[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.

[dragonwriter]

> "I can do it cheaper" implies that I can get my costs down lower.

Zero or negative net costs are lower than positive net costs. So "I'll do it for free" (or even, "I'll pay you for the opportunity to do it") are instances of "I can do it cheaper."

> "I can do it for free" means that I'm ignoring any of my costs.

No, it doesn't; assuming rationality it means that the net costs are nonpositive, not that they are ignored (which would be irrational.)

Of course, it could be the result of ignoring some or all costs, but so could "I can do it cheaper" when there is still some charge for the work. There's nothing special about the zero charge case.

[kbenson]

No, it just means that monetary compensation is no longer the largest, or in this case of any consideration. There are other costs, such as time and effort, but there are also other profits, such as reputation and personal satisfaction. Compensation doesn't bottom out zero, it can also go negative. In this specific case, if there were two such people bidding against each other for the 18F contract, one or both of them might have been willing to pay a few dollars for the privilege of working on the project. I got a feeling from this post that the pair of them that did this contract would have had little problem throwing $10 at 18F for the chance to do the project.

[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.