[ksk]

Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet.

"Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist.

Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone.

>I use open source technologies on a daily basis, and this seemed like a great opportunity to give back a little.

If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project.

[kbenson]

> and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist

Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed.

I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary compensation.

Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free.

> If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project.

The people that start/work on a specific open source project have the right to ask for compensation in whatever way they like, or enforce it through their license. You have no right to speak for all open source projects.

[yellowstuff]

Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.

[nogoodnamesleft]

> The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Utilitarianism? Watch it quickly spiral into a shit show.

These same concerns and arguments are nothing new. People have been bemoaning the evils of open-source and it's socialist ways as unethical and selfish for years. And look how the software market still flourished. In many cases, directly off the backs of unpaid developers.

There's a good chance we're beyond a tipping point of ever again having enough work for the masses anyway. Look how many able-bodied folks the Feds hide under disability to keep the unemployment numbers low. And computing jobs will continue to vanish as software advances. You gonna tell a software company they can't launch their accounting AI because of CPA job losses? You going to stop IBM from improving Watson because it might cost us some Javascriptkiddie jobs (don't need as many web pages if Watson can do my work just by talking to it, or just having a brain-wave interface)?

Humanity will shrug and do what they did when cars replaced horse and buggy: Carry on.

[jtuente]

So I think most people completely miss this when they see it, but I love it when people call "socialist" things selfish. It's the very definition of irony that something done "for the benefit of others" is deemed to be done solely for the person's ego. Personally, I don't see open source as inherently socialist anyways, but that's another topic entirely.

[cortesoft]

Soup kitchens have the exact same risk. If those soup kitchens cook too much, they will drive restaurants out of business. Luckily, for both soup kitchens and programmers, this will never happen. There is more programming work to be done than programmers, and the markets aren't the same.

[stuartaxelowen]

Soup kitchens and restaurants are not competitors.

[cortesoft]

And volunteer development work and professional development work are also not competitors.

[caseysoftware]

This was the common argument 10 years ago as open source CMSes - primarily WordPress and Drupal - started becoming more common. That eventually web developers would be entirely replaced by people who just configure plugins/modules.

As we've seen, software development has stagnated and almost gone away in the ten years since.

[makomk]

Open source CMSes increase efficiency - by reducing the amount of work required to set up a website, they mean that the time and money saved can potentially be used for more productive purposes. Working for free doesn't do that; it involves the same amount of work and time, just for free.

[bobcostas55]

>Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work.

This makes very little sense. They still have $3,498 left from what they had budgeted, money that can (and will) be spent elsewhere. The money doesn't just disappear into thin air.

[ksk]

>Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers.

No, it is not the same thing at all. People volunteer for organizations because the organizations DO NOT have the resources to pay them because all their money goes into buying goods and what not.

When you bid $1 and work for free, you're saying I don't want the money you're willing to pay. To fail to understand this basic difference is silly.

[brownbat]

> don't want the money you're willing to pay

You could run this same critique against any bid after the first bid, because it's lower than the amount they were willing to pay. The consequence of your argument is that all auctions are immoral.

In reality, prices are negotiated between a field of willing suppliers and purchasers. There will almost always be some "producer surplus," some amount producers get beyond their bedrock price, and some "consumer surplus," some amount consumers save over what they would have paid. It's just typical to find some middle ground in any transaction.

Here there was a middle ground, because $1 was not the only compensation, there were other personal benefits from taking on the work. It seems at the core you're saying he should have only valued money, that he should not have been allowed to "enjoy the work for other reasons" unless cash was involved, because some people prefer cash.

That doesn't seem like a sound ethical principle either.

> To fail to understand this basic difference is silly.

Also, maybe avoid dismissing other commenters as "silly." It's how these threads tend to slide off the rails.

EDIT: Warning - Sorry for some ninja edits, tried to expand my position. I didn't delete anything controversial, just added additional thoughts.

[ksk]

No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

[brownbat]

> I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

Why? I don't understand why these aren't just other prices.

I'm not trolling, I'm asking for clarification. It's like you just said to me "3 is a number but 0 is not a number." I literally don't understand your position.

Also is $1 free in this context?

Note I'm responding to your critique of the low bid, you said the reason it was bad was because you're taking less than they're "willing" to pay. If that's really your justification, it would apply to non-free bids as well. Maybe that's not your actual justification though...

Sorry if we're talking past each other. My perspectives on this are highly shaped by my experiences with economics courses, especially micro. Really recommend working through some of that material, which can be found free online. It might change the way you look at the world: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-121-microeconomic-th...

