Are Open Source Developers Being Underfunded and Exploited? (staltz.com) 228
Donation-based open source programmer Andre Staltz recently collected data from GitHub, Patreon, and OpenCollective to try to calculate how much money is being donated to popular projects.
The results? Out of 58 projects checked, "there were two clearly sustainable open source projects, but the majority (more than 80%) of projects that we usually consider sustainable are actually receiving income below industry standards or even below the poverty threshold." More than 50% of projects are red: they cannot sustain their maintainers above the poverty line. 31% of the projects are orange, consisting of developers willing to work for a salary that would be considered unacceptable in our industry. 12% are green, and only 3% are blue: Webpack and Vue.js... The median donation per year is $217, which is substantial when understood on an individual level, but in reality includes sponsorship from companies that are doing this also for their own marketing purposes...
The total amount of money being put into open source is not enough for all the maintainers. If we add up all of the yearly revenue from those projects in this data set, it's $2.5 million. The median salary is approximately $9k, which is below the poverty line. If split up that money evenly, that's roughly $22k, which is still below industry standards. The core problem is not that open source projects are not sharing the money received. The problem is that, in total numbers, open source is not getting enough money...
GitHub was bought by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. To make that quantity easier to grok, the amount of money Microsoft paid to acquire GitHub -- the company -- is more than 3000x what the open source community is getting yearly. In other words, if the open source community saved up every penny of the money they ever received, after a couple thousand years they could perhaps have enough money to buy GitHub jointly... If Microsoft GitHub is serious about helping fund open source, they should put their money where their mouth is: donate at least $1 billion to open source projects. Even a mere $1.5 million per year would be enough to make all the projects in this study become green.
The article suggests concrete actions to stop this "exploitation," including donating to open source projects, as well as more scrutiny of how well open source projects are funded, and "pressuring Microsoft to donate millions to open source projects." It also suggests considering alternative licenses for new projects, and unionizing.
But Chris Aniszczyk, the CTO of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, responded on Twitter that the donation-based approach is "a path to ruin for sustainability... you solve this problem by having companies hire folks or help maintainers build businesses around their projects... let's not turn open source into a gig economy and demand more of companies instead."
So what do Slashdot's readers think? Are open source developers being underfunded and exploited? And if so -- what's the solution?
The results? Out of 58 projects checked, "there were two clearly sustainable open source projects, but the majority (more than 80%) of projects that we usually consider sustainable are actually receiving income below industry standards or even below the poverty threshold." More than 50% of projects are red: they cannot sustain their maintainers above the poverty line. 31% of the projects are orange, consisting of developers willing to work for a salary that would be considered unacceptable in our industry. 12% are green, and only 3% are blue: Webpack and Vue.js... The median donation per year is $217, which is substantial when understood on an individual level, but in reality includes sponsorship from companies that are doing this also for their own marketing purposes...
The total amount of money being put into open source is not enough for all the maintainers. If we add up all of the yearly revenue from those projects in this data set, it's $2.5 million. The median salary is approximately $9k, which is below the poverty line. If split up that money evenly, that's roughly $22k, which is still below industry standards. The core problem is not that open source projects are not sharing the money received. The problem is that, in total numbers, open source is not getting enough money...
GitHub was bought by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. To make that quantity easier to grok, the amount of money Microsoft paid to acquire GitHub -- the company -- is more than 3000x what the open source community is getting yearly. In other words, if the open source community saved up every penny of the money they ever received, after a couple thousand years they could perhaps have enough money to buy GitHub jointly... If Microsoft GitHub is serious about helping fund open source, they should put their money where their mouth is: donate at least $1 billion to open source projects. Even a mere $1.5 million per year would be enough to make all the projects in this study become green.
The article suggests concrete actions to stop this "exploitation," including donating to open source projects, as well as more scrutiny of how well open source projects are funded, and "pressuring Microsoft to donate millions to open source projects." It also suggests considering alternative licenses for new projects, and unionizing.
But Chris Aniszczyk, the CTO of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, responded on Twitter that the donation-based approach is "a path to ruin for sustainability... you solve this problem by having companies hire folks or help maintainers build businesses around their projects... let's not turn open source into a gig economy and demand more of companies instead."
So what do Slashdot's readers think? Are open source developers being underfunded and exploited? And if so -- what's the solution?
