6 ms·

Should we do more to incentivize open source?

47 points by jackaltman 13y ago

jimktrains2 13y ago
I'm actually working on a letter to encourage my city to make the transition from Windows to F/OSS.
ckdarby 13y ago
I'm looking into starting a nonprofit organization to help sustain developers to contribute to open source.
mseebach 13y ago
Although building a company on the heels of the open source community flies in the face of the its spirit No, this is false. Free as in speech vs. Free as in beer. Make all the money you can, just keep the software free (as in speech).
- jackaltman 13y ago
  I understand the different meanings of the word free, I'm just pointing out that there's a risk that incentive structures won't create the desired effect.
- chc 13y ago
  This is a meaningful distinction, but as far as I can tell, not a practical one. I have never seen any way to make something free-as-in-speech without as a side effect making it free-as-in-beer. Speech itself is free-as-in-beer. Even if you charged admission for people to hear the initial speaking, the things you spoke are no longer yours to profit from once they've been passed on to others (unless you take measures to abridge their free speech). Can you name a piece of free-as-in-speech software that cannot be had without paying money? There definitely seems to be a tension there. As far as I can tell, very, very few businesses actually make any money off writing and selling free software. They either open-source some tertiary part of a larger non-free piece of software, or they just give the software away for free and try to make money on support and consulting contracts.
  - takluyver 13y ago
    I've been wondering for a while whether the app store model will foster more paid open source software. Theoretically, the app store owner can protect the original creator from unwanted clones, and most users won't bother to find and compile the source code to avoid buying the $2 app. I've not seen much evidence of this so far, but StormCloud, a weather applet available on Ubuntu and Chrome, is one example (more or less - I'm not sure that the "Don't be a dick public license" meets strict definitions of freedom).
    - zugbo 13y ago
      Here's another example, then: A while ago I found https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-Backgrounds https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-Backgrounds which is an animated wallpaper app for Android. Between the dollar it costs on the store and the time it'd take to build it, I quickly chose to spend the money. But, if the choice had instead been between a $1 closed source version on the store or an open source manual compile, I think I would have taken the build/install option.
    - gizmo686 13y ago
      App stores may also allow you to leverage trademarks on your project. Even if someone were to upload a free (as in beer) version, you could still forbid them from using the same name. With the current format of app stores, it seems like this would be a much stronger advantage then similar trademark protections for desktop apps.
bprowd 13y ago
BProwd.com organizes open source developers to create profitable projects where each contributor gets an equity split on the project.
Vekz 13y ago
Companies should sponser open source efforts similar to some pro athletes. Pro skateboarders make a living off sponsorships. They get free gear and travel expenses from their sponsors and in turn get their sponsors name out. More Organizations should do this for key open source projects. I guess you kind of see this with Joynet and Node.js
mixedbit 13y ago
Heroku should not be put alongside Firefox, Linux, Django, etc. It is not an open source platform, only their client-site tools are open source.
- jackaltman 13y ago
  That's a good point.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gwern 13y ago
Summary: open source is a public good / has positive externalities, and thus is likely underfunded.
- davidw 13y ago
  Excellent summary. The language of economics is often very good for succinctly communicating things like this. As far as what should be done, that's a lot trickier. My inclination is that it should mostly be limited to universities and government having something of a bias for open source with very liberal licenses. That's a big vague, but I'm a bit tired, so it'll have to do. I do not think the government should get involved in funding software it doesn't actually need in a big way.
  - gwern 13y ago
    I'm not sure either. The academia model seems very ill-suited for FLOSS because, while it does incentivize releasing source so other people can use it, it doesn't incent any sort of ongoing maintenance or improvement except in the rare case where doing so can generate more papers and publications (which, unless the initial functionality was amazing, means that the released source will quickly become useless and bitrotten - saw it happen multiple times in Haskell-land). One mode which does seem to work very well is Google's Summer of Code. For pretty modest investments, it seems to yield a lot of useful functionality, and because it piggybacks on existing projects & communities, the improvements seem to generally stick. I've watched the Haskell-related Summer of Codes for years now (http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code) and there's been some great stuff accomplished via them.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
What do we want from open source? For a long time, foss movement rallied around building desktop experience, but now given the prevalence of macs and non-desktop computing this seems to be no longer the case. What kind of open source should we incentivize? For example, do we really need to incentivize ten thousands of ruby on rails testing frameworks? I would argue that grassroot open source needs help in discovery and reaching their audience more than they need "incentivizing", and discovery means filtering.
- goldfeld 13y ago
  I think we should be incentivizing open source software and infrastructure that promotes peer-based architectures and descentralization of the control over data, for a start. How is open source going to displace Google as the search leader? That would be a good start, and things like PRISM would be less the powerful for it.
BenoitEssiambre 13y ago
One area where open source makes a lot of sense is in government infrastructure. It lets governments avoid having everyone's data stuck in propriety formats and then extorted by software companies for access later. The UK government, for example, has recently mandated a preference for open source: (http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-mandates-preference-for-open-source http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-man...) Unfortunately, governments are still getting caught in proprietary solutions. Here in New-Brunswick, Canada for example, the government has just chosen an officially sponsored electronic medical record system for the province. Unfortunately, they picked a proprietary SAAS system which means that if doctors signup, everyone's medical records will be uploaded to some private company's servers. The company charges $24 000 per doctor upfront plus $400 a month subscription for continued access with a price guarantee for only three years. After all our medical records have been converted to their proprietary format at a huge cost (not included in the $24000), this company will be in a position to charge whatever they want. The government gives incentives to doctors to signup to the proprietary system ($16000) and have given monopolistic exclusivity for at least three years to this system when it comes to connecting to hospital lab results. There is actually a good open source alternative developed in other Canadian provinces. The OSCAR open source EMR is quickly becoming the most popular system in those provinces. Support plans often costs less than $100/month (it would be free if you were a geeky doctor willing to install and support it yourself). Somehow, the vast marketing and sales budgets of proprietary companies compared to the more minimal OSS sales push was able to sway our government into giving a quasi monopoly to a costly proprietary system.
