7 ms·

The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community (2013)

57 points by Mc_Big_G 12y ago

Palomides 12y ago
I'm not sure I have any good arguments either way, but seeing an argument that open source software is uncompensated labor that devalues programming work and serves the corporate establishment makes me very uncomfortable.
- SrslyJosh 12y ago
  It's a compelling argument for stronger "viral" licenses, for sure.
craigcabrey 12y ago
Is it just me or does this article twist the (rather simple) idea of meritocracy? What you contribute and the quality of what you contribute defines the respect and influence you receive as a result (in a given community, of course). I don't see how that can be tied into "normal" social statuses as this author is trying to imply. Thoughts?
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  This article has an interpretation of meritocracy that doesn't fit mine. I always took it to mean that in open source you're judged on the quality of contributions and software projects speak for themselves. All the connective tissue to that making a person "deserving" of anything other than earned respect for their accomplishments, or the idea that people who don't contribute are without merit are completely foreign to me. This article was the first place I heard of people getting that impression.
- glyph 12y ago
  "Meritocracy" is not a real concept of how to run a community, but rather a satirical term used to lampoon the idea that "merit" is a 1-dimensional concept which can be measured linearly and used to judge people and rank them. The term was invented as satire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy Thinking that it's a good idea is like what happened with "waterfall" development. Someone described all the problems with what big companies were doing, and then someone else picked up that description of all the problems and said "ooh! all the big companies are doing this! this must be a great way to do things!" and then everyone perpetuated that disaster for the next two decades. The fact that "hacker" culture has uncritically picked up on "meritocracy" and doesn't realize it's a snarky joke about unfairness says a lot about the unbelievably sheltered and privileged position that most people reading this site enjoy, and our collective lack of social skills. By "social skills" I don't just mean, like, how to behave at parties, but also how to manage groups and how to be aware of the perspectives of other people. Not to mention the fact that if your open source community isn't measuring merit on an objective, defined-in-advance, linear scale, with measures in place, then you are not even practicing the (unfair, broken) system of "meritocracy", you're just doing "rule by cognitive bias" ("biasocracy"? surely nobody is going to take that term and think it's a worthy goal to aspire to). You can trust me, because my community _does_ practice objective, quantitative meritocracy, and therefore I am provably the best and most deserving person in this conversation: https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/ https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    That the term was coined in a satirical context does not mean the concept it describes is in any way discredited by default. The semiotics behind ideas are constantly evolving in any event.
  - edleafe 12y ago
    Symphony orchestras used to claim to be the equivalent of a 'meritocracy' (don't think that they used that term, though). They selected strictly by audition, relying on the ears of the (male) conductor/director, and less than 10% of the musicians selected were women. When they changed to have the musicians perform behind a screen, and without identifying them by name, the number of women selected increased dramatically. A similar dynamic happens in the tech world. The people determining 'merit' have that same built-in bias against females, and will judge their work as lower than it should be. The bias need not be conscious, and in most cases the men think that they are being fair and honest, but it's there.
    - glyph 12y ago
      This exact example features in the blog post draft I copied most of my comment from :-). Even more pernicious than that though - you say "the men think they are being fair and honest", but research repeatedly shows that women are also less fair to other women. This is important to keep in mind because it reinforces the fact that most of the biases that work against objectively determining merit are part of the fabric of our society. They are biases that you will tend to hold even if they hurt you personally. Many men bristle when they are confronted with this sort of research and say "I'm not a sexist" or "I'm not a racist". That's the wrong way to think about it. We live in a deeply unfair society, and unless we constantly, mindfully, consciously work against that unfairness all the time, we will fall victim to it ourselves and perpetuate it.
- SrslyJosh 12y ago
  > What you contribute and the quality of what you contribute defines the respect and influence you receive as a result Except it doesn't. Racism, sexism, personal arrogance, etc. all influence the way that people treat each other. People who feel they are not being treated with respect may never make it to the point of contributing anything, or they may decide it's not worth the emotional burden of dealing with assholes.
TD-Linux 12y ago
It is true that the culture of OSS contributions and IRC lurkers is a very small subset of the available talent pool. On the other hand, jobs that hire based on open source contributions are still a very small subset of the total available jobs. The vast majority of my friends in college were hired with little experience into large corporations, who are better equipped to have a smooth onboarding experience and on-site training. FWIW, I contributed to an open-source project and was then hired to work on it full-time, and it has been a great experience.