Open Source is Communist (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it sustainable? The data says it's been sustainable for 40 years.
Re:Open Source is Communist (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your understanding of communism is flawed.
Also I believe the article makes it clear it is not sustainable.
Not sustainable????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I believe the article makes it clear it is not sustainable.
That is a pretty weird take from either you or the article, open source thing is THE most sustainable thing there is. Long after out sun is ashes there will be open source software and people contributing to it.
If OSS were "not sustainable" it would have withered and dies long ago, yet it has been with us practical from the beginning of computers and keeps growing and growing.
Even if you didn't believe the evidence that history and current adoption of OSS stacks across the industry was trying to beat you over the head with, even then a simple logical evaluation of facts shows it is way more than sustainable.
It's al based on this simple fact - programmers go to school, and eventually programmers retire. Say they contribute zero to OSS during working years (an utterly absurd assertion, but lets pretend). That still leaves a decade plus on either end where people don't care about money, just about coding for fun and learning and helping others (yes at both ends).
The retired developers will be super experienced so they will produce a lot of high quality stuff... and that is why we see the adoption we have of OSS across the industry, increasing year by year.
If someone claims this is exploitation they look upon this only from the outside, not knowing a thing about programming and the very real value this brings to the people working on it - even if that value is not "money" . I smell someone trying to sow discontent in the valley of OSS and we shall not have it.
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You really missed the point. Open source software in general cannot be a revenue stream nor source of income if it is supported by donations. That's not sustainable.
It's also like saying flight using a picnic table cloth is not sustainable. Or reading novels using images from GPS satellites is difficult. Or shitting on the ceiling is not a viable career.
We shouldn't even be discussing this. Donations are not meant to support your career if your career is creating a product with no price tag. Sure it would b
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You really missed the point. Open source software in general cannot be a revenue stream nor source of income if it is supported by donations. That's not sustainable.
People keep saying that... people who don't know what sustainable means. It doesn't have anything to do with revenue streams, unless you're trying to run a business. It only means you can keep doing it. People can keep doing it as a hobby. Lots of unpaid projects have become relevant.
You are using words you don't understand, and it's not working well for you.
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People keep saying that... people who don't know what sustainable means. It doesn't have anything to do with revenue streams, unless you're trying to run a business. It only means you can keep doing it. People can keep doing it as a hobby. Lots of unpaid projects have become relevant.
If someone came up to you and asked if your OSS work was sustainable, you think they are asking if the inheritance from your Mom is enough to allow to you keep doing it?
You might have some other definition of sustainable in your head, that but isn't what TFA or anyone else here is talking about.
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If someone came up to you and asked if your OSS work was sustainable, you think they are asking if the inheritance from your Mom is enough to allow to you keep doing it?
If you don't like programming, just go ahead and say so. The people who like doing it will keep doing it in their spare time regardless of what you think.
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If you don't like programming, just go ahead and say so. The people who like doing it will keep doing it in their spare time regardless of what you think.
I love software development. I also like getting paid.
I have no problem with you writing OSS so I can get paid to monetize it.
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I don't like it much either, although I've OSS'd anything I didn't see a way to monetize. My contributions have been trivial, so I don't feel taken advantage of. I'm thankful to/for the people who contribute more.
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OSS was sustainable. With SaaS, there's too much appropriation and turning proprietary of OSS, which means there's less development of it.
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With SaaS, there's too much appropriation and turning proprietary of OSS, which means there's less development of it.
That's just illustrating that with SaaS, the hard part isn't the software, it's the service. "Enterprising" developers will give away the software. Not so easy to do with the service part. Welcome to the world you've built for yourselves.
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The problem with SaaS is since the software is never published, people build on open source and never give back their changes. Therefore, things like the GPL cease to actually achieve their goals as the work is just stolen.
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I seriously doubt any major SaaS player is knowingly violating GPL. Folks in software take that very seriously, if for no other reason than self preservation.
If you are aware of GPL violations that affect OSS I recommend getting a lawyer. Posting the specific here might even get someone else interested. You aren't just speculating or spreading FUD are you?
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That still leaves a decade plus on either end where people don't care about money, just about coding for fun and learning and helping others (yes at both ends).
That isn't sustainable. By definition. Those people are not being sustained by their work. They are doing charity.
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I would say giving away software is the most rich person thing you can do.
