Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD
2 years ago
It's really interesting to me how the vibes have shifted against open source in recent years. I remember when open source came out, it seemed like an implicit critique of proprietary software as stuffy and corporate. But proprietary software has an advantage: The devs get paid.
If you want to get paid for your work, why are you choosing to give it away for free? I'm not judging, I'm genuinely curious. Are there any open source boosters left, and if so how would they make the case for open source at this point?
Maybe what's needed is a "for-profit open source" license, where the code is free for anyone to read, but it's illegal to use for commercial purposes without paying. I'm guessing this approach is already being explored?
I do free open-source work because I want to reshape the world, and this is somewhere I have leverage. If I was paid to do the work, then I would have to deliver what the customer wants, which is not always aligned with how I see things.
It’s pure ego, but I hope it benefits the world too :)
Thanks for replying. Yeah that seems like a decent model -- it starts as a passion project, then acquires users, then the dev stops having as much fun and starts feeling a sense of responsibility.
One solution is to announce that you're abandoning the project and suggest that its users make a plan to fork it / take over maintenance. Instead of adding a social norm that open source devs should get paid, we could drop the norm that open source devs should feel obligated to maintain projects for free. Maybe every README could have info about the primary maintainers and how enthusiastic they think they're going to be about the project going forward, so people can make informed technology choices. That way no one complains about a bait and switch.
Another idea is for the dev to respond to issues on Github by saying things like "I can fix this if you pay $X"
Another approach might be for employers to allocate 20% of employee time to open-source work.
Benefits:
- recruit high quality developers
- up-skill existing developers
- devs will sometimes fix things that the company is using
>Maybe what's needed is a "for-profit open source" license, where the code is free for anyone to read, but it's illegal to use for commercial purposes without paying. I'm guessing this approach is already being explored?
Nonfree and proprietary licenses have always been an option. The problem is developers want the convenience that FOSS culture provides without actually making the sacrifice of putting end-user rights before their own profit. Coding (specifically web dev) has turned into a money train and FOSS devs want on board.
FOSS licensing is an ethical stance. That ownership of software, (nonfree) copyright and intellectual property is fundamentally immoral, and authorship doesn't grant you privilege over the code you write. And that stance has a cost. If developers want to get paid, get a job writing code and a paycheck, or use a nonfree license. Otherwise, stop being hypocritical. You chose this path.
>Are there any open source boosters left, and if so how would they make the case for open source at this point?
I consider the way I publish MIT projects to be mostly in good faith. I put it out there because I like having my name associated with useful implementations of things. If my code, worked on with my own hands, is spread via unattributed copy-pasting? Good. Even if I don't know about it, somewhere out there my code is powering something.
I started this mindset when I was a new grad, and to achieve a task I would first look at a bunch of different open-source projects to get a sense of how they were approaching the problem domain.