[erikerikson]

Have you paid?

I too have been frustrated by the way open source works. Maintainers are frequently people in high demand and open source rarely pays commensurate.

So too have I given my work away and been met with entitled demands for service and time. I enjoyed writing the code and making something useful. I enjoyed the validation of that belief based on use but that doesn't feed the family or further my actual goals in life.

[saulpw]

I agree that open source needs to find ways to engage with the economy, for multiple reasons. But the project needs to create the system/process/structure; individual contributors paying money won't affect these systemic problems even if the money they're paying is substantial. At best they create a temporary system of privilege.

[erikerikson]

I agree with what most of you've written. A temporary system of privilege is a great descriptor of what I've seen to date. I'm not sure this should be each individual project's responsibility, the scaling attributes of that design seems to intend failure.

[shimman]

Why should I pay, why can't we tax big tech and VC firms so the public can fund this stuff instead? They have all the money, they have all the power; why can't we take it away from them?

The world of software would be a vastly better place if the public had options to invest in software as well.

[erikerikson]

Strictly speaking that question was for the author. Less strictly for anyone who wants to demand the resources of contributors, even if contributing themselves. The question is about balance and consideration, recognizing that even if someone is giving away their work they live in a financialized world that doesn't respond to their generosity by giving them free access to resources (most of the time).

The distributive justice matters you reference are big problems. To answer your question: we can because they don't actually have all the power, we just don't find the will and not entirely without reason. If we used taxes to extract those funds they would likely be priced in so that the population is left funding them still. It would risk a privileging as suggested by a peer statement and the real solution has to be pretty systemic.

The problem is broad and something like we live in a society where the most privileged amongst us are happy to have a smaller pie so long as they get a larger proportion of it. Even if it's caused by ignorance, that doesn't keep it from being the case. It's also true that we have societal behaviors which reduce our productivity due to the injustice of things. We punish the sincere and well-behaved for the benefit of those creating asymmetric information and abusing others.

I don't think we should be surprised that this leads to bad results and things functioning less capably than they could.

[theturtlemoves]

"Why can't we just demand to spend someone else's money on this because they ought to agree that this is important. Meanwhile, I myself can't be arsed to spend a dime on it, but yeah still important..."

No. If you think it's important, you pay for it.

[theturtlemoves]

Exactly. There has to be a payoff. When that's sheer enjoyment, that's fine. But that could flip and then payment, exchange of honest value, is a good model between people to do things and get mutual value exchange