[dragonwriter]

> No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

No, its not. "I can do it for free" is an instance of "I can do it cheaper". Its quite possible for someone to have a non-negative (zero or positive) net utility from an act which gives someone else a net positive utility, so that the "price" they are willing to charge for that task is zero or even negative (that is, they are willing to pay for the opportunity.) That's no different than the variation in utilities between suppliers with a net negative utility who are willing to do the task for a variety of positive payments.

[s73v3r]

No, it's not. "I can do it cheaper" implies that I can get my costs down lower. "I can do it for free" means that I'm ignoring any of my costs.

[detaro]

Where is the line between "cheaper" and "free"?

Minimum wage might be a useful data point, but tied to not predictable work time.

[gertef]

$1 is not free, so fret not.

[kbenson]

> No, it is not the same thing at all. People volunteer for organizations because the organizations DO NOT have the resources to pay them because all their money goes into buying goods and what not.

The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that.

This is the exact same. He liked the goal of the organization, he liked what they were doing, and he wanted to work with them, and he wanted to help out. Any money saved here isn't going to some CEO, this is the government, it's budgeted and if it doesn't go to another project here, it goes to some other service for the American people.

When you comp some or all of any expected monetary compensation, which is what this and all volunteer work is, you are helping to set the market rate for that job. The only reason volunteers in an industry can be unpaid is because the supply of people willing to work for no money outstrips the demand. If there were not enough people to volunteer in an area, the organization could and would pay some amount out of their operating fund to pay the work, if it was important to them. This would likely result in fewer workers, but it's obvious how this would work out. It's all supply and demand, even for volunteer work.

[ksk]

>The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that.

You are comparing two very different things. The material costs of feeding 100 people would probably equal the labor costs of one worker for one day. Nobody is going to make the labor compromise when the question is "Do I feed 10 people or 100 people".

>Any money saved here isn't going to some CEO, this is the government, it's budgeted and if it doesn't go to another project here, it goes to some other service for the American people.

Um, do you have any idea about federal funds just languishing in bank accounts? Just google "unspent government money".

Sorry, your argument does not hold any water. In any case, we're entering into the minutia of a topic that I have little interest in, so I am not inclined to continue.

[kbenson]

> The material costs of feeding 100 people would probably equal the labor costs of one worker for one day. Nobody is going to make the labor compromise when the question is "Do I feed 10 people or 100 people".

But that's not the actual decision that needs to be made. It's more like do I feed no people because there's nobody to distribute the food that will work for free, or do I pay some people some small amount and feed some people. I guarantee decisions like that get made at all levels of nonprofits all the time, from entry level positions to directors. It is a market, and just because much of the time supply far outstrips demand, to the point that there is no monetary compensation (but there is theoretically other compensation), doesn't mean that always hold true at all times and in all locations.

[parennoob]

> Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free.

This comparison is inaccurate – soup kitchen volunteers are not performing a complete job which is being bid for. This underbid is more analogous to if a local government center asking for bids to serve a meeting of 500 people, and a local soup kitchen bidding $1 for the contract because they are essentially giving away free food. They then end up supplying the meeting with 500 bowls of great chili, and everyone is happy.

If the soup kitchen started doing this every time the government center issued a bid, the local restaurants would never make any money from the government center. This is not to say that they would never make money. But it is legitimate for an average restaurant in the area to be worried by the soup kitchen's actions, and view it as a potential devaluer of their product.

[kbenson]

Sure, but the government is under no obligation to support restaurants through soup kitchen contracts. Their mandate is to feed the poor. They should choose the option that lets them achieve this goal as efficiently as possible. Social, technological and economic changes that make it harder for restaurants to compete can and will happen, and it's the job of the restaurants to respond in a competitive way if they want those contracts, or shift their focus to a more lucrative sector, or go out of business. That's not smug and elitist (as the top level comment implied), that's the system we have and it's responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than anything we've tried before.

You can safely ignore the rest of my comment if you like, it's sort of me just rambling because there's a place to do it.