dreamdu5t 12y ago
I stopped contributing OSS lately after seeing how many startups use some of my modules. Why should I work for free to help others profit? Yet if I use restrictive licenses people just avoid the software altogether. If my open-source software is successful I just end up being exploited financially. EDIT: Downvotes? I guess it's socially unacceptable to not want to contribute to OSS because someone else will just make money off your work.
- pc86 12y ago
  Why not use a license that merely prohibits commercial use? And presumably the startups in question are actually adding some value to your code beyond just implementing it with a wrapper. It's not like they are building a business around your piece of code (or are they?)
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    Such a license would mean your software is proprietary, and thus dissuade not just businesses but a lot of end users as well, e.g. from not being featured in distro repositories (or thrown away in some third-party repo) due to not meeting licensing guidelines.
  - dreamdu5t 12y ago
    Because people actively avoid OSS with licenses like that, always opting for projects that have MIT/BSD type licenses.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      False premise: Software with such a license by definition is not OSS.
    - pc86 12y ago
      I would imagine people actively avoid them if they plan on charging for something. I'm honestly not sure what you wanted. You contributed code to something, and people used it. Some of those happened to make money on code that included yours (I'm sure the impact yours had on their bottom line is debatable). Did you expect financial compensation? Did you just hope for whatever reason that nobody would make any money off any code that you wrote? If you didn't want people to "avoid" your software, you wanted them to use it, right?
Justsignedup 12y ago
As a father of 1, I must agree to this: - I lose ~ 2-3 hours a day every day on commute alone. - I lose an additional 1-2 hours daily on getting my daughter ready, taking her to school, pickup from grandparents, and other daily needs of my daughter. - My income is SIGNIFICANTLY lessened by the expenses of my daughter If I was not a father, I would have the following: - I could live 15 minutes away from work by foot, thus saving me between 1.5 - 2.5 hours a day. - Living close to work requires most likely paying double my current housing cost, and having half my living space. - Living close to work eliminates my need for a car, so some savings there. - I will have 2 spare hours for extra sleep or misc. activity a day - I will also have 2-3 extra hours a day not taking care of my daughter (homework, Daddy-Child time, planning meetups with friends, planning activities). - No need to pay for extra food (time + money), no need to have homecooked food (I can survive on "ramen", child cannot), no need for gymnastics or other physical / social / mental development activity programs (lots of money saved). Add it all up I am at ~ 4-6 hour disadvantage to the average 23-27 year old single male, with a significant lifestyle and monetary hit. If I was just to use 2 hours a day that the more free have to program an OSS project, and 2-4 hours on sleep, I would be better rested, more productive, and would contribute between 10 to 14 hours a week to OSS all while keeping my current lifestyle. P.S. on top of that I work at a job who doesn't count ass-in-chair time, lets me work 9-5 (not 9-6), and is low stress. So already I am privileged over others in my exact position without this cozy 9-5 job. P.S.S. on top of that as a divorced man, I also need to find time to date, so you can't argue that I too have time savings over a single man's need to date. Which mind you is really hard when you have a child. P.S.S.S. Some people have a job that revolves around and/or encourages OSS contributions. So they get to contribute, all while getting paid for it in their standard job. This puts then in an even further advantage because they are now unfairly elevated above the average worker.
- SrslyJosh 12y ago
  > As a father of 1, I must agree to this Yep, and people who are disabled (or act as a caretaker) are in a similar boat. Ironically, you are probably a better bet for a lot of employers than that average young single male because you value stability. You're not gonna jump ship because you want a foosball table or expect to have lunch catered every day.
forgottenpass 12y ago
Getting blindsided by that complete botching of a strong argument seems oddly familiar, I must have read this back in 2013 too. The case to be made that unpaid labor to an OSS project should not be a barrier to entry to employment is very strong on it's own. The sidetrack into OSS diversity seems to imply that if open source were more diverse it wouldn't still be a terrible hiring practice to expect candidates to have contributed to open source.
timwaagh 12y ago
i liked the article until it became feminist. the notion that because there are less women in industry recruiters cannot use a selection criterium that has intrinsically nothing to do with gender, however somehow guys score better on that criterium, doesn't sit well with me. like i'm evil and deserve less favourable treatment because i'm white and male.
- me1010 12y ago
  I think the author is attempting to make the very valid point that not all good programmers can be expected to be giving freely of their non-work day time. In short -- life happens but then the jobs dry up and good talent is over looked or lost. And, yes, it does happen to women more than men.
  - pc86 12y ago
