

Should we do more to incentivize open source? - jackaltman
http://jackealtman.com/should-we-do-more-to-incentivize-open-source

======
freshhawk
I think the answer is yes, but with a huge caveat: incentives _must_ be build
around the social norms that made open source successful in the first place.
Incentives built on financial norms would be disastrous and act as strong
disincentives instead. Humans are weird, and we act differently when operating
under financial norms than we do under social norms. Dan Ariely explains this
quite nicely in a lot of his talks, you should google it if you haven't seen
it.

This is why I'm really skeptical of things like gittip or other "we'll pay you
pennies to spend hours of your life building open source projects" approaches.

I much more excited by the cultural shift that seems to be happening around
"my github account is my resume". It's not just a "write open source as resume
padding to get a better job" thing, it's an increase in the amount of social
capital resulting from contribution to open source. Basically if people find
out I contribute to a "good" open source project more people care and the
people who care, care more than they used to.

I think this is an excellent incentive scheme. A popular open source project
cannot generate enough revenue to pay me what my contribution is worth so it's
impossible for them to incentivize me with money. But if my reputation is
increased because my contribution is recognized and my peers think more of me,
my ideas are more easily heard and my financial career path opportunities are
expanded because of that reputation then I am highly motivated to contribute.

I think there's a big place for the patronage/sponsorship model as well (and
the incentives to be a patron are quite similar), especially for getting the
necessary but boring/less sexy things done. It can also push back, in one way,
against the problem of reputation based incentives undervaluing boring but
high-value work.

~~~
AJ007
Would it be reasonable for a developer to ask, I want to devote 1 year of my
time to open source project X, please fund me on Kickstarter to accomplish Y &
Z?

~~~
freshhawk
I like the kickstarter model but it does put things in the world of financial
norms. How much work are you going to put in to an open source project when
the other guy working on it is getting paid by kickstarter money?

That said it's a great way to let people actually get what they want most from
a project by putting something on the line to make it happen. For single
person projects or small teams who are all getting funded I think it's nearly
perfect. Certainly very exciting.

The only thing worrying is that it's much more likely for those funded
projects to stop development when the money stops. Who knows if that will be
an actual problem or not.

For larger projects, when everyone can't get paid from the pot, it's a bit
tricky. I'm pretty sure that we'll see some successful projects completely
implode from the internal arguments and demotivation resulting from allocating
crowdfunded money.

Anyway, I could dream up fun scenarios all day but it's just predicting the
future so it's probably all wrong. I think kickstarter type models are really
promising for all sorts of things so people should go for it.

One thing to always keep in mind though: A human will happily do something for
free for all sorts of reasons, if you start paying them they will be even
happier for a while, then will normalize to just as happy as before. If you
stop paying them they will never go back to being happy doing that thing for
free.

------
BenoitEssiambre
One area where open source makes a lot of sense is in government
infrastructure. It lets governments avoid having everyone's data stuck in
propriety formats and then extorted by software companies for access later.

The UK government, for example, has recently mandated a preference for open
source: ([http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-
man...](http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-mandates-
preference-for-open-source))

Unfortunately, governments are still getting caught in proprietary solutions.
Here in New-Brunswick, Canada for example, the government has just chosen an
officially sponsored electronic medical record system for the province.

Unfortunately, they picked a proprietary SAAS system which means that if
doctors signup, everyone's medical records will be uploaded to some private
company's servers.

The company charges $24 000 per doctor upfront plus $400 a month subscription
for continued access with a price guarantee for only three years. After all
our medical records have been converted to their proprietary format at a huge
cost (not included in the $24000), this company will be in a position to
charge whatever they want.

The government gives incentives to doctors to signup to the proprietary system
($16000) and have given monopolistic exclusivity for at least three years to
this system when it comes to connecting to hospital lab results.

There is actually a good open source alternative developed in other Canadian
provinces. The OSCAR open source EMR is quickly becoming the most popular
system in those provinces. Support plans often costs less than $100/month (it
would be free if you were a geeky doctor willing to install and support it
yourself). Somehow, the vast marketing and sales budgets of proprietary
companies compared to the more minimal OSS sales push was able to sway our
government into giving a quasi monopoly to a costly proprietary system.

~~~
asb
Sadly that preference has been made rather less strong (presumably after some
behind the scenes lobbying...). [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-
source-preferenc...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-
preference-blunted-in-UK-Government-guide-1889015.html)

------
mseebach
_Although building a company on the heels of the open source community flies
in the face of the its spirit_

No, this is false. Free as in speech vs. Free as in beer. Make all the money
you can, just keep the software free (as in speech).