An important concept that I think some people miss with free markets and "fairness" is that it's all relative to the time frame you are looking at. Yes, it's possibly more fair (depending on how you determine fairness) to right now to completely redistribute all wealth equally between all world inhabitants, but will that result in overall better outcomes for people 50 years from now? If we had done that 50 years ago, would we be better off right now? 100 years ago? To my view, free markets are the best way we've found so far to increase wealth overall over time, so it helps prevent local maxima effects and eventually leads to better outcomes. Unfortunately that means some people get the short end of the stick, but it's important to remember that the short end is short relative to the other end, and the stick is getting longer overall as time goes on. That's not to say I believe in a completely hand-off approach to markets. They can and are manipulated at times, and there are runaway effects that should be mitigated.

[brownbat]

Switching contexts, you could say the same thing about garage bands.

"Why are these amateurs playing all these shows basically for free? They're stealing money from hardworking musicians!"

Some disciplines spark addicted, passionate individuals who get other benefits beyond the price. (In contrast, there aren't a lot of enthusiast janitors.) If you want to make a living and you opt to compete with abundance, you shouldn't be shocked when someone is willing to underbid.

[Jtsummers]

> (In contrast, there aren't a lot of enthusiast janitors.)

Totally unrelated, but this is the second time recently I've seen a remark like this. And I agree entirely, but I actually know one. Guy retired, wanted to help out an underfunded school, became their janitor. Retired military so he's essentially got a (much better than) living wage for the rest of his life, the income was irrelevant. He just wanted to see the conditions for the students improved.

[brownbat]

Ha, fun to see the counterexample, totally makes sense.

Definitely more accurate to say that, while volunteerism is pervasive in some fields, it's far less common in others.

I think the fields where it's more common have huge social or moral benefits to go along with the job. Or sometimes they function like a foot in the door in a lucrative field. I can easily see helping out an underfunded school fitting the former categories.

Coal mining will probably be my go to example from now on... ;)

[ksk]

>Switching contexts, you could say the same thing about garage bands

I don't know much about the music business, but as a layman, I don't think the two situations are comparable. I think that when a band releases free music they're thinking "I just need to put htis out for free and if my song goes viral THEN I'm going to get picked up by this huge record label, etc ,etc"

Its more of a "let me win the lottery" prayer, than any kind of volunteer type sentiment.

[Jtsummers]

I don't think GP was talking about releasing music for free. I think they were talking about bands that'll do a gig in a bar for $200 (or whatever's considered cheap) versus one that costs several times that, but is actually trying to make a living playing music.

[goorpyguy]

This is a good analogy, actually. You want a chance to do the work, and have people see your good work. You want that badly enough that you're willing to do the initial work for free.

[iMerNibor]

Which is basically the reasoning behind bidding 1$ then..

He got a lot of attention from just doing that aswell, so a success for him

[zeckalpha]

> If you want to contribute to open source, then please feel free to join an open source project.

It IS an open source project: https://github.com/18F/calc/blob/master/LICENSE.md

[Lawtonfogle]

>"Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist.

Not seeing a big difference between that and "Oh, I already make enough at my day job, now let me produce FOSS that competes with commercial software which are some people's primary job."

[orless]

> Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet.

Not necessarily, this may be also a valid profit-oriented strategy. My wife worked for ca. 8 month almost for free (for lowest rate allowed by the law) to get an entry in her CV which landed her on her next real money job.

[pimlottc]

Whether it's a good strategy is besides the point; it's still a luxury in that your wife had the means to live for 8 months without a substantial income. Some people don't have the safety net to be able to do that, even if they knew it would put them in a better position in the long run.

[orless]

> Whether it's a good strategy is besides the point

It is my point that this may be a good strategy.

> it's still a luxury in that your wife had the means to live for 8 months without a substantial income

Spending 10k Euro on an audio system is a luxury, spending 10k Euro to get a better job is an investment with a pretty good ROI.

> Some people don't have the safety net to be able to do that, even if they knew it would put them in a better position in the long run.

Since for almost anything there will be people who can't afford it, so this argument makes everything a luxury.

[tptacek]

How does the same argument not apply to everybody with full-time employment who works on FOSS projects?

[fasteddie]

> Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet.

This is true for markets where there really is no other alternative than working for free. You are certainly referring to children of wealthy parents who can afford to do unpaid or low-paid internships and entry level jobs in industries like media, the arts, or sports.

When you are talking about contract development work, which exists a robust market for paid work, even if all similar gov't contracts gets done at the $1 it would not much affect someones ability to sell their skills in the private markets.

[cortesoft]

So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.

[Jtsummers]

> So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.

If you donate things then you're still buying it from someone, but giving it to someone that cannot afford them. So really, you're a surrogate purchaser.