I would say most software devs who are not hired outright to do opensource all say the same thing. "Life gets in the way". Meaning they have to get paid in some other way to do it. If they did not have spare time and money they would not do it. I also hear a lot of "i do this in my spare time do not expect much" and that is on major projects nevermind the minor ones.
There are ways to do this. Look for companies which have problems close to the space where you write open source. When you get hired get a clause in your contract that says that you can do open source when it isn't competing with their software (or when they agree or whatever). If you aren't valuable enough to be able to demand that (I've never recently had a problem) then make sure that you find open source solutions to the companies problems and ensure you fix the problems you find. Get permission to
Re: Not sustainable????? (Score:2)
If MS decides to "open source" its OS across all levels you will see something *very* different in the world. Not because it is good or bad or open source. But because it is free at that point.
Windows has 95% or more of the desktop market, and it isn't free (either as in speech or beer), so why would they 'open source' it? Forgo a fantastic revenue stream (billions annually) to secure one or two more percentage points of market share?
No, it will never happen.
Re: Open Source is Communist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
I don't know how to make communism work at a national level, but at an open source level it is working very well.
Software is different than other industries. It requires near-zero capital (a Raspberry Pi Zero costs $5), and has a near-zero marginal cost of replication. So "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" can actually work.
In the future, these same characteristics may apply to 3D-Fabrication design files, and maybe even creative works of literature or entertainment.
But communism will not work for goods and services that require expensive capital and continuous human labor for produ
Re: (Score:2)
That's only true if you consider your time, knowledge, and connectivity to be worthless.
You've underestimated the cost - the raspberry Pi is only $5ish by itself, and you'd most likely want something to connect to it (e.g. another computer, display, etc.) You need internet access, currently ~$25/month or varying based on location or type of access used, and it only becomes marginal if you somehow
Re: In the Russian or Chinese sense no. (Score:2)
Re:Open Source is Communist (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Source is communist, in the most positive possible way at this time.
That's really interesting for me, because I have talked with a lot of folks who grew up in the communist former East Germany. One of the very few positive things that they say about East Germany, was that people bent over backwards to help each other.
For example, if you were renovating your home, you just needed to buy a case of beer, and the neighbors would come by and help out . . . for the price of a beer for a half day's work. And then . . . when your neighbors needed to renovate . . . you would go by and help them.
People were united because they knew that the State would not assist them with anything, so lot's of things that you would expect the State to do, like building playgrounds, wasn't going to happen, unless the folks in the neighborhood did it themselves.
This kinda sorta mirrors what you wrote . . . folks doing volunteer work for a common good.
Now, where's my beer . . . ?
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current capitalism solves that too. communism left people some land; big mistake. better to have overseas investment companies hold it. heheh. efficient.
Re:Open Source is Communist (Score:4, Informative)
so lot's of things that you would expect the State to do, like building playgrounds, wasn't going to happen, unless the folks in the neighborhood did it themselves.
That is a super bad example you pulled out of your hat, because that is actually what the state did very well.
The point about renovating your house is: there where companies doing that. But the companies had to follow the "master plan", aka got more or less assigned which houses/rooms they should pain/renovate when. Obviously with no "free market" they could not work where the demand or desire was.
Hence people did many things themselves and obviously helped each other.
They did not help each other with renovating because otherwise it would not happen, but no one likes to be in a queue of the single company responsible for the district for 2 or more years.
Communism worked in eastern Germany exceptionally well regarding child care and day care, that includes play grounds. West Germany or united Germany is still not on the level of work freedom people had in the east regarding work and kids.
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As a guy born in Yugoslavia, I can say yes, there definitely was strong sense of community which included helping each other, your neighbour was/became your (sometimes) a best friend etc.
It even made sense. It was not even about renovations, it was about building houses as well. See, in the period of sixties to late seventies, there was a relatively big economic progress. A lot of industry was built factories/shipyards/refineries etc which needed a lot of workforce. So all of those companies built very affo
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I agree with others in this thread who point out that your communism analogy is wrong.
The essence of a communist system is this: the state (and thus in theory, the citizen-workers) own the means of production. It is shared by fiat, not by the voluntary choice of participants. Everybody owns it because nobody owns it.
In the case of software development, the means of production can be modest. Yet there may be players who seek to profit from a privileged position. In the mind of Microsoft, Github had such a po
Re: Open Source is Communist (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's flawed from every word.
