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$12,000 a month sounds like a commercial rate (roughly the London Ruby contracting rate). Do these open-source Kickstarter projects normally pay themselves so w

$12,000 a month sounds like a commercial rate (roughly the London Ruby contracting rate). Do these open-source Kickstarter projects normally pay themselves so well?

dasil003 14y ago
It's not a rate (all the backers are paying a fixed cost of their own choice), it's a salary. Why should someone take a pay cut in order to produce an open source project?
- matthewrudy 14y ago
  By his own schedule, he has allocated a month of his time per $12,000 funded (to me this is a rate). I'm not saying he should take a pay cut. Just that if this is common, then the nature of Open Source has changed. It seems to be the best of all worlds; Good rate, choice of project, open source, low risk.
  - mooreds 14y ago
    He might have misestimated the project scope, so there is still that risk (and perhaps that pads the number?). It's not clear to me what he'd do if it took longer than he thought (return money, finish on his own time, go back to the well for more support)?
    - kybernetikos 14y ago
      My understanding is that legally he's supposed to return the money if he can't provide the promised benefits, but that Kickstarter don't encourage people to have that understanding because it would damage the intention and culture of the site. There have been a lot of kickstarter projects that failed or delivered late, and I don't it's common at all for any of them to pay money back, despite the legal situation. I doubt that in reality he is bearing any of the risk of failure, except as regards to his reputation.
- pc86 14y ago
  Please tell me where you work that $144,000 isn't an obscenely large salary. He doesn't live in San Francisco or Manhattan or London, he lives in Texarkana where the cost of living is a substantial percentage below the US average.[0] I have no doubt that you can live well in that area on 1/3 of what he's asking. I'm not saying the guy should work for peanuts or that people who work on F/OSS should do so with no financial upside, but let's stop pretending that $12,000 in a month is a normal salary or something that doesn't need at least some justification. Clearly people think it's worth it and that's great, but the whole tone of "I have $12,000 and now I can afford to work on this for a month" just makes me sick to my stomach. [0] http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/texas/texarkana http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/texas/texarkan...
  - dasil003 14y ago
    For the kind of developer who is implementing git in javascript in a month, $144k is definitely in the realm of market salary. Obviously this is more than most people in the world make, but if you just reject it as greed outright you are ignoring the real problems of corruption and dirty money happening in the upper echelons of society. To me he's offering to do something, being up front about the cost, and you can take it or leave it. I see no moral justification to start prying into his expenses. You don't know how big his family is, or what debt he has, or how he spends his money, so who are you to judge him? If he makes this money in the private sector then I see absolutely nothing greedy about proposing that same salary on a kickstarter, but beyond that I don't see that it's any of your or my business. He's not enriching himself through arbitrage here, he's simply putting a price on honest work that has an outsize public benefit. There are so many real financial injustices in the world that I just don't understand what angle you're coming from here. Do you believe individuals just shouldn't be allowed to make more than a standard deviation above median income? Or is does it have something to do with an ideal that F/OSS should distance itself from real money? If you were offered a job for $150k would you turn it down because it feels like selling your soul to the devil?
th 14y ago
Income is a strange thing. Scenario 1: Make a product in a month and sell it online. Assume you make $60,000 dollars over 2 years, performing only minor maintenance tasks occasionally. One way to look at it: That's $2,500 per month in income. Another way: That's $60,000 for one month of work. Scenario 2: Perform a large task for a company charging them $12,000 and promising to deliver it in a month. Depending on the work being delivered, that's not necessarily an unreasonable cost. One way to look at it: That's paying $12,000 for $12,000 in value Another way: That's approximately a rate of $75 per hour. -- A company paying an employee $12,000 every month for developing software is probably unreasonable. A consultant, contractor, or self-employed entrepreneur making that money for a one-off job may not be unreasonable.

$12,000 a month sounds like a commercial rate (roughly the London Ruby contracting rate). Do these open-source Kickstarter projects normally pay themselves so well?

dasil003 14y ago

It's not a rate (all the backers are paying a fixed cost of their own choice), it's a salary. Why should someone take a pay cut in order to produce an open source project?

matthewrudy 14y ago
By his own schedule, he has allocated a month of his time per $12,000 funded (to me this is a rate). I'm not saying he should take a pay cut. Just that if this is common, then the nature of Open Source has changed. It seems to be the best of all worlds; Good rate, choice of project, open source, low risk.
- mooreds 14y ago
  He might have misestimated the project scope, so there is still that risk (and perhaps that pads the number?). It's not clear to me what he'd do if it took longer than he thought (return money, finish on his own time, go back to the well for more support)?
  - kybernetikos 14y ago
    My understanding is that legally he's supposed to return the money if he can't provide the promised benefits, but that Kickstarter don't encourage people to have that understanding because it would damage the intention and culture of the site. There have been a lot of kickstarter projects that failed or delivered late, and I don't it's common at all for any of them to pay money back, despite the legal situation. I doubt that in reality he is bearing any of the risk of failure, except as regards to his reputation.
pc86 14y ago
Please tell me where you work that $144,000 isn't an obscenely large salary. He doesn't live in San Francisco or Manhattan or London, he lives in Texarkana where the cost of living is a substantial percentage below the US average.[0] I have no doubt that you can live well in that area on 1/3 of what he's asking. I'm not saying the guy should work for peanuts or that people who work on F/OSS should do so with no financial upside, but let's stop pretending that $12,000 in a month is a normal salary or something that doesn't need at least some justification. Clearly people think it's worth it and that's great, but the whole tone of "I have $12,000 and now I can afford to work on this for a month" just makes me sick to my stomach. [0] http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/texas/texarkana http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/texas/texarkan...
- dasil003 14y ago
  For the kind of developer who is implementing git in javascript in a month, $144k is definitely in the realm of market salary. Obviously this is more than most people in the world make, but if you just reject it as greed outright you are ignoring the real problems of corruption and dirty money happening in the upper echelons of society. To me he's offering to do something, being up front about the cost, and you can take it or leave it. I see no moral justification to start prying into his expenses. You don't know how big his family is, or what debt he has, or how he spends his money, so who are you to judge him? If he makes this money in the private sector then I see absolutely nothing greedy about proposing that same salary on a kickstarter, but beyond that I don't see that it's any of your or my business. He's not enriching himself through arbitrage here, he's simply putting a price on honest work that has an outsize public benefit. There are so many real financial injustices in the world that I just don't understand what angle you're coming from here. Do you believe individuals just shouldn't be allowed to make more than a standard deviation above median income? Or is does it have something to do with an ideal that F/OSS should distance itself from real money? If you were offered a job for $150k would you turn it down because it feels like selling your soul to the devil?

th 14y ago

Income is a strange thing. Scenario 1: Make a product in a month and sell it online. Assume you make $60,000 dollars over 2 years, performing only minor maintenance tasks occasionally. One way to look at it: That's $2,500 per month in income. Another way: That's $60,000 for one month of work. Scenario 2: Perform a large task for a company charging them $12,000 and promising to deliver it in a month. Depending on the work being delivered, that's not necessarily an unreasonable cost. One way to look at it: That's paying $12,000 for $12,000 in value Another way: That's approximately a rate of $75 per hour. -- A company paying an employee $12,000 every month for developing software is probably unreasonable. A consultant, contractor, or self-employed entrepreneur making that money for a one-off job may not be unreasonable.