~~~
chc
This is a meaningful distinction, but as far as I can tell, not a practical
one. I have never seen any way to make something free-as-in-speech without as
a side effect making it free-as-in-beer. Speech itself is free-as-in-beer.
Even if you charged admission for people to hear the initial speaking, the
things you spoke are no longer yours to profit from once they've been passed
on to others (unless you take measures to abridge their free speech). Can you
name a piece of free-as-in-speech software that cannot be had without paying
money? There definitely seems to be a tension there.

As far as I can tell, very, very few businesses actually make any money off
writing and selling free software. They either open-source some tertiary part
of a larger non-free piece of software, or they just give the software away
for free and try to make money on support and consulting contracts.

~~~
takluyver
I've been wondering for a while whether the app store model will foster more
paid open source software. Theoretically, the app store owner can protect the
original creator from unwanted clones, and most users won't bother to find and
compile the source code to avoid buying the $2 app.

I've not seen much evidence of this so far, but StormCloud, a weather applet
available on Ubuntu and Chrome, is one example (more or less - I'm not sure
that the "Don't be a dick public license" meets strict definitions of
freedom).

~~~
zugbo
Here's another example, then: A while ago I found
[https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-
Backgrounds](https://github.com/gjtorikian/Earthbound-Battle-Backgrounds)
which is an animated wallpaper app for Android. Between the dollar it costs on
the store and the time it'd take to build it, I quickly chose to spend the
money.

But, if the choice had instead been between a $1 closed source version on the
store or an open source manual compile, I think I would have taken the
build/install option.

------
mixedbit
Heroku should not be put alongside Firefox, Linux, Django, etc. It is not an
open source platform, only their client-site tools are open source.

~~~
jackaltman
That's a good point.

------
gwern
Summary: open source is a public good / has positive externalities, and thus
is likely underfunded.

~~~
davidw
Excellent summary. The language of economics is often very good for succinctly
communicating things like this.

As far as what should be done, that's a lot trickier. My inclination is that
it should mostly be limited to universities and government having something of
a bias for open source with very liberal licenses. That's a big vague, but I'm
a bit tired, so it'll have to do. I do not think the government should get
involved in funding software it doesn't actually need in a big way.

~~~
gwern
I'm not sure either. The academia model seems very ill-suited for FLOSS
because, while it does incentivize releasing source so other people can use
it, it _doesn 't_ incent any sort of ongoing maintenance or improvement except
in the rare case where doing so can generate more papers and publications
(which, unless the initial functionality was amazing, means that the released
source will quickly become useless and bitrotten - saw it happen multiple
times in Haskell-land).

One mode which does seem to work very well is Google's Summer of Code. For
pretty modest investments, it seems to yield a lot of useful functionality,
and because it piggybacks on existing projects & communities, the improvements
seem to generally stick. I've watched the Haskell-related Summer of Codes for
years now
([http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code](http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code))
and there's been some great stuff accomplished via them.

------
nodally
There was an excellent talk on this same topic this week at the Open Source
Bridge event in Portland. The topic was "No, I Won't Contribute to Your Open
Source Project". Slides are available.
[http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957](http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/957)

------
guard-of-terra
What do we want from open source? For a long time, foss movement rallied
around building desktop experience, but now given the prevalence of macs and
non-desktop computing this seems to be no longer the case.

What kind of open source should we incentivize?

For example, do we really need to incentivize ten thousands of ruby on rails
testing frameworks?

I would argue that grassroot open source needs help in discovery and reaching
their audience more than they need "incentivizing", and discovery means
filtering.

~~~
goldfeld
I think we should be incentivizing open source software and infrastructure
that promotes peer-based architectures and descentralization of the control
over data, for a start. How is open source going to displace Google as the
search leader? That would be a good start, and things like PRISM would be less
the powerful for it.

------
czstrong
I don't think incentives should be created and awarded to developers of open
source work. That will only attract more of the type of coder you don't want
developing open source code, causing a reduction in quality.

People work on open source projects because they are driven and motivated by
the challenge of creating great software that lasts, the mastery they develop
while doing it, and the fulfillment and satisfaction of making a contribution
to the community of fellow hackers.

------
jimktrains2
I'm actually working on a letter to encourage my city to make the transition
from Windows to F/OSS.

------
beat
So how do you mean "incentivize"? Financial renumeration can often be had, by
getting hired by a company that benefits from your open source project (this
probably covers thousands of open source developers today).