"To each according to his need."
And who decides what someone's need is? Does someone need a yacht? No? So there are no yachts now. Instead of some people having them, now zero people have them.
"From each according to his ability"
Again, who decides what your best ability is? Is an artist going to get to paint when the country needs farmers? Or is he going to be forced onto a farm?
And giving people stuff from those that have more is great. But what happens when you've created a cou
Re: Open Source is Communist (Score:2)
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The essence of a communist system is this: the state (and thus in theory, the citizen-workers) own the means of production.
No it is not.
The essence is: everybody performs by its ability, everybody consumes/receives by its needs.
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You're going to need someone to determine abilities and needs for everyone. You can't just leave that to the people, because greed and lazyness would take over. This means you need a state to make those decisions, which means that the state is in charge of the means of production.
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Just like classical communism though, many open source programmers just end up as suckers whose produce is used by the elite (in this case, software companies)
Re: Open Source is Communist (Score:2)
Re:Open Source is Communist (Score:5, Informative)
The article is not really about Open Source, it is actually about a donation model applied to Open Source.
And he just shown it is *not* sustainable for the people involved.
But Open Source is not just about donations. For most part, it is produced by full time employees of for-profit companies being paid industry standard wages. Microsoft and Google are the biggest contributors. The biggest "pure" open source contributor is probably Red Hat, again a for-profit company selling products to customers. Even Mozilla, who takes donations, make most of its money from search royalties.
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And he just shown it is *not* sustainable for the people involved.
No, he has done no such thing. It's not sustainable as a full-time occupation, but so what? Lots of software has been written and supported in people's free time, over the years. They need some other source of income, but that's hardly a non-starter. You might as reasonably say that model trains as a hobby are unsustainable, which is to say, it would be completely unreasonable.
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In this communist world, were are my free Dr. visits,
No doctor visits for people who can't spell "where"
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Surprised you weren't modded Flamebait, but to some extent it's objectively true. The GPL regime in particular is pretty well communist--it sucks the software into being public, and then keeps it locked there, unable to re-enter the more capitalist world if it desires. The BSD-style licenses are like a commune where you're free to come and go, the GPL seeks to build a Berlin wall.
The dichotomy here has always fascinated me. What we call "the left" in the USA would be all on board supporting higher pay fo
Re: No. (Score:2)
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Communism is the idea of the state controlling the production and commerce. Which state is in charge of open source? NONE. Socialism is the idea that society is responsible for the well being of the population.
You're a moron.
It is not slavery. (Score:5, Insightful)
Programmers who choose to work on open source projects are donating their time. People do not expect to pay for open source, so those who create it should not expect to get anything for their labors. Exploitation means those who do it do not have much of a choice. Anyone who is a good enough programmer to be worth their salt, should be able to find a job that actually pays. If you expect to be paid, do not work on open source. Period.
Re: It is not slavery. (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it amazing that people who talk about how software should be free are now also talking about how they should be paid for it.
Not the same people (Score:4, Insightful)
The people who are agitating for this don't know a thing about programming, they see see a class of people they think they can exploit with division politics.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The benefit of open source is the end product is free to use and without licensing or proprietary limitations.
Many people donated a lot of time to make OpenOffice/LibreOffice something that relives them of paying commercial office suite licenses, that goes for many other projects.
For others, open source provides them an opportunity to contribute to a project to add a feature that would not be a popular to a private funded interest thus unattainable; by developing it in a OSS project they can not only have t
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Within a CoC?
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The benefit of open source is the end product is free to use and without licensing or proprietary limitations.
That is the main benefit for you and me.
But the true one is: you have the source code. However that is often not really exploited, people rather file a bug report instead of fixing it and contributing. On the other hand fixing open source is often troublesome ... e.g. Apache Lucene. Considered "state of the art" but probably the worst open source software ever. No idea why programmers don't know tha
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It's exploitation we signed up for (Score:5, Insightful)
We as OSS devs gladly contribute code for free to projects that are under a license not requiring any payment from users. Not getting paid is practically what we signed up for.
I don't think this is a problem. If you want to be paid, don't be a charity. Be a business, like all the software companies who are getting paid. It's not hard.
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OSS devs are for the most part, volunteers. If they get any money at all then that's a bonus.