- asb 13y ago
  Sadly that preference has been made rather less strong (presumably after some behind the scenes lobbying...). http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-preference-blunted-in-UK-Government-guide-1889015.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-preferenc...
czstrong 13y ago
I don't think incentives should be created and awarded to developers of open source work. That will only attract more of the type of coder you don't want developing open source code, causing a reduction in quality. People work on open source projects because they are driven and motivated by the challenge of creating great software that lasts, the mastery they develop while doing it, and the fulfillment and satisfaction of making a contribution to the community of fellow hackers.
beat 13y ago
So how do you mean "incentivize"? Financial renumeration can often be had, by getting hired by a company that benefits from your open source project (this probably covers thousands of open source developers today). But money isn't why people start open source projects, for the most part. What's their motivation? Pride? Political freedom? Helping the world? Depends on the person. Incentives need to be aligned with the individual being incentivized. But honestly, money isn't a good open source motivator. If someone wants to get rich, there are usually better ways via closed source.
- beat 13y ago
  Thinking about it, we should maybe be incentivizing existing businesses to support on-the-clock open source work by their own staff.
NovemberWest 13y ago
That government is best which governs least. -- Often attributed to Thomas Jefferson Years ago, I read a biography of a prostitute and political activist. She wanted prostitution decriminalized, not legalized. She felt legalizing it would create problems. She cited Nevada as an example, where there is a fair amount of regulatory burden on the women but the pimps and johns still essentially do as they please. She just wanted the right to charge for services without risk of arrest. I will suggest that since there is already open source, incentives are probably not a good idea. But removing barriers of some sort might do a lot. I have thought a lot about such things over the years, not open source per se but, for example, how to make money from making information freely available. It is a challenge but can be done and has been for years (broadcast radio, broadcast tv, etc). So I would suggest you work on removing barriers rather than providing "incentives." Or at least balance the incentives piece with also removing barriers. My 2¢. Edit: Someone want to kindly explain the downvote? Is there some problem with suggesting a removal of barriers instead of providing incentives? Or this just a helping of lurv from one of my many anti-fans? Thx.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  I think you got a downvote because I can't imagine what your second paragraph has to do with anything. Also, broadcast radio, broadcast TV are not freely available, so they're poor examples for you to use. (They have licensing terms, prohibit rebroadcast, embed commercials that are not desirable with no legitimate way to remove them, you have to pay to get a DVD or watch on iTunes or Amazon, etc.)
  - NovemberWest 13y ago
    Well, it looks relevant to me. Incentivizing something is similar to legalizing it whereas removing barriers is similar to decrimilizing it. And broadcast radio and TV work for my purposes as an example. They do not directly charge consumers for the information they share yet they manage to make a buck. I will note I am 48, so maybe I am remembering a broadcast era a lot of members here would not remember. Note to self: Folks on HN routinely think sex and prostitution references are irrelevant, not on point, not a meaningful example, ad nauseum. Maybe someday I will remember it gets perceived that way, even though I think we are all adults and it should be nbd. But thanks for the feedback. Have an upvote.
lowglow 13y ago
Attach crowd-funded bounties to feature requests.
- mike_herrera 13y ago
  To a large extent, this is what we currently have... A company needs an OSS feature so they hire one of the devs to work on the software, full-time.
nodally 13y ago
There was an excellent talk on this same topic this week at the Open Source Bridge event in Portland. The topic was "No, I Won't Contribute to Your Open Source Project". Slides are available. http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957 http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957
freshhawk 13y ago
I think the answer is yes, but with a huge caveat: incentives must be build around the social norms that made open source successful in the first place. Incentives built on financial norms would be disastrous and act as strong disincentives instead. Humans are weird, and we act differently when operating under financial norms than we do under social norms. Dan Ariely explains this quite nicely in a lot of his talks, you should google it if you haven't seen it. This is why I'm really skeptical of things like gittip or other "we'll pay you pennies to spend hours of your life building open source projects" approaches. I much more excited by the cultural shift that seems to be happening around "my github account is my resume". It's not just a "write open source as resume padding to get a better job" thing, it's an increase in the amount of social capital resulting from contribution to open source. Basically if people find out I contribute to a "good" open source project more people care and the people who care, care more than they used to. I think this is an excellent incentive scheme. A popular open source project cannot generate enough revenue to pay me what my contribution is worth so it's impossible for them to incentivize me with money. But if my reputation is increased because my contribution is recognized and my peers think more of me, my ideas are more easily heard and my financial career path opportunities are expanded because of that reputation then I am highly motivated to contribute. I think there's a big place for the patronage/sponsorship model as well (and the incentives to be a patron are quite similar), especially for getting the necessary but boring/less sexy things done. It can also push back, in one way, against the problem of reputation based incentives undervaluing boring but high-value work.
- jackaltman 13y ago
  Right - the incentive needs to be consistent with the platform; this is why you bring a dinner host a bottle of wine instead of the equivalent amount of cash.
- AJ007 13y ago
  Would it be reasonable for a developer to ask, I want to devote 1 year of my time to open source project X, please fund me on Kickstarter to accomplish Y & Z?
  - 13y ago
subus 13y ago
Interesting question is why academia/research is treated differently from the OSS community. Think about all the money being funneled into research from government and non-government agencies and this is never considered penny pinching / charity. Why isn't there a similar channel for companies / government agencies to sponsor OSS projects?
lazzlazzlazz 13y ago
Isn't this what gittip is for? It seems to maintain the right social incentives without turning open source into a rat race.