    I don't think even companies that "require" a strong GitHub portfolio are saying that they're not filtering out good or great programmers. It's about signal and noise. If you are hiring for a senior development position and you have a filter you can employ that will cut out 90% of mediocre or bad programmers (or perhaps more importantly make it much easier to identify them), but will also cut out 40% of good and great programmers, it's not a foregone conclusion that you shouldn't employe that filter. If you still get enough resumes to make a decision, you've just decreased the odds that you get a shit hire by $MATH percent. If social justice is something you care about you probably don't want to do this. If building good software is something you care about, you probably do. I think most here would agree that a random developer with a large body of public OSS contributions is probably "better" than a random developer without. I say that as someone who has pushed to a public GitHub repository probably four times in the past two years.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- eevee 12y ago
  i was kinda following you until that last part, where "not getting more favorable treatment" spontaneously mutated into "getting less favorable treatment"
WhitneyLand 12y ago
The article bounces around to touch so many different social issues its nearly incoherent. Regarding the main point I think it's a non issue. Companies are only interested in hiring OSS contributors to get a feel for their work. There are many other ways to do this. For example since a lot of my work is visual I maintain a demo reel. For others it may be articles you've written or even Stackoverflow contributions. It is not hard to get a job without OSS if you have some way to communicate your past performance. Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? I know women have a tough time in certain tech environments, but I'm really surprised to hear of repos where this is happening because perpetrators would have to do it publicly. Please provide examples of the largest OSS community where this is happening and where offenders are not called out or reprimanded. I'll be glad head over there and back you up.
- Justsignedup 12y ago
  Most harassment is public. - Twitter - Facebook - IRC - Twitch - Reddit - Real world (some wear hoods) Some are more anonymous, some less.
- avsbst 12y ago
  Notepad++, granted they were called out on it hence the apology: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sexist-jokes.html http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sex...
- SrslyJosh 12y ago
  Lucky for you that you can show your work to people outside of your company, right? > Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? Now you're being deliberately obtuse. Not everyone uses github, and not all communication happens through github.
  - multiplicity 12y ago
    Keep in mind this is Ashe Dryden, who thinks being called a professional victim is misogynist. Paper-thin skin, but throwing stones from her glass house like there's no tomorrow. Open source's results-over-feelings approach turns off many, not just women.
pc86 12y ago
> 52% of women caregivers with incomes at or below of the national median of $35k spend 20+ hours each week providing care. The largest racial demographics in this group are black and hispanic. Are there many people, regardless of gender or race, who earn less than $35k/year and are in a position to contribute to OSS?
- malandrew 12y ago
  Excellent question. If you're in a position to contribute to OSS and earn less than that salary, you're likely living in another country where that salary is one of relative affluence (affording you the luxury of time to contribute to open source).
malandrew 12y ago
Does the design community, which expects job candidates to have a portfolio of work in order to be considered for a position, have these same debates that we have in software engineering?
- Mc_Big_G 12y ago
  Designer portfolios aren't typically closed source and represent paid work.
jallmann 12y ago
What's puzzling is how often FOSS advocates, especially from the permissive camp, frame the idea of contributing code as a purely altruistic action, in that code should be open-sourced and contributed back to because it is the Right Thing to do, resulting in warm fuzzies. The code is both the means and the end: you have the code, do as you wish with it, and please do contribute back if you've made any useful improvements. Now consider the original motivation behind the GPL, which is to ensure software freedom [1]. Being open-source is merely a necessary prerequisite for software freedom. The GPL is much less idealistic than permissive licenses, and more practical about ensuring its goals. RMS had no illusions about the motivations of people and companies; the GPL's absolute requirement for open-ness is an acknowledgement that there will be licensees who are more than happy to use FOSS software against the spirit in which it was intended. One side effect of the GPL's demands for open-ness is that when FOSS usage reaches a critical mass, companies will have no choice but to employ programmers that work on free software. These programmers will then contribute back as necessary, creating a self-sustaining FOSS ecosystem. This is already happening with Linux. In a perfect world full of truly free/libre software, we probably wouldn't have articles like this complaining about "unpaid OSS labor" and GitHub resume padding. The playing ground will be evened out, and there will be proportionately fewer developers contributing because of "love and a lot of free time." In that sense, developers who contribute to FOSS under non-copyleft licenses are doing a disservice to the rest of us who don't have that luxury. [1] The phrase 'software freedom' is used very specifically to refer to software that satisfies the four freedoms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