But money isn't why people start open source projects, for the most part.
What's their motivation? Pride? Political freedom? Helping the world? Depends
on the person. Incentives need to be aligned with the individual being
incentivized. But honestly, money isn't a good open source motivator. If
someone wants to get rich, there are usually better ways via closed source.

~~~
beat
Thinking about it, we should maybe be incentivizing existing businesses to
support on-the-clock open source work by their own staff.

------
subus
Interesting question is why academia/research is treated differently from the
OSS community. Think about all the money being funneled into research from
government and non-government agencies and this is never considered penny
pinching / charity. Why isn't there a similar channel for companies /
government agencies to sponsor OSS projects?

------
NovemberWest
That government is best which governs least. -- Often attributed to Thomas
Jefferson

Years ago, I read a biography of a prostitute and political activist. She
wanted prostitution decriminalized, _not_ legalized. She felt legalizing it
would create problems. She cited Nevada as an example, where there is a fair
amount of regulatory burden on the women but the pimps and johns still
essentially do as they please. She just wanted the right to charge for
services without risk of arrest.

I will suggest that since there is already open source, incentives are
probably not a good idea. But removing barriers of some sort might do a lot.

I have thought a lot about such things over the years, not open source per se
but, for example, how to make money from making information freely available.
It is a challenge but can be done and has been for years (broadcast radio,
broadcast tv, etc). So I would suggest you work on removing barriers rather
than providing "incentives." Or at least balance the incentives piece with
also removing barriers.

My 2¢.

Edit: Someone want to kindly explain the downvote? Is there some problem with
suggesting a removal of barriers instead of providing incentives? Or this just
a helping of lurv from one of my many anti-fans? Thx.

~~~
VikingCoder
I think you got a downvote because I can't imagine what your second paragraph
has to do with anything.

Also, broadcast radio, broadcast TV are not freely available, so they're poor
examples for you to use. (They have licensing terms, prohibit rebroadcast,
embed commercials that are not desirable with no legitimate way to remove
them, you have to pay to get a DVD or watch on iTunes or Amazon, etc.)

~~~
NovemberWest
Well, it looks relevant to me. Incentivizing something is similar to
legalizing it whereas removing barriers is similar to decrimilizing it. And
broadcast radio and TV work for my purposes as an example. They do not
directly charge consumers for the information they share yet they manage to
make a buck. I will note I am 48, so maybe I am remembering a broadcast era a
lot of members here would not remember.

Note to self: Folks on HN routinely think sex and prostitution references are
irrelevant, not on point, not a meaningful example, ad nauseum. Maybe someday
I will remember it gets perceived that way, even though I think we are all
adults and it should be nbd.

But thanks for the feedback. Have an upvote.

~~~
VikingCoder
It's the flaws of TV and radio that make them no longer work as an example.
The technology advanced to the ridiculous stage - we really are living in _the
future!_ , but the licensing did not. The laws enforce restrictions, and the
content owners exploit them, to a degree that's absurd to most of us.

~~~
NovemberWest
Thank you for the feedback. I think I see a bit of our disconnect.

My main interest is in the general model of making info/entertainment
available to an audience for "free" while still finding a way to monetize it.
Broadcast TV and radio have done that for a long time and there are some
websites that exist which do much the same. There are no membership fees. You
can read/participate for free. Yet the site owner somehow makes money. Some
take donations. Some use advertising to pay the bills. Some sell merchandise.
(And one invests in startups, which is way more complicated than my modest
goals, so not a model I am looking to emulate but it does exist.)

Perhaps I am merely a fool, tilting at windmills. But that is the general
model I am shooting for. The details on how that works varies, but that model
has been around for decades, both before the Internet and, in recent years, on
the Internet. It can be done. It is being done. I have yet to make it work,
but it is a viable model.

------
Vekz
Companies should sponser open source efforts similar to some pro athletes. Pro
skateboarders make a living off sponsorships. They get free gear and travel
expenses from their sponsors and in turn get their sponsors name out. More
Organizations should do this for key open source projects. I guess you kind of
see this with Joynet and Node.js

------
ckdarby
I'm looking into starting a nonprofit organization to help sustain developers
to contribute to open source.

------
bprowd
BProwd.com organizes open source developers to create profitable projects
where each contributor gets an equity split on the project.

------
lowglow
Attach crowd-funded bounties to feature requests.

~~~
mike_herrera
To a large extent, this is what we currently have...

A company needs an OSS feature so they hire one of the devs to work on the
software, full-time.

------
lazzlazzlazz
Isn't this what gittip is for? It seems to maintain the right social
incentives without turning open source into a rat race.