47 points by jackaltman 13y ago

jimktrains2 13y ago

I'm actually working on a letter to encourage my city to make the transition from Windows to F/OSS.

ckdarby 13y ago

I'm looking into starting a nonprofit organization to help sustain developers to contribute to open source.

mseebach 13y ago

Although building a company on the heels of the open source community flies in the face of the its spirit No, this is false. Free as in speech vs. Free as in beer. Make all the money you can, just keep the software free (as in speech).

jackaltman 13y ago
I understand the different meanings of the word free, I'm just pointing out that there's a risk that incentive structures won't create the desired effect.
chc 13y ago
This is a meaningful distinction, but as far as I can tell, not a practical one. I have never seen any way to make something free-as-in-speech without as a side effect making it free-as-in-beer. Speech itself is free-as-in-beer. Even if you charged admission for people to hear the initial speaking, the things you spoke are no longer yours to profit from once they've been passed on to others (unless you take measures to abridge their free speech). Can you name a piece of free-as-in-speech software that cannot be had without paying money? There definitely seems to be a tension there. As far as I can tell, very, very few businesses actually make any money off writing and selling free software. They either open-source some tertiary part of a larger non-free piece of software, or they just give the software away for free and try to make money on support and consulting contracts.
- takluyver 13y ago
  I've been wondering for a while whether the app store model will foster more paid open source software. Theoretically, the app store owner can protect the original creator from unwanted clones, and most users won't bother to find and compile the source code to avoid buying the $2 app. I've not seen much evidence of this so far, but StormCloud, a weather applet available on Ubuntu and Chrome, is one example (more or less - I'm not sure that the "Don't be a dick public license" meets strict definitions of freedom).
  - zugbo 13y ago
    Here's another example, then: A while ago I found https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-Backgrounds https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-Backgrounds which is an animated wallpaper app for Android. Between the dollar it costs on the store and the time it'd take to build it, I quickly chose to spend the money. But, if the choice had instead been between a $1 closed source version on the store or an open source manual compile, I think I would have taken the build/install option.
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    App stores may also allow you to leverage trademarks on your project. Even if someone were to upload a free (as in beer) version, you could still forbid them from using the same name. With the current format of app stores, it seems like this would be a much stronger advantage then similar trademark protections for desktop apps.

bprowd 13y ago

BProwd.com organizes open source developers to create profitable projects where each contributor gets an equity split on the project.

Vekz 13y ago

Companies should sponser open source efforts similar to some pro athletes. Pro skateboarders make a living off sponsorships. They get free gear and travel expenses from their sponsors and in turn get their sponsors name out. More Organizations should do this for key open source projects. I guess you kind of see this with Joynet and Node.js

mixedbit 13y ago

Heroku should not be put alongside Firefox, Linux, Django, etc. It is not an open source platform, only their client-site tools are open source.

jackaltman 13y ago
That's a good point.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gwern 13y ago

Summary: open source is a public good / has positive externalities, and thus is likely underfunded.

davidw 13y ago
Excellent summary. The language of economics is often very good for succinctly communicating things like this. As far as what should be done, that's a lot trickier. My inclination is that it should mostly be limited to universities and government having something of a bias for open source with very liberal licenses. That's a big vague, but I'm a bit tired, so it'll have to do. I do not think the government should get involved in funding software it doesn't actually need in a big way.
- gwern 13y ago
  I'm not sure either. The academia model seems very ill-suited for FLOSS because, while it does incentivize releasing source so other people can use it, it doesn't incent any sort of ongoing maintenance or improvement except in the rare case where doing so can generate more papers and publications (which, unless the initial functionality was amazing, means that the released source will quickly become useless and bitrotten - saw it happen multiple times in Haskell-land). One mode which does seem to work very well is Google's Summer of Code. For pretty modest investments, it seems to yield a lot of useful functionality, and because it piggybacks on existing projects & communities, the improvements seem to generally stick. I've watched the Haskell-related Summer of Codes for years now (http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code) and there's been some great stuff accomplished via them.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

What do we want from open source? For a long time, foss movement rallied around building desktop experience, but now given the prevalence of macs and non-desktop computing this seems to be no longer the case. What kind of open source should we incentivize? For example, do we really need to incentivize ten thousands of ruby on rails testing frameworks? I would argue that grassroot open source needs help in discovery and reaching their audience more than they need "incentivizing", and discovery means filtering.

goldfeld 13y ago
I think we should be incentivizing open source software and infrastructure that promotes peer-based architectures and descentralization of the control over data, for a start. How is open source going to displace Google as the search leader? That would be a good start, and things like PRISM would be less the powerful for it.

BenoitEssiambre 13y ago

One area where open source makes a lot of sense is in government infrastructure. It lets governments avoid having everyone's data stuck in propriety formats and then extorted by software companies for access later. The UK government, for example, has recently mandated a preference for open source: (http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-mandates-preference-for-open-source http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-man...) Unfortunately, governments are still getting caught in proprietary solutions. Here in New-Brunswick, Canada for example, the government has just chosen an officially sponsored electronic medical record system for the province. Unfortunately, they picked a proprietary SAAS system which means that if doctors signup, everyone's medical records will be uploaded to some private company's servers. The company charges $24 000 per doctor upfront plus $400 a month subscription for continued access with a price guarantee for only three years. After all our medical records have been converted to their proprietary format at a huge cost (not included in the $24000), this company will be in a position to charge whatever they want. The government gives incentives to doctors to signup to the proprietary system ($16000) and have given monopolistic exclusivity for at least three years to this system when it comes to connecting to hospital lab results. There is actually a good open source alternative developed in other Canadian provinces. The OSCAR open source EMR is quickly becoming the most popular system in those provinces. Support plans often costs less than $100/month (it would be free if you were a geeky doctor willing to install and support it yourself). Somehow, the vast marketing and sales budgets of proprietary companies compared to the more minimal OSS sales push was able to sway our government into giving a quasi monopoly to a costly proprietary system.

asb 13y ago
Sadly that preference has been made rather less strong (presumably after some behind the scenes lobbying...). http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-preference-blunted-in-UK-Government-guide-1889015.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-preferenc...

czstrong 13y ago

I don't think incentives should be created and awarded to developers of open source work. That will only attract more of the type of coder you don't want developing open source code, causing a reduction in quality. People work on open source projects because they are driven and motivated by the challenge of creating great software that lasts, the mastery they develop while doing it, and the fulfillment and satisfaction of making a contribution to the community of fellow hackers.

beat 13y ago

So how do you mean "incentivize"? Financial renumeration can often be had, by getting hired by a company that benefits from your open source project (this probably covers thousands of open source developers today). But money isn't why people start open source projects, for the most part. What's their motivation? Pride? Political freedom? Helping the world? Depends on the person. Incentives need to be aligned with the individual being incentivized. But honestly, money isn't a good open source motivator. If someone wants to get rich, there are usually better ways via closed source.

beat 13y ago
Thinking about it, we should maybe be incentivizing existing businesses to support on-the-clock open source work by their own staff.

NovemberWest 13y ago

That government is best which governs least. -- Often attributed to Thomas Jefferson Years ago, I read a biography of a prostitute and political activist. She wanted prostitution decriminalized, not legalized. She felt legalizing it would create problems. She cited Nevada as an example, where there is a fair amount of regulatory burden on the women but the pimps and johns still essentially do as they please. She just wanted the right to charge for services without risk of arrest. I will suggest that since there is already open source, incentives are probably not a good idea. But removing barriers of some sort might do a lot. I have thought a lot about such things over the years, not open source per se but, for example, how to make money from making information freely available. It is a challenge but can be done and has been for years (broadcast radio, broadcast tv, etc). So I would suggest you work on removing barriers rather than providing "incentives." Or at least balance the incentives piece with also removing barriers. My 2¢. Edit: Someone want to kindly explain the downvote? Is there some problem with suggesting a removal of barriers instead of providing incentives? Or this just a helping of lurv from one of my many anti-fans? Thx.

VikingCoder 13y ago
I think you got a downvote because I can't imagine what your second paragraph has to do with anything. Also, broadcast radio, broadcast TV are not freely available, so they're poor examples for you to use. (They have licensing terms, prohibit rebroadcast, embed commercials that are not desirable with no legitimate way to remove them, you have to pay to get a DVD or watch on iTunes or Amazon, etc.)
- NovemberWest 13y ago
  Well, it looks relevant to me. Incentivizing something is similar to legalizing it whereas removing barriers is similar to decrimilizing it. And broadcast radio and TV work for my purposes as an example. They do not directly charge consumers for the information they share yet they manage to make a buck. I will note I am 48, so maybe I am remembering a broadcast era a lot of members here would not remember. Note to self: Folks on HN routinely think sex and prostitution references are irrelevant, not on point, not a meaningful example, ad nauseum. Maybe someday I will remember it gets perceived that way, even though I think we are all adults and it should be nbd. But thanks for the feedback. Have an upvote.

lowglow 13y ago

Attach crowd-funded bounties to feature requests.

mike_herrera 13y ago
To a large extent, this is what we currently have... A company needs an OSS feature so they hire one of the devs to work on the software, full-time.

nodally 13y ago

There was an excellent talk on this same topic this week at the Open Source Bridge event in Portland. The topic was "No, I Won't Contribute to Your Open Source Project". Slides are available. http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957 http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957

freshhawk 13y ago

I think the answer is yes, but with a huge caveat: incentives must be build around the social norms that made open source successful in the first place. Incentives built on financial norms would be disastrous and act as strong disincentives instead. Humans are weird, and we act differently when operating under financial norms than we do under social norms. Dan Ariely explains this quite nicely in a lot of his talks, you should google it if you haven't seen it. This is why I'm really skeptical of things like gittip or other "we'll pay you pennies to spend hours of your life building open source projects" approaches. I much more excited by the cultural shift that seems to be happening around "my github account is my resume". It's not just a "write open source as resume padding to get a better job" thing, it's an increase in the amount of social capital resulting from contribution to open source. Basically if people find out I contribute to a "good" open source project more people care and the people who care, care more than they used to. I think this is an excellent incentive scheme. A popular open source project cannot generate enough revenue to pay me what my contribution is worth so it's impossible for them to incentivize me with money. But if my reputation is increased because my contribution is recognized and my peers think more of me, my ideas are more easily heard and my financial career path opportunities are expanded because of that reputation then I am highly motivated to contribute. I think there's a big place for the patronage/sponsorship model as well (and the incentives to be a patron are quite similar), especially for getting the necessary but boring/less sexy things done. It can also push back, in one way, against the problem of reputation based incentives undervaluing boring but high-value work.

jackaltman 13y ago
Right - the incentive needs to be consistent with the platform; this is why you bring a dinner host a bottle of wine instead of the equivalent amount of cash.
AJ007 13y ago
Would it be reasonable for a developer to ask, I want to devote 1 year of my time to open source project X, please fund me on Kickstarter to accomplish Y & Z?
- 13y ago

subus 13y ago

Interesting question is why academia/research is treated differently from the OSS community. Think about all the money being funneled into research from government and non-government agencies and this is never considered penny pinching / charity. Why isn't there a similar channel for companies / government agencies to sponsor OSS projects?

lazzlazzlazz 13y ago

Isn't this what gittip is for? It seems to maintain the right social incentives without turning open source into a rat race.