[voidhorse]

Uh oh, looks like my tech writing career is under threat (so of course I'm posting with a bit of bias here). A wise move on amazon's part though, offload your work on to users who will improve the docs for a couple of reasons:

1. They can add their contributions to their resumes. 2. They use the software and more than likely reference the docs, and so are already stakeholders that desire the content to be correct and so will happily fix it given the chance so that they can save themselves headaches in the future. 3. The general concept of 'open source' is very enticing and is almost always has a positive connotation, so very few people will see that this is a clever way to cut costs and net free labor and not really the virtuous public gesture of transparency and good will a lot will perceive it to be.

This would be different if, like actual open source software others could pull the thing and conceivably make a better version of it and compete, but since this is necessarily bound to a product that's not going anywhere outside the organization, it's de facto always going to be free labor for amazon and never going to promote potential forking out of modified versions of the project, further securing the companies foothold in the market as well--after all, if you no longer have to pay folks for all the extra bits like documentation, support, and maintenance of internal libraries, you can have nothing but a horde of devs working on the user-facing product, and ensure all of your money goes toward nothing other than squashing the competition. Sure you could argue it's still technically possible for someone's fork to gain bigger traction than the official amazon repo, but cmon now, the project is so massive and is so bound to the company that such a scenario is highly unlikely. On the plus side, open sourcing is a boon for archivists were the main content to ever disappear (unlikely).

I realize this sounds a little bleak, and I'm sure amazon also has good intentions with this move, but I can't help but see the potential for future markets where a lot of free labor is snagged under the banner of 'open source' simply because people are shortsightedly seeking resume boosts and not realizing that contributing labor freely will more than likely hurt the job market in the long run.

Not saying you shouldn't contribute to open source, nor is the idea of open source a bad one, but I think the lines get a bit blurred when it comes to open source projects owned by private (massive, in this case) corporations who are then gaining from the work of outsiders without needing to compensate them. Sure, helping out looks good on your resume, just as unpaid internships do--but at some point we need to take a look at these practices that can be, whether intentionally or not, ways of sidestepping the proper dispensation of wages and compensation for labor.

They may still need to pay somebody to green light merges, but that's a lot less costly, I imagine, than paying a team of writing professionals.

[antpls]

I find interesting the assumption every comments make that people are "dumb enough to work for free for Amazon if it's openly accessible". To give the possibility to everyone for proposing changes to their documentation doesn't mean EVERYONE will propose changes. It simply means people who have interest in doing so will be able to do it more easily. We can see this like a reduction of the cost of communication for everyone who have interests at a better Amazon's documentation. To me, it looks like common sense : you won't give money to someone for fixing a comma, because it's not hard and therefore it's not labor. The power of internet is that the work can be split among so many people that the "work" isn't "work" anymore. If it take everyone participating only 5 minutes a day to improve the documentation, then I cannot see how you would remunerate people with money. People can however still point to their github accounts to prove they contributed, and they "earn" reputation instead of money (ala StackOverflow).

[rapfaria]

I'm curious. What makes contribution to this docs so special that adding it to the resume has been mentioned a few times in this thread? I mean, is it not just another repo you have contributed to in your github profile?

[voidhorse]

It may just be another repo at the end of the day. Point is, contributions to open source are sometimes considered when selecting job candidates, so it remains an incentive for folks that may be strong enough for it to nudge them to do work for Amazon. I.e. even though it's technically free labor, I potentially benefit in some way thus I'm content. The problem is potential edge in future job searches is a far more ephemeral form of compensation for your time, is not concretely measurable, and is not actually provided by the company the labor was completed for. In the end the company ends up with a tangible product which they can use to compete in a market and the open source contributor ends up with, at best, a potential benefit should she ever need to apply to some job that will actually pay her for her work in the future.

[mgkimsal]

i'd have to think it's a prestige matter. sending some patches to project X vs AWS ... one will be seen by more folks, used by more folks, probably has to be vetted by someone with known authority, etc.

why does going to one university vs another carry more weight with some people?