Comment by komali2

I agree, however, compensation in general is reaching a point where rational value calculations are fraying. I can't explain why an engineer, though well paid, is making .01% of the CEO's salary, nor can I explain why an engineer doing the same work but in the Philippines is making 40% of the salary of the one in the USA.

I was very inspired by "Walkaway" by Cory Doctorow. It involves a world where people detach themselves from "Default" (global capitalist society) by living in abandoned towns, building the tooling they need to re-establish a modern quality of life. He pulled a great deal on the open source movement in his speculations of how this might look. What I didn't realize at the time is it is essentially an anarchist proposition of community self-reliance. In the novel, there's no point in seeking compensation for your work, because your basic needs are already met by a share-and-share-alike society, and therefore everything you do fulfills either a very clear personal or community need (building a tractor, a house, software to manage a farm, a public spa, or repair schedules), or, is purely for pleasure.

My friend that's sticking it out in the USA is doing the "correct" path for an engineer: First gig in our hometown, transitioned to NYC, did a 4 year tour there saving a couple hundred K, house upstate, still working and saving for retirement but also farming ants and doing his other odd projects for his pleasure. In a recent conversation he mentioned frustration at the poor retirement opportunities for most of our generation. You gamble your life saving's on the stock market, or, do something that doesn't really benefit the world like flipping properties, if you can afford it. If your interest is self fulfillment, community fulfillment, and financial fulfillment as we grow older, that doesn't really exist, at least not in any combination that we've been able to figure out. He's thinking about some kind of ethical business venture, or maybe just a fun thing he can kick off that he can hire his non-engineering friends into like a cute little sandwich shop or something, but as he enters that world he's realizing all his competition is hyper-capitalized businesses or people that he can't possibly compete with if he doesn't do the same shit they're doing, such as filling their kitchens with undocumented immigrants. Basically, if he wants to do good and get paid for it, the opportunities just don't seem to be there.

So therefore, long term what I want to strive for as I build out open source software is actions that "break us out of the box." I and my like minded friends don't really think capitalism is going to cut it in terms of actually rewarding with money our efforts to do good in the world; after all, an investment banker makes more than a teacher and firefighter combined, and does functionally nothing useful. Therefore I'm interested in building things that free people from a financial burden. Every little financial burden I can free people from is a success. I love when I read stories about people building out little GPT programs that can automatically negotiate parking bills or whatever. Or scan your email to automatically apply for rebates and coupons. Or, outside of actual coding, helping people find out that their library has a streaming app they can use for free, so they don't have to pay netflix anymore. Or helping people turn their lawns into gardens, to reduce their food bills.

From a software standpoint, the "Awesome Selfhosted" project is very inspiring in this vein: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted Lots of tools that many people pay for that you can instead deploy on your own and use for free in a way you control.

That's the kind of open source software I want to build. Trying to get paid to build FOSS is a distraction, instead I want to build things that will help people not have to pay for other stuff. I make plenty of money in my day job, I'm good on that front. Pipe dream, we do enough of it, and the question of "getting paid" becomes moot.

Even in this thread we can see the toxicity around trying to get paid to do good in the world. "What, you did something good for free and expected to get paid for it, what are you, an entitled moron?" vs "FOSS software is the backbone of your organization, if you don't pay for it, you are evil." I think it's just so frustrating how twisted up things are. Normally you get paid to do engineering, but if you build something genuinely useful for people, now you don't get paid, but somehow you're an asshole for asking to get paid, and also you're naive for thinking any organization would ever pay for something they don't have to pay for... what a mess. What a rats nest of competing values and accusations. It's not worth trying to fit what imo often inspires FOSS, namely "fixing a problem in our society," into the capitalist mode of thinking, "and getting rewarded for it." If you want to fix things in society, build FOSS, if you want to get rich, take contracts, charge your clients 200/hr for engineering time, put Indian engineers on it, and pay them 10/hr. There, now you're rich. So what?

Edit: on reflection I think basically our efforts to do good for people by writing foss will simply be exploited for profit by corporations, so better to walk into this understanding that, and for those that aren't happy with that state of affairs, try writing foss that can help other people escape these kinds of exploitation.