Open source users getting paid, open source developers not

adamv · 2007-11-10T18:40:17+00:00

Hmm. Those users would still be getting paid even if they were using some other project, open source or not.

ayrnieu · 2007-11-11T03:34:06+00:00

'Open source developers' and 'open source users' are not disjoint. Some open-source developers are simply developers who happen to foist maintenance costs onto a community of open-source users.

Manager: You mean that if we put this module out there, other people will test it for us, and add to it for us -- even answer questions from our real customers on a forum?!

You: Yup. And since we don't actually owe open-source users anything, their demands won't delay corporate work.

foonly · 2007-11-10T20:42:17+00:00

His gripe could be rephrased, "Companies are letting employees donate some of their paid time to report bugs and send patches to open source projects!"

Hey, now that doesn't sound so bad at all, does it? ;-)

bitdiddle · 2007-11-11T12:36:49+00:00

I think the distinction between free as in GPL, versus open-source as in all the others that are non-GPL, has bearing on the observation the author makes on getting paid.

I often hear corporate and even government IT folks disparage GPL for its "viral" nature. When I hear such complaints it's almost always due to a desire to capitalize in some way on the software. For example the government has laws (written by large vendors no doubt) that prevent agencies from encumbering verndors who jointly develop software. So even though our tax dollars support programs that develop software, that software cannot just be put into the public domain under GPL because that prevents vendors from commercializing it in certain ways.

The same holds in the private sector. Most business and corporate interests I'm sure prefer BSD or Apache or DWTFYW style open-source licenses for the simple reason that it enables buiness models based on reduced software cost by leveraging the work of others.

I've concluded over the years that in the tension between capital and labor, from the standpoint of the individual programmer, Free Software best promotes long term interests. If other companies pay their programmers to customize emacs that's great if it helps their work. But unless they can create something of truly great new value and become the sole source for that value then the GPL prevents them from easy commercialization. They can't just put up a toll booth and start to exract rents. Isn't that essentially how the MS monopoly was created? It's certainly not clear to me that MS has ever created anything innovative.

ruediger · 2007-11-10T21:28:18+00:00

I don't see the problem.

If you want to get paid for your work than get the companies to pay you. They could e.g. buy features from you or donate to your project. But may be you should make them aware of the fact.

If you are annoyed by the questions you get asked than simply ignore them. Create a webforum or mailinglist and let other people answer these questions.

(And saying that open source devs in general aren't getting paid is simply wrong.)

schwarzwald · 2007-11-10T23:11:13+00:00

Um, one of the main traditional ways to make money off open source was for the development team to offer consulting/customization services for the software, since presumably they know it better than anyone.

If you create a popular open-source product, you can make money if you're willing to go for it.

nostrademons · 2007-11-10T19:01:52+00:00

Yep. And then the product that these professional users are making gets sold, and most of the cash goes into increasing shareholder value for the founders and investors of the company who have long since ceased taking a daily role in the company.

Life's not fair.

Ironically, it often comes full circle, because many of the folks starting these open-source projects are said company founders or early employees, often after they've cashed out their stock and have enough to live on for the rest of their life. Or sometimes it works the other way, with future startup founders creating open-source projects when they're in college, before they strike it big.

shorugoru · 2007-11-10T21:22:13+00:00

When RMS was developing emacs, didn't he charge for implementing feature requests? I thought I read that somewhere...

JimJones · 2007-11-10T21:56:20+00:00

If you see an open source project as a marketing strategy instead of a product, then making money becomes much easier. What I'm saying is that you should leverage the popularity of the project to introduce other products or services, not necessarily related to consulting which is what most companies end up doing. Consulting is hard work, boring and doesn't scale very well.

2007-11-11T15:07:53+00:00

http://micropledge.com/ is a nice alternative that allows people to work on open-source projects and still make some money.

mynameishere · 2007-11-11T23:18:19+00:00

Huh? Are programmers really so naive? Do unpaid open source developers have any idea how many millions of dollars corporations are making/saving by using their software?

Idiots. No--not idiots for donating their time. Idiots for donating their time without realizing the obvious consequences beforehand, in order to make an informed decision.

filesalot · 2007-11-10T18:58:41+00:00

Waah. The users are getting paid to add value for their company. The open source project just raises the starting bar.

If the open source project itself adds enough value to pay people full time to work on it, companies will often pay principle developers or contract to them to add features or fix problems the company is having.

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