The problem comes in when you're donating time (via work) to a group that can afford to pay for it, and there are people looking for work that are willing to work for the normal wages/rates that would've been paid.

If the people receiving the benefits of the work can't afford to pay, you aren't taking the work from anyone. When there's no one willing to work for the rates being offered, you aren't taking the work from anyone. But when people are willing to work for the rates offered, and you give your time for free, you are taking the work from other people.

The ethics and morality of giving is kind of complicated.

[hamburglar]

> The ethics and morality of giving is kind of complicated.

No, it's really quite simple. It's the ethics and morality (and circuitous justification) of being upset by others giving that's complicated.

I built a friend of a friend a billing system for his fledgling business. Didn't charge a dime. I even got sucked in to support for much longer than I really wanted, since no good deed goes unpunished. Was it unethical of me to undercut the other people who might have wanted to provide those services for money?

I did some free consulting last week. A friend is starting a company and hasn't hired devs yet, so I met him for a half day and we worked on system architecture. I told him ahead of time that I was happy to do it for free. He had the money to pay a consultant, but every bit he saves now extends his runway. He bought me a beer. Unethical?

Last year my water heater failed catastrophically and dumped its water all over the floor. I went to my next door neighbor and said, "hey, is there a plumber you recommend around here?" and his response was "don't waste your money on a plumber. That's an easy job, and I can help. Let's go to Home Depot." He spent the whole day helping me. Literally took a paying job that I was planning to pay a plumber to do. Should plumbers be upset about their work being devalued?

[FF76]

> Should plumbers be upset about their work being devalued?

The problem stems from contributions that have a big impact. Big impact can be achieved by one person contributing a large amount, or many people contributing small amounts.

Another comment referred to this article where a Florida business man donated a million t-shirts to Africa that resulted in the textile industry bankruptcy: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00...

Was it bad just by giving away t-shirts? I don't think so. Was it bad just by giving away that many t-shirts? I don't think so either.

It was bad because his actions created a dependency on an unreliable source while removing the main income source that sustains reliable ones. If he subsidized the income loss of the textile industry, the consequences would not have been as devastating.

That's really the crux of the argument; giving away things for free generally takes income from dependable sources of labour. It's only when it has a big impact that people pay attention.

Going back to the topic, the same can be said about volunteering. I think it's okay if volunteering dislodges an entire industry as long as the volunteering is sustainable and reliable.

[hamburglar]

I think the big mistake people make when criticizing this $1 contract is imagining the logical conclusion if everyone worked for $1 instead of realizing that this is a one-off giveaway and it has zero impact on actual rates for this type of work. This guy is not going to continue doing $1 contracts, and nobody is going to respond by reducing their prices to below what they deserve. People can give things away. The reason plumbers aren't concerned about neighbors helping each other with their water heaters is that nobody is going to make a career out of competing with them by doing full-time gratis plumbing jobs.

Complaining about this is like saying the apocryphal jilted wife who sold her husband's prized Porsche for $1 has affected the price of Porsches.

[FF76]

It's okay to talk about everyone working for $1 after all it has to start from somewhere right?

I think the spirit of the complaining is more of a warning to keep an eye out for the trend rather than stop these one-offs altogether, but that's a lot harder to say and act on than "stop these one-offs".

[gbhn]

I think this is the most apropos objection: 18F is trying to trial a reliable source of contracting for small-scale IT work.

If it turns out that volunteerism is reliable, then awesome! 18F just discovered that by spending time to nail down detailed reqs the govt can let patriotic citizens contribute to their society by helping on projects! Everyone wins and things are awesome!

If on the other hand your intuition is that volunteerism is unreliable, then this just short-circuited an early experiment by 18F to figure out a reliable piecework system for doing IT development.

My intuition matches the second case, but there's an existence proof that the first might actually be correct. It'd be a totally awesome story if it was, so I have a hard time being sad. And even if it isn't, it may give 18F folks a think, as in "hmm, perhaps some of these projects are appropriate for volunteerism; is there a context where we can develop tools for that use case? universities? job training?"

[phaemon]

> Another comment referred to this article where a Florida business man donated a million t-shirts to Africa that resulted in the textile industry bankruptcy

I didn't result in any such thing, nor does the linked article suggest it does. A million t-shirts dumped in Africa would have less effect than the same number dumped in the USA.

[Jtsummers]

1) Maybe? Did they have the resources to pay someone? And, as you pointed out, you got sucked into support for a role you didn't get paid. This increased their dependency on you and pulls you out of your normal economic/professional role. Probably not unethical, but certainly led to undesirable results (for you, great for them).