57 points by Mc_Big_G 12y ago

I'm not sure I have any good arguments either way, but seeing an argument that open source software is uncompensated labor that devalues programming work and serves the corporate establishment makes me very uncomfortable.

SrslyJosh 12y ago
It's a compelling argument for stronger "viral" licenses, for sure.

craigcabrey 12y ago

Is it just me or does this article twist the (rather simple) idea of meritocracy? What you contribute and the quality of what you contribute defines the respect and influence you receive as a result (in a given community, of course). I don't see how that can be tied into "normal" social statuses as this author is trying to imply. Thoughts?

forgottenpass 12y ago
This article has an interpretation of meritocracy that doesn't fit mine. I always took it to mean that in open source you're judged on the quality of contributions and software projects speak for themselves. All the connective tissue to that making a person "deserving" of anything other than earned respect for their accomplishments, or the idea that people who don't contribute are without merit are completely foreign to me. This article was the first place I heard of people getting that impression.
glyph 12y ago
"Meritocracy" is not a real concept of how to run a community, but rather a satirical term used to lampoon the idea that "merit" is a 1-dimensional concept which can be measured linearly and used to judge people and rank them. The term was invented as satire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy Thinking that it's a good idea is like what happened with "waterfall" development. Someone described all the problems with what big companies were doing, and then someone else picked up that description of all the problems and said "ooh! all the big companies are doing this! this must be a great way to do things!" and then everyone perpetuated that disaster for the next two decades. The fact that "hacker" culture has uncritically picked up on "meritocracy" and doesn't realize it's a snarky joke about unfairness says a lot about the unbelievably sheltered and privileged position that most people reading this site enjoy, and our collective lack of social skills. By "social skills" I don't just mean, like, how to behave at parties, but also how to manage groups and how to be aware of the perspectives of other people. Not to mention the fact that if your open source community isn't measuring merit on an objective, defined-in-advance, linear scale, with measures in place, then you are not even practicing the (unfair, broken) system of "meritocracy", you're just doing "rule by cognitive bias" ("biasocracy"? surely nobody is going to take that term and think it's a worthy goal to aspire to). You can trust me, because my community _does_ practice objective, quantitative meritocracy, and therefore I am provably the best and most deserving person in this conversation: https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/ https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  That the term was coined in a satirical context does not mean the concept it describes is in any way discredited by default. The semiotics behind ideas are constantly evolving in any event.
- edleafe 12y ago
  Symphony orchestras used to claim to be the equivalent of a 'meritocracy' (don't think that they used that term, though). They selected strictly by audition, relying on the ears of the (male) conductor/director, and less than 10% of the musicians selected were women. When they changed to have the musicians perform behind a screen, and without identifying them by name, the number of women selected increased dramatically. A similar dynamic happens in the tech world. The people determining 'merit' have that same built-in bias against females, and will judge their work as lower than it should be. The bias need not be conscious, and in most cases the men think that they are being fair and honest, but it's there.
  - glyph 12y ago
    This exact example features in the blog post draft I copied most of my comment from :-). Even more pernicious than that though - you say "the men think they are being fair and honest", but research repeatedly shows that women are also less fair to other women. This is important to keep in mind because it reinforces the fact that most of the biases that work against objectively determining merit are part of the fabric of our society. They are biases that you will tend to hold even if they hurt you personally. Many men bristle when they are confronted with this sort of research and say "I'm not a sexist" or "I'm not a racist". That's the wrong way to think about it. We live in a deeply unfair society, and unless we constantly, mindfully, consciously work against that unfairness all the time, we will fall victim to it ourselves and perpetuate it.
SrslyJosh 12y ago
> What you contribute and the quality of what you contribute defines the respect and influence you receive as a result Except it doesn't. Racism, sexism, personal arrogance, etc. all influence the way that people treat each other. People who feel they are not being treated with respect may never make it to the point of contributing anything, or they may decide it's not worth the emotional burden of dealing with assholes.

