainable. Yes, using OSS as your marketing and adoption strategy is probably not very reliable and can cause users to use your OSS as if it was OSS, that is, without giving anything back. But usually those projects succeed because they are OSS, and would've had basically no users otherwise. Who would've used MongoDB, elastic search, or redis if they were proprietary and required a paid license from the get go? In a way, that's also true in this case (success came from being OSS) but again, I get why it seems unfair for some when it's a non profit not being able to sustain itself or get contributions for corporate users.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  The problem is, if their software had cost what it needed to from the start then that would've put it in a totally different competition with other companies. Bypassing that competition doesn't mean they can suddenly start complaining about how many customers they have vs how much they get.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    Yeah I completely agree and that's exactly why the most annoying part of the OSS sustainability conversation. Most of the big OSS players (not individual devs, I'm referring more to the open core type of corporations) would just not exist at all, much less make more money, without OSS. No matter how much money elastic search lost to Amazon for example, they would've made basically nothing without OSS.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mistrial9 2y ago

> Releasing free software is a gift to the world. definite maybe, but it is not only that.

kamaal 2y ago

Part of the reasons why developers are so common is because starting is easy thanks to these 'free' tools. They better pay, or some body 15 years from now will have to spend $10,000 just to being learning how to code. That not only reduces number of programmers that you can hire, that will create a serious general programmer crunch, that will likely increase the cost of making software 1000x.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

The stronger claim is that not giving back is short-sighted rather than unethical: using a volunteer product in your business without doing anything to ensure it's long-term longevity risks regression bugs and dependency hell.