2) Your free consultancy extends his runway, which means he has a greater chance of success and puts him in a better position to contribute by hiring and spending in the future.

3) You also keep the retail chain in existence, and have spent your money more wisely rather than overpaying (by labor rates at least) for someone else to do what was actually a quick and easy job.

Honestly, though. You seem to be thinking that I'm opposed to giving. All I said is that it's complicated when you start giving to (and sometimes, in essence, taking from) others. Look at that Africa t-shirt versus textile manufacture example in another thread. Millions of people clothed, thousands of people out of (otherwise sustainable) work. The calculus is non-trivial. Clothing people is a good thing. Putting thousands of people out of work is probably a bad thing (depends on what the work is, and what they can do after it). Which one outweighs the other. In the long term, eliminating an industry from a region is probably going to turn out to be a worse thing as it eliminates the ability of those individuals participating in it to feed and clothe themselves and contribute financially to their local economy. Compared to other forms of giving (versus free t-shirts) that would have enabled people to build up more businesses and industries where they would then be able to afford and/or manufacture more clothing (or whatever other needed goods) locally/regionally. Or purchase them from abroad by producing some goods/services they could sell globally.

[cortesoft]

Ok, so I took away some work that they were going to pay someone for. What, though, are they going to do with that money they saved? They are probably going to spend it on something else, which will employ somebody. It just shifts where that money is spent.

[Jtsummers]

Right. If we provide teachers to an area, we might be eliminating the teachers already present. More likely we're supplementing them. This is filling a need that a local economy may not be able to sustain on its own.

If we provide volunteer laborer a to a farmer who can afford hired hands, we're reducing the income to those in the local unskilled labor market.

Those are two extremes and most labor-giving and goods-giving fall in between. But we need to determine where it falls to determine whether is a positive or a negative.

[ac2u]

Put more succinctly that I did in my comment, where a lot of folks extrapolated my comments on the tone of the article to a full blown commentary on the free market.

[celticninja]

Perhaps but I imagine people would not willingly produce something for free if it was the private sector. The fact it is government and taxes pay for it, therefore you and me pay for it, there should be no problem in getting it done for free(essentially).

Would it be better to pay a company $500, of which $150 goes to the dev and $350 to company coffers?

[thaumasiotes]

When Microsoft let volunteers supply photos for new default Windows backgrounds, there was incredible outrage among professional photographers. People who are not professional photographers can usually see that better images at lower cost is a good thing and not a bad one.

[cuckcuckspruce]

>Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet.

Go back to your gulch, John Galt. Just because someone chooses to be altruistic does not mean you have to crap all over their altruism.

[Jtsummers]

You're basically name-calling, which is unproductive. While I'm not in agreement with OP, some levels and methods of altruism/volunteerism can end up being counterproductive. A certain level of free <insert good> to a region is useful. Above that, or for too long, and you end up harming local farming and manufacturing, to the point where they may also depend on the free goods.

I'm lacking specific articles and lines of research, but charity seems to be better when it's establishing people on their own (teaching them a trade, providing them a global market for the goods they already produce, education, medical, etc.) than giving them a thing. We have to be careful when giving to others that we don't simultaneously diminish them. All of this is a balance, and the correct balance very much depends on the extent of the need and the existing capabilities and limitations of the people involved so no universal line can be drawn.

[kedean]

You may be thinking of this example: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00...

TLDR; sending a surplus of tshirts to Africa did nothing but crash local textile industries by introducing a surplus of existing, cheap product. Guy wanted to do good, didn't think about the consequences, and screwed up.

[Jtsummers]

That was exactly the example that was in my mind, but I didn't have time when posting to look it up. Thanks.

[djrogers]

Except you clearly haven't read the article - he didn't send the shirts, he listened to the aid workers and criticism over his plan and decided against it.

The local textile crashes referred to in the economy were from cheap second hand imports, not aid.

[nogoodnamesleft]

Calling other people "smug" and "elitist". Justify it by believing you are some sort of protector of the rest of us. Opening our eyes to our unethical behavior, and how we're demeaning and stealing bread from the mouths of others.

Maybe our economics are unethical. I mean we have right here evidence that people can be motivated by things other than money. But yeah we have to bow our heads at the pulpit of "sound economics".

Let's start excluding those who want to contribute in a different way because it undermines the religion. Maybe we should burn them at the stake?