[jddil]

Never understood why our industry seems unique in our willingness to do unpaid work for giant corps. Your compression library isn't saving the world, it's making it easier for amazon to save a few bucks.

You have the right to be paid for your time. It's valuable.

I enjoy coding too... but the only free coding I do is for myself.

Use a proper license, charge for your time and stop killing yourself doing unpaid hobby projects that cause nothing but stress.

[dugite-code]

> why our industry seems unique in our willingness to do unpaid work for giant corps.

Because it never starts that way. It scratches an itch, solves an interesting puzzle and people thank and praise the work. Deep down we all want to be useful, and it helps that it looks great on a résumé.

After it's established the big corps come along, but the feeling of community usefulness remains. It's also why so many devs burn themselves out, they don't want to disapoint.

[maerF0x0]

IMO this is exactly why. The payout comes later, if the project is successful.

[cesarb]

> Never understood why our industry seems unique in our willingness to do unpaid work for giant corps. Your compression library isn't saving the world, it's making it easier for amazon to save a few bucks.

The work was not being done "for giant corps"; it was being done for everyone, and giant corps just happen to be a part of "everyone", together with small corps, individual people, government, and so on.

> You have the right to be paid for your time. It's valuable.

When you think of free software contributions as "volunteer labor" instead of just a hobby, it makes more sense. Yes, my time is valuable; when I'm working on free software, I'm choosing to use this valuable time to contribute to the whole world, without asking for anything in return.

[aulin]

I'd say you're contributing back. You don't ask anything in return because you live in a ecosystem built on the contributions of everyone, you're just doing your part.

[squigz]

Weird that this is a concept people struggle to understand...

[bombcar]

Did you get paid for the post you just wrote? People at giant corps are reading it right now, they're getting value from it. You deserve to be paid!

IF you understand why you'd post without being paid, you're 80% of the way to realizing why people program without being paid.