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"Donation-based open source programmer" oh, this guy is trying to support himself by making open source software. Pretty sure that's not how it works, so the entire basis of this shitty concept is bogus.
Don't be tempted to tip this idiot.
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Re:It's exploitation we signed up for (Score:5, Informative)
To be clear, I said "be a business", not "go work for a company". These can be interpreted as two very different things.
I'd love to see numbers showing how many people view OSS through an ethical lens. I hadn't thought it to be significant, though I'd love to be wrong. Regardless, I do think some way to enable charitable donations across a wide breadth of open source would be really great.
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No he isn't. You're projecting that onto him. For those who can think past their polysci class "Be a business" also means create your very own, private and beholden to no one business.
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Money (Score:2)
It's tempting to simply say 'yes', but funding is not the only measure of success.
Open source developers are (in general) successful in their goals.
Volunteers (Score:3)
They are not being âoeexploitedâ, they are volunteers. They can stop volunteering at any time.
Re: Volunteers (Score:2)
As opposed to paying them money to coerce them into staying with the project?
Slavery! (Score:2)
A Capitalists dream come true
volunteers (Score:4, Insightful)
No one forces anyone to do anything... (Score:2)
The kewl thing about open source you can just say nope not doing it anymore and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
That is freedom.
Commercial OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to be clear here, the major OSS projects out there are commercially backed. Not all appear that way, but quite a few are nowadays. Developers contribute to these software projects because they actively use them on their day jobs and either need to fix bugs they're ran into or add new features to extend their particular business needs. These developers are already being paid by their day jobs to make these otherwise "free" contributions to OSS.
Jealous, much? (Score:2)
I'd like to see more people donate to OSS. Heck, I should donate more, myself. However...
There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of open source projects. The author certainly doesn't intend MS to hand me money for my little projects - he has his own pet projects in mind. As soon as some organization with deep pockets hands someone else money, some people get jealous and greedy. That's what I see hear: Microsoft paid a stupid-high prices for GitLab, and now some OSS developers are
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If they want to make money, they need to do consulting that relates to the OSS project. They have to be doing something useful to some industry, basically. Then they can get money because of their open source work, but the money won't be for their open source work.
In a way, yes. (Score:2)
FOSS developers give away quality Software for free. So yes, they are being exploited, by their own choice. However, FOSS developers usually think in a bigger picture and see the long-term benefits as weighing much heavier than any personal short term gains you get by going closed source. And they're usually right. The digital world has the fascinating trait that Marxism works very very well within it, better than any other system. That's why, in the long term, FOSS always wins.
It's the model of FOSS that s
Your hobby (Score:2)
Open source is something you do after work for some reason.
Selecting to spend hours very month on open source is not been "exploited".
You can stop your hobby of adding to code at any time.
Fork a project, change a project, stop working on code.
Take up a sport, fishing, stamp collecting, watching TV/streaming, gardening, bicycling, painting.
Enjoy your free time.
Not the politics of open source and CoC changes.
Developing in the wrong countries (Score:2)
But there are two rebuttals. First, if people want to make a living from writing FOSS, the USA is not the place to do it. It is far too expensive to live. The developers from other countries can do much better on those rates of contributions.
Second, why should a de
What people signed up for. (Score:2)
abandoned projects and code rot (Score:3)
Today FOSS runs the huge majority of the internet. In that sense, Free Software had already won.
But in another sense, the viability of FOSS is starting to decline. I see it everywhere in the form of abandoned projects. Take a look at your typical mom/pip/gems/maven/whatever dependency tree. I bet at least one package that _your_ app depends on is effectively abandoned. It feels like termites are starting to eat the house.
I see the evidence all the time; but I can only speculate about the cause. It seems that software companies have broken an unspoken, implicit social contract - especially in the past two decades, we nearly all software companies are owned by the same handful of inbred capitalist "investors".
The companies make liberal use of FOSS components, but contribute back _nothing_. And the companies no longer hire FOSS developers as consultants - they prefer instead to hire cheap code monkeys in India. Curiously, that latter point may explain why abstruse, difficult to use software May be more financially viable for FOSS developers than writing pleasant, easy to use software.
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Re: abandoned projects and code rot (Score:2)
St Richard is often right.
