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I'm not sure who this is aimed at, open source software developers seem to fall into two major categories: - employees at a company working on or using specifi

I'm not sure who this is aimed at, open source software developers seem to fall into two major categories: - employees at a company working on or using specific open-source software - passionate individuals (sometimes small groups, usually after an original author gets a following) The former are already paid, and the latter aren't in it for the money. The psychology of money is such that when you introduce money into the equation it becomes a "job", and people treat it as such. e.g. Would you help a friend move house for free? Yes. What if they paid you $3? No...? Who is this product for, and how will it avoid this paradox of getting more out of people for "free" ?

kingkilr 14y ago
Those are great questions. And I don't think they have easy answers. For me, the motivation is to eventually get to a put where this can replace my day job. Until it can get there, unfortunately, it's an awkward balance to not let the money affect your contributions, and still do something useful with it; see my other comment for more thoughts on that.
jnoller 14y ago
Like Alex, I replied elsewhere (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4439026 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4439026) - I fall into both of your categories. However in the latter case (passionate individuals) there's a lot of work out there that doesn't fall into "cool new sexy code with lots of followers) and rather falls into the "sweeping the floors, working out outreach and fighting stop energy in various things) that are a lot less emotionally and tangibly rewarding (in fact, they're more draining than coding) than shipping awesome code.
zzzeek 14y ago
> and the latter aren't in it for the money. It's for the latter. We certainly need money to survive, and the more money we have such that we don't have to show up to work on someone else's for-profit idea, the more time we have to give to our projects.
fijal 14y ago
PyPy core dev speaking here. I do it mostly for passion. Every now and then I have to do something for someone that falls into few categories like "stupid website that would never take off" or "some pypy usage that makes absolutely no sense to the broader community". Those things mostly slow down pypy development and frankly the benefits are very very low. I would be more than happy to get rid of this stuff as it's distracting. Can gittip be the way to do it? Maybe. Would it be beneficial if we find some way to do it? I think so.
BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
I think you're oversimplifying the kind of developers out there. Have you honestly never seen an open-source project with a Paypal Donate button, or some form of the old "Buy me a beer" solicitation in a README?
tree_of_item 14y ago
The latter are necessarily in it for the money, if only to continue existing. As an example, Clojure: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/clojure/zHffJemM5Gs/TncfjgTnQF8J https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/clojure/zH...

kingkilr 14y ago

Those are great questions. And I don't think they have easy answers. For me, the motivation is to eventually get to a put where this can replace my day job. Until it can get there, unfortunately, it's an awkward balance to not let the money affect your contributions, and still do something useful with it; see my other comment for more thoughts on that.

jnoller 14y ago

Like Alex, I replied elsewhere (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4439026 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4439026) - I fall into both of your categories. However in the latter case (passionate individuals) there's a lot of work out there that doesn't fall into "cool new sexy code with lots of followers) and rather falls into the "sweeping the floors, working out outreach and fighting stop energy in various things) that are a lot less emotionally and tangibly rewarding (in fact, they're more draining than coding) than shipping awesome code.

zzzeek 14y ago

> and the latter aren't in it for the money. It's for the latter. We certainly need money to survive, and the more money we have such that we don't have to show up to work on someone else's for-profit idea, the more time we have to give to our projects.

fijal 14y ago

PyPy core dev speaking here. I do it mostly for passion. Every now and then I have to do something for someone that falls into few categories like "stupid website that would never take off" or "some pypy usage that makes absolutely no sense to the broader community". Those things mostly slow down pypy development and frankly the benefits are very very low. I would be more than happy to get rid of this stuff as it's distracting. Can gittip be the way to do it? Maybe. Would it be beneficial if we find some way to do it? I think so.

BHSPitMonkey 14y ago

I think you're oversimplifying the kind of developers out there. Have you honestly never seen an open-source project with a Paypal Donate button, or some form of the old "Buy me a beer" solicitation in a README?

tree_of_item 14y ago

The latter are necessarily in it for the money, if only to continue existing. As an example, Clojure: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/clojure/zHffJemM5Gs/TncfjgTnQF8J https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/clojure/zH...