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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • Not really. The problem with FOSS licensing is that it was too altruistic, with the belief that if enough users and corporations depended on the code, the community would collectively do the work necessary to maintain the project. Instead, capitalism chose to exploit FOSS as free labor most of the time, without any reciprocal investment. They raise an enormous amount of issues, and consume a large amount of FOSS developer time, without paying their own staff to fix the bugs they need resolved — in the software their products depend on. At that point the FOSS developer is no longer a FOSS developer, and instead is the unpaid slave labor of a corporation. Sure, FOSS devs could just ignore external inputs, but that’s not easy to do when you’ve invested years of your life in a project. Exploiting kindness may be legal, but it should never be justified or tolerated.

    Sure, FOSS licenses legally permit that kind of use, but just because homeless shelters allow anyone to eat their food, and sleep in their beds, that doesn’t make the rich man who exploits that charity ethically or morally justified. The rich man who exploits that charity (i.e. free labor), and offers nothing in return, is a scummy dog cunt; there are no two ways about it. The presence of lecherous parasites can destroy the entire charity; they can mean the difference between sustainability and burnout.

    FOSS should always be free for all personal, free, and non profit use, but once someone in the chain starts depending on FOSS to generate income and profit, some of that profit should always be reinvested in those dependencies. That’s what FOSS is now learning; to reject the exploitation and greed of lecherous parasites.




  • I’ll bite, too. The reason the status quo allows systemic wage stagnation for existing employees is very simple. Historically, the vast majority of employees do not hop around!

    Most people are not high performers and will settle for job security (or the illusion of) and sunk cost fallacy vs the opportunity of making 10-20% more money. Most people don’t build extensive networks, hate interviewing, and hate the pressure and uncertainty of having to establish themselves in a new company. Plus, once you have a mortgage or kids, you don’t have the time or energy to job hunt and interview, let alone the savings to cover lost income if the job transition fails.

    Obviously this is a gamble for businesses, and can often turn out foolish for high-skilled and in demand roles — we’ve all seen many products stagnate and be destroyed by competition — but the status quo also means that corporations are literally structured — managerially, and financially — towards acquisition, so all of the data they capture to make decisions, and all of the decision makers, neglect the fact that their business is held together by the 10-30% of under appreciated, highly experienced staff.

    It’s essentially the exact same reason companies offer the best deals to new customers, instead of rewarding loyalty. Most of the time the gamble pays off, and it’s ultimately more profitable to screw both your employees and customers!