[ac2u]

>It didn’t seem controversial to me. Writing some code to help out the government and the general public—what a unique opportunity!

Y'know, if the author explained it along the lines of "I wanted to have a record of government work as a foot in the door", I think it would be an easier pill to swallow for the folks bidding at reasonable prices.

However, the tone here is a little patronising if another bidder was just trying to get enough to cover the rent.

But at the end of the day, it's the way that system was set up. Hopefully 18F sees this as an opportunity to improve the auction system (secret minimum and other suggestions in the other thread), rather than a way to get cheap labour.

[luma]

Why would anybody be against competent coders wanting to donate time to public use? I get that other people were hoping to be paid for this, but would you end all volunteer programs on account of them interfering with paid labor?

[ac2u]

No I wouldn't. But volunteer work is usually commissioned without a price incentive in mind rather than an auction style format.

[anm89]

No one is. If you want to donate your time there are a million non profits that will gladfully take the donation.

There is no reason this process has to devalue everyone else's work on a paid job.

[fineman]

Then get another job. We don't owe you your line of work.

If you literally can't compete with volunteers maybe you should see what they says about your niche and then find a new one.

Once when replacing a server (and fixing the wiring, etc, etc) I also replaced a router and dual-homed the company's site as a freebie because it made my job easier (the new router had diagnostics, managed-switch features, etc). It was a line-item I could have billed for separately, or it was a new level of service.

By the "save the work for the guy feeding the starving children" philosophy we should nickel-and-dime our clients instead of providing our true value. I don't like that.

[fineman]

btw, I'm a supporter of unlimited (ie, not limited - I would try to encourage you to not need it though) welfare to let society say "tough" things such as "Oh well, I guess we don't need many buggy whips."

And as to why I didn't charge anyways - the change actually made my other work faster.

[Kalium]

There are lots of non-profits that will gladly take the donation. Very, very few have made it as easy to donate as 18F has.

Perhaps the lesson here is that non-profits need to make it as easy and clearly-defined as 18F has in order to receive more donations.

[s73v3r]

Volunteer programs? No, not at all. But this is NOT a volunteer program. It is supposed to be a way to better bid out government work, which I will point out is very much not charity.

[username223]

> Why would anybody be against competent coders wanting to donate time to public use?

Ayn frowns upon altruism, and lots of coders (heart) Ayn.

[tomcam]

  However, the tone here is a little patronising if another bidder was just trying to get enough to cover the rent.

Didn't seem the slightest patronizing to me. Brendan just seemed delighted that he could help out. I love that.

More important, any bidder in any circumstance can be outbid by someone else and lose rent money in the process, right? To dictate any other outcome would require a depth of knowledge about the market and its bidders that no one party could possibly acquire reliably.

[afarrell]

> if another bidder was just trying to get enough to cover the rent.

This line of argument would hold water if the federal government had any kinda of monopsony power on software consulting services. They do not.

[ac2u]

My thoughts weren't really centred around arguing that to be honest. It was more to do with the author's tone, which took a rather tone-deaf attitude as to why certain folks were disappointed with the outcome.

The outcome of the auction happened in a way which was allowed by the parameters which defined it.

[moron4hire]

So I take it you believe government should in general be an "employer of last resort", aka using public works projects as mediums of social services.

[ac2u]

Nope. Made the assumption that because the price was going down rapidly that there were perhaps a few one-man/woman shops that wanted to do work for a price which was more reasonable than $1.

Edit: Also you took a massive leap of extrapolation on what my views were on a short paragraph. Beyond guessing a possible motivation (foot in door as government contractor), there's nothing pinning my views here on the auctioneer being a government contractor rather than private sector.