Comment by bootload | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bootload | Hacker News Reader

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"Isn't that fair though? Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

No.

When I read this I think of Bruce Perens and BusyBox. [0] BusyBox, created by Perens as a floppy rescue/boot/installer disk for Debian, written as a single binary. [1],[2] Real handy if your partition failed or you needed to install an OS or update.

This didn't stop unscrupulous companies installing BusyBox charging for it and violating the GPL licensing agreements. [3] At no time did these companies chip in to help in the development of BB. Yet they wanted (needed) the inclusion of this useful software.

This is HN, a place where smart people hang out at the intersection of technology and commerce. I posted the article as an experiment to see what possible commercial possibilities could be imagined.