In the SaaS era, GPL isn't nearly strong enough to achieve its goals. That's why I advocate people release Free Software under the stronger AGPL. Or maybe it's time for a new copyleft license better suited to today's realities.
Below the poverty line where? (Score:2)
Without some stats about where the open source devs are from, how can one claim that a certain sum of money is too little?
Still, the entire idea that open source developers are exploited is ludicrous, unless one can actually show that they're part of an organisation which is deliberately paying them less than expected.
Underfunded? (Score:2)
This news is unfunded.
Just like us.
50% red.. 12% green, and only 3% blue (Score:2)
Best way to kill Open Source (Score:2)
Yes, been there, done that (Score:2)
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ESR on "Load-Bearing Internet People" (Score:2)
Coincidentally, Eric Raymond has just written an apposite article:
An LBIP is a person who maintains the software for a critical Internet service or library, and has to do it without organizational support or a budget backing him up.
That second part is key. Some maintainers for critical software operate from a niche at a university or a government agency that supports their effort. There might be a few who are independently wealthy. Those people aren’t LBIPs, because the kind of load I’m talking
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An LBIP is a person who maintains the software for a critical Internet service or library, and has to do it without organizational support or a budget backing him up.
To a first approximation, there are none of these people. Even David Mills, the NTP guy, had university support. DNS? Originally paid for by DARPA, then DEC was paying Paul Vixie for it, then Paul Vixie created ISC to fund development, then version 9 was developed as an outsourced contract, paid for in part, again, by the US military. Apache? Famously has its own foundation. BGP? Developed commercially. WebKit? Developed commercially. Blink? Developed commercially. MySQL? Developed commercially
Good planning = good funding. (Score:2)
Work for the dole (Score:2)
Wah, my OSS project is not making me rich... (Score:3)
Seriously, I don't know the author of this, but it just reads like he is complaining that he, as an OSS developer, can't just be his own boss and not get a real job. It seems like he just wants to be paid to work on his pet project and doesn't understand why it isn't working out.
I've contributed to OSS projects in one way or another over the past 25 years, but it was out of love for the project, enthusiasm for what the project was doing, and a general sense of excitement getting to work on the project and with the people involved.
But I never thought that I could just quit my day job and expect people to give me money so I could contribute to a project at my whim.
Income results from doing an agreed amount of work according to an agreed timeline, but OSS often shuns that kind of thing anyway. Devs work on features they want to see and release when they want to (if at all) and no one is held accountable if dates slip or expected features or functionality aren't included. Not only is there no accountability in these situations, but these are often the drivers that get other OSS developers involved because they have their own needs they want to satisfy.
So my advise to this guy would be to stop whining, get a job like the rest of us, and keep following his passion by contributing as time allows... It's probably the best he can hope for.
The question (Score:2)
So the question is, are ciders who volunteer their time for no compensation, helping to develop programs that are given away for free, are being taken advantage of?
Yes.
Because they volunteered their time in return for nothing more than to be a part of a community working to solve particular problems.
Re:Volunteers Underpaid, demand salaries! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that is kind of my take as well; don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the contributions people make (on both ends), but it is silly to think of it as an isolated ecosystem.
Not to sound like a pointy-haired boss, but the work you do for free is something to leverage work you are paid to do. Things you do for free will not consistently put food on the table, although you might get a nice dinner out every so often. BUT, if it gives you consulting opportunities or a full-time job then it is essentially a marketing expenditure. Business rule of thumb is about 10% marketing budget, so you can dedicate ~200 hours per year to such a “side project” that helps you in other ways. Looked at that way, if you get in $9k in contributions, suddenly you can afford to spend nearly twice as many hours on the project if you so choose.
The real problem is that if you haven’t sorted out a primary source of income outside your volunteer work as you get older and have more responsibilities then you are in trouble.
Re:Volunteers Underpaid, demand salaries! (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA only makes sense if you look at who is behind it. The author is a blogger soliciting money [staltz.com] to make stuff that nobody wants. By conflating his situation with the wider open source movement, he is hoping to generate sympathy and donations.
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OSS would destroy all PSS, sooner or later, eventually!
Would free software destroy proprietary video games, or only software used in the line of business?
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Would free software destroy proprietary video games, or only software used in the line of business?
It will destroy proprietary game engines, but not proprietary game assets.
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First, are behavior scripts considered part of the program or the assets? (If "yes", which? If "both", which more?)
