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The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software is Unsustainable
(trstringer.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
How many working people are doing it not because of the money but solely because they enjoy the work?
You’d be surprised
I can think of at least twenty that I know or knew personally.
I seriously doubt it.
I work for money. While I enjoy my work. I wouldn’t do it for free. I have to eat, pay a mortgage, etc.
Hell even if I wont the lottery. I wouldn’t do this job for free and it’s a really good job.
I would (and do) work on my own projects for free.
You can do that now. Nothing stops you from doing free work. Most people can’t afford to work for free.
I think there should be a clause in most open source projects that you’ll donate time if used for corporate interest. That way companies would be forced to contribute which means the employee is paid.
I’ve seen many companies just take from oss. They need to give back as well.
How many hours per week do you spend working on your own project for free?
How many bug reports and merge requests do you get per day?
I promise you that the way you work on your own project does not scale to the level of big FOSS projects with tens or hundreds of thousands of users or more.
Sounds like you don't know the story of core-js. Any popular open-source is basically unsustainable without profit.
https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/blob/master/docs/2023-02-14-so-whats-next.md
I dare to say 0.01%. Most devs, including open source devs are payed one way or another.
Sure, there are labours of love. But most aren't.