[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.