TD-Linux 12y ago

It is true that the culture of OSS contributions and IRC lurkers is a very small subset of the available talent pool. On the other hand, jobs that hire based on open source contributions are still a very small subset of the total available jobs. The vast majority of my friends in college were hired with little experience into large corporations, who are better equipped to have a smooth onboarding experience and on-site training. FWIW, I contributed to an open-source project and was then hired to work on it full-time, and it has been a great experience.

dreamdu5t 12y ago

I stopped contributing OSS lately after seeing how many startups use some of my modules. Why should I work for free to help others profit? Yet if I use restrictive licenses people just avoid the software altogether. If my open-source software is successful I just end up being exploited financially. EDIT: Downvotes? I guess it's socially unacceptable to not want to contribute to OSS because someone else will just make money off your work.

pc86 12y ago
Why not use a license that merely prohibits commercial use? And presumably the startups in question are actually adding some value to your code beyond just implementing it with a wrapper. It's not like they are building a business around your piece of code (or are they?)
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Such a license would mean your software is proprietary, and thus dissuade not just businesses but a lot of end users as well, e.g. from not being featured in distro repositories (or thrown away in some third-party repo) due to not meeting licensing guidelines.
- dreamdu5t 12y ago
  Because people actively avoid OSS with licenses like that, always opting for projects that have MIT/BSD type licenses.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    False premise: Software with such a license by definition is not OSS.
  - pc86 12y ago
    I would imagine people actively avoid them if they plan on charging for something. I'm honestly not sure what you wanted. You contributed code to something, and people used it. Some of those happened to make money on code that included yours (I'm sure the impact yours had on their bottom line is debatable). Did you expect financial compensation? Did you just hope for whatever reason that nobody would make any money off any code that you wrote? If you didn't want people to "avoid" your software, you wanted them to use it, right?

Justsignedup 12y ago

As a father of 1, I must agree to this: - I lose ~ 2-3 hours a day every day on commute alone. - I lose an additional 1-2 hours daily on getting my daughter ready, taking her to school, pickup from grandparents, and other daily needs of my daughter. - My income is SIGNIFICANTLY lessened by the expenses of my daughter If I was not a father, I would have the following: - I could live 15 minutes away from work by foot, thus saving me between 1.5 - 2.5 hours a day. - Living close to work requires most likely paying double my current housing cost, and having half my living space. - Living close to work eliminates my need for a car, so some savings there. - I will have 2 spare hours for extra sleep or misc. activity a day - I will also have 2-3 extra hours a day not taking care of my daughter (homework, Daddy-Child time, planning meetups with friends, planning activities). - No need to pay for extra food (time + money), no need to have homecooked food (I can survive on "ramen", child cannot), no need for gymnastics or other physical / social / mental development activity programs (lots of money saved). Add it all up I am at ~ 4-6 hour disadvantage to the average 23-27 year old single male, with a significant lifestyle and monetary hit. If I was just to use 2 hours a day that the more free have to program an OSS project, and 2-4 hours on sleep, I would be better rested, more productive, and would contribute between 10 to 14 hours a week to OSS all while keeping my current lifestyle. P.S. on top of that I work at a job who doesn't count ass-in-chair time, lets me work 9-5 (not 9-6), and is low stress. So already I am privileged over others in my exact position without this cozy 9-5 job. P.S.S. on top of that as a divorced man, I also need to find time to date, so you can't argue that I too have time savings over a single man's need to date. Which mind you is really hard when you have a child. P.S.S.S. Some people have a job that revolves around and/or encourages OSS contributions. So they get to contribute, all while getting paid for it in their standard job. This puts then in an even further advantage because they are now unfairly elevated above the average worker.

SrslyJosh 12y ago
> As a father of 1, I must agree to this Yep, and people who are disabled (or act as a caretaker) are in a similar boat. Ironically, you are probably a better bet for a lot of employers than that average young single male because you value stability. You're not gonna jump ship because you want a foosball table or expect to have lunch catered every day.

forgottenpass 12y ago

Getting blindsided by that complete botching of a strong argument seems oddly familiar, I must have read this back in 2013 too. The case to be made that unpaid labor to an OSS project should not be a barrier to entry to employment is very strong on it's own. The sidetrack into OSS diversity seems to imply that if open source were more diverse it wouldn't still be a terrible hiring practice to expect candidates to have contributed to open source.

timwaagh 12y ago

i liked the article until it became feminist. the notion that because there are less women in industry recruiters cannot use a selection criterium that has intrinsically nothing to do with gender, however somehow guys score better on that criterium, doesn't sit well with me. like i'm evil and deserve less favourable treatment because i'm white and male.