Second, if the engine is free, how does the developer fulfill the publisher's demand to deter prohibited copying of the assets?
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Second, if the engine is free, how does the developer fulfill the publisher's demand to deter prohibited copying of the assets?
They can offer goodies with the purchase. We already know that DRM doesn't prevent copying.
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The download stores I know of (Steam, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, etc.) don't allow a publisher to bundle feelies with a purchase. So if the goodies aren't feelies, how does the publisher deter copying of the goodies?
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The download stores I know of (Steam, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, etc.) don't allow a publisher to bundle feelies with a purchase. So if the goodies aren't feelies, how does the publisher deter copying of the goodies?
You can't even bundle feelies with the purchase of a Steam title purchased in a retail location, in a physical box?
What fraction of Steam games have a boxed release? (Score:2)
You can't even bundle feelies with the purchase of a Steam title purchased in a retail location, in a physical box?
You can, but only if your game has a physical release in the first place. As far as I can tell, this requires the following:
1. The game disc and the feelies will fit in a standard DVD keep case.
2. The publisher is big enough to convince some notable brick-and-mortar retail chain to carry its product. I would imagine that a publisher that well capitalized is probably going to be so risk-averse as to not attempt to release a DRM-free game on a free engine. What fraction of Steam games have a wide physical rel
Re: OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS EVIL!!! (Score:2)
> even though Netscape was far superior quality software!"
Er... not sure how old you were circa 1997, but IE4 stomped Netscape 4 into the ground because Netscape 4 sucked. Seriously, it was almost impossible to use Netscape 4 for more than hour without having it crash... sometimes, (on Win9x) badly enough to take the whole OS down with it.
IE4 wasn't perfect, but Netscape 4 sure made it seem like it was.
Netscape 4 was so awful, Microsoft could have made IE4 for Linux, charged $10 more than the cost of Wi
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When I used Win 95 and Win 98, I always used Netscape. For eMail and for browsing. It never crashed. No idea what you are talking about.
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Er... not sure how old you were circa 1997, but IE4 stomped Netscape 4 into the ground because Netscape 4 sucked.
I'm not sure how much Microsoft Kool-Aid you've impacted into your rectum, but it must have been a lot, because IE4 sucked a lot worse than Netscape 4. IE dominated not because it was better, but because it was bundled in the anticompetitive sense of the word. The US DoJ found that Microsoft abused their monopoly position in basically every possible way, and the EU forced Microsoft to implement choice screens to assist customers in locating other browsers and search engines.
Re: OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS EVIL!!! (Score:2)
Back in 1997, I was doing web design... so I was using browsers for 10-12+ hours/day.
Netscape 4 drove me *insane* with its endless crashing under Windows 95. IE4 felt like a literal gift from ${deity} by comparison. Plus, IE4 had all kind of cool DHTML features that didn't have Chrome & Firefox equivalents for several *years*. Most of what we now know as CSS & DOM made their first appearance in IE... CSS 1.0 basically just codified ~85% of what IE *already* did so other browsers could implement it i
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Itches will tend to get scratched. Some of that will get shared.
I don't understand these people who say it has to be a full time job. If they didn't have the time, they wouldn't make so many new features. It would just keep working.
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Tldr: I owe you absolutely nothing beyond your license terms.
Legally that's correct. The thing is legality is the minimum standard of behaviour below which ultimately men with guns will come and stop you. Society largely works because people actually behave much better.
You smugly talk about free stuff and no obligations, sure, but you'll lose a lot if the free stuff goes away and then you'll have to start paying full commercial rates. Or you could not be an asshat, contribute back and keep getting good stu
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If you say "This is free." and I take one and walk off, you have zero grounds morally or ethically to condemn my action.
Especially, you cannot condemn only in reference to your particular charity, not examining if you yourself have contributed any effort to his.
That your and his charities don't over lap in personal utility is a separate issue from the morality of charity.
Tall horse, we
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if open source developers are doing good things and submitting good things, and if some organization is overseeing the progress and receiving funds under a 501 (c) (3) non-profit status or for-profit status; everyone should know what everyone is getting compensated if any.
You can do your part by refusing to make any contributions to any software project (or anything else really) where there is not full and complete transparency in funding. You should get to know everything but the names and addresses of private donors before you fork over your cash.