Can OSSPledge Fix Open Source Sustainability?
Posted by Practical-Ideal6236@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 20 comments
Posted by Practical-Ideal6236@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 20 comments
guest271314@reddit
It's FOSS. Free Open Source Software. Money is not involved. That's the point.
If you are motivated by currency, then you can be bought and sold.
If you are not motivated by currency then you can't be bought and sold.
$2,000 USD is nothing, anyway.
EmanueleAina@reddit
Fucking decades for the FSF itself trying to educate people that it is "free as in speech and not as in beer" and people still expect the free beer. Wow.
guest271314@reddit
Well, don't call it FOSS. Start out as a commercial concern.
Don;'t start out pretending like you are in to writing and publishing Free Open Source Software, then mid-stream try to make some fiat currency off of your wares.
twotime@reddit
Sustainability crisis IS extremely real though and money is one way to improve things.
Anything above toy projects (or one-off contributions) requires enormous time investment. There are limits how much you can run as a hobby beyond that you either burn out (and project has a good chance of dying) or need compensation to do instead of the daytime work. (ah and some projects are fairly security sensitive too so benefit greatly from realtime support)
The proposal is for corporations to pay 2000 per developer per year. That's far more than nothing (yet negligible compared to other per-developer corporate costs).. Apart from getting the companies to pay, the other hard problem is how to distribute that funding
guest271314@reddit
Umm, "money" doesn't address *sustainability at all.
Nothing is stopping you from using your "money" to pay for time with whores and gamble.
You start off FOSS, then magically become a capitalist, or worse demand to be a peasant at $5 USD a day.
As if Google, Apple, Meta ain't raking in hundreds of millions of dollars they pass out to shareholders.
Dick Grasso made $50,000 per day in his role at NYSE in the 1990's. Don't prentend like you are suffering then ask for just enough to buy a corn dog once a day. Or make a pot of beans.
If you are going to demand some money, might as well be a living wage. You might be able to keep a roof over your head for $2,000 a month. But then you have to sustain your physical body by eating.
That's insane.
twotime@reddit
$2000/year is not a suggested "compensation" for OSS developers. It's a suggested "payment (yearly fee) per corporate developer".
Is reading the article before commenting that hard?
guest271314@reddit
Makes no sense to me.
If the person is a corporate developer they are already in the corporate zone.
So some corporation gets to write off $2000?
And some group of developers sits on some board and decides who gets the $2000 per years per corporate citizen that buys in to the racket?
schneems@reddit
I think you’re getting downvoted as it’s free to use, but not free to produce. Money is always involved, but not always directly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U8vi6Hbp8Vc
But in seriousness: I make a TON of open source, but that’s largely because I’m able to make it at work. I know a bunch of extremely talented developers who don’t have that luxury that are doing great stuff and would do even MORE great things if money was not a concern. Or less of a concern.
I don’t think open source should be limited to only the independently wealthy. It’s “many eyes” not “many independently wealthy eyes”.
It’s enough to buy some delivery food so you can work through lunch and ship that next patch once a week. It’s not a replacement salary, but it’s not nothing either.
I don’t think OSS pledge is the “fix” but I think it can be part of a well balanced ~~breakfast~~ approach.
guest271314@reddit
It's literally Free Open Source Software. It's a philosophy.
Just like capitalism is a philosophy, which demands maximum profit for shareholders for the least amount of expenses, thus Apple, Levi's, etc. manufacture their goods outside of the United States, because the cost of paying U.S. workers is not "sustainable" re the purpose of corporations: To make money.
The folks in the reparations for Africans in the western hemisphere every few years say sign this or that petition.
I say, go on strike, then you can rationally determine your value in the global workforce and management and in the executive realm, by withholding your time and energy (economics) from the global economy.
The amount global GDP drops in 7 days is how much you are worth.
In this domain, if you demand to be paid for your work, and don't get paid, go on strike from producing code that the tens of millions of people and corporations depend on around the world, for a week. Then you know how much you are worth by how much global GDP declines just based on hackers not hacking.
Then you have a verifiable metric to demand that amount of money from dependents.
$2000 a year?
That's laughable.
All these high-fallutin' programmers on this very board can take care of their own, without asking corporations for anything.
notoriouslyfastsloth@reddit
fake problems
EmanueleAina@reddit
which one?
notoriouslyfastsloth@reddit
open source doesn't have a sustainability problem
myringotomy@reddit
You can't fix open source sustainability until you fix human greed and selfishness.
That's not going to happen so.....
etcre@reddit
... Is this another thread where people act surprised and get upset that people who work for free don't get paid?
guest271314@reddit
Is it really work if you went into it as a volunteer, donating your time to the Public Domain?
guest271314@reddit
What a joke. Sam Altman can ask for $7 trillion without blinking an eye, and people who decided to produce Free Open Source Software have people lobbying for them for $5 a day?
If you are going to unionize and lobby it might as well be for some real bread.
shevy-java@reddit
That's distorted. Not every project would have suffered the same.
xz utils was targeted because so many archives could be affected by it. Most open source projects by hobbyists won't reach the same wide use of their software. If you write an audio player for use in the browser, how likely is it that you end up in a similar situation as xz utils anywhere?
Ok so ... which companies do that? Sounds like a lot of expenses.
I think we have a problem in expectations. I can see that companies divvy up some money, but I don't see how devs get paid per year in a way that is competitive. Only a very small percentage of developers may end up in the latter situation.
throwaway490215@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
trackerstar@reddit
I pledge to not pay ;)
Practical-Ideal6236@reddit (OP)
Are you a tech CEO/CTO? If so, curious to know why not?