Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by habnds 2605 days ago
agreed, additionally, there's an interesting behavioral phenomenon where people are perfectly willing to help strangers on the street when asked for free, but the willingness rate drops dramatically when someone offers them a small amount of money because it reframes the conversation. Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.
3 comments
smusumeche 2605 days ago
A lot of us in this industry are very fortunate to have high salaries. At the risk of sounding crass, $20/hour is not much money to me. So this is really just a show of support. I'm going to donate the money anyway. (disclaimer: I work at Formidable)
link
Aeolun 2604 days ago
It sounds like just enough to be nice, and not nearly enough to move the needle, to me.

I guess that’s why I think it’s great.

If it was a smaller token amount, it would feel sad.

If it was more, it would feel exploitative (like a number of people in this thread already said).

link
nickjj 2605 days ago
Yep, that exact feeling is one of the things that provoked me to write the comment.

Then there's also the social aspect of it all. If you're working with a team of 10 people and 8 of them are contributing to projects that help the company because you're all on the same mission of "rainbows and unicorns are amazing, our company is the best" then there's a tremendous amount of social pressure to keep up with everyone else because otherwise everyone thinks you're not on the same page and you get outcast. Once that happens for a while, that's when you get burnt out and resent everyone you work with.

link
DoctorOetker 2605 days ago
>Once people see open source as a way to make money, it becomes a very different thought process.

I think it's less about a different thought process, but about a set of potential legal implications or ramifications.

link
habnds 2604 days ago
yeah actually it's a good point about possible legal issues, but that's separate from what I meant in my comment. It's been shown empirically that a stranger is more likely to help if asked for a favor than if offered a small amount of money.
link