me1010 12y ago
I think the author is attempting to make the very valid point that not all good programmers can be expected to be giving freely of their non-work day time. In short -- life happens but then the jobs dry up and good talent is over looked or lost. And, yes, it does happen to women more than men.
- pc86 12y ago
  I don't think even companies that "require" a strong GitHub portfolio are saying that they're not filtering out good or great programmers. It's about signal and noise. If you are hiring for a senior development position and you have a filter you can employ that will cut out 90% of mediocre or bad programmers (or perhaps more importantly make it much easier to identify them), but will also cut out 40% of good and great programmers, it's not a foregone conclusion that you shouldn't employe that filter. If you still get enough resumes to make a decision, you've just decreased the odds that you get a shit hire by $MATH percent. If social justice is something you care about you probably don't want to do this. If building good software is something you care about, you probably do. I think most here would agree that a random developer with a large body of public OSS contributions is probably "better" than a random developer without. I say that as someone who has pushed to a public GitHub repository probably four times in the past two years.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
eevee 12y ago
i was kinda following you until that last part, where "not getting more favorable treatment" spontaneously mutated into "getting less favorable treatment"

WhitneyLand 12y ago

The article bounces around to touch so many different social issues its nearly incoherent. Regarding the main point I think it's a non issue. Companies are only interested in hiring OSS contributors to get a feel for their work. There are many other ways to do this. For example since a lot of my work is visual I maintain a demo reel. For others it may be articles you've written or even Stackoverflow contributions. It is not hard to get a job without OSS if you have some way to communicate your past performance. Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? I know women have a tough time in certain tech environments, but I'm really surprised to hear of repos where this is happening because perpetrators would have to do it publicly. Please provide examples of the largest OSS community where this is happening and where offenders are not called out or reprimanded. I'll be glad head over there and back you up.

Justsignedup 12y ago
Most harassment is public. - Twitter - Facebook - IRC - Twitch - Reddit - Real world (some wear hoods) Some are more anonymous, some less.
avsbst 12y ago
Notepad++, granted they were called out on it hence the apology: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sexist-jokes.html http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sex...
SrslyJosh 12y ago
Lucky for you that you can show your work to people outside of your company, right? > Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? Now you're being deliberately obtuse. Not everyone uses github, and not all communication happens through github.
- multiplicity 12y ago
  Keep in mind this is Ashe Dryden, who thinks being called a professional victim is misogynist. Paper-thin skin, but throwing stones from her glass house like there's no tomorrow. Open source's results-over-feelings approach turns off many, not just women.

pc86 12y ago

> 52% of women caregivers with incomes at or below of the national median of $35k spend 20+ hours each week providing care. The largest racial demographics in this group are black and hispanic. Are there many people, regardless of gender or race, who earn less than $35k/year and are in a position to contribute to OSS?

malandrew 12y ago
Excellent question. If you're in a position to contribute to OSS and earn less than that salary, you're likely living in another country where that salary is one of relative affluence (affording you the luxury of time to contribute to open source).

malandrew 12y ago

Does the design community, which expects job candidates to have a portfolio of work in order to be considered for a position, have these same debates that we have in software engineering?

Mc_Big_G 12y ago
Designer portfolios aren't typically closed source and represent paid work.

jallmann 12y ago

What's puzzling is how often FOSS advocates, especially from the permissive camp, frame the idea of contributing code as a purely altruistic action, in that code should be open-sourced and contributed back to because it is the Right Thing to do, resulting in warm fuzzies. The code is both the means and the end: you have the code, do as you wish with it, and please do contribute back if you've made any useful improvements. Now consider the original motivation behind the GPL, which is to ensure software freedom [1]. Being open-source is merely a necessary prerequisite for software freedom. The GPL is much less idealistic than permissive licenses, and more practical about ensuring its goals. RMS had no illusions about the motivations of people and companies; the GPL's absolute requirement for open-ness is an acknowledgement that there will be licensees who are more than happy to use FOSS software against the spirit in which it was intended. One side effect of the GPL's demands for open-ness is that when FOSS usage reaches a critical mass, companies will have no choice but to employ programmers that work on free software. These programmers will then contribute back as necessary, creating a self-sustaining FOSS ecosystem. This is already happening with Linux. In a perfect world full of truly free/libre software, we probably wouldn't have articles like this complaining about "unpaid OSS labor" and GitHub resume padding. The playing ground will be evened out, and there will be proportionately fewer developers contributing because of "love and a lot of free time." In that sense, developers who contribute to FOSS under non-copyleft licenses are doing a disservice to the rest of us who don't have that luxury. [1] The phrase 'software freedom' is used very specifically to refer to software that satisfies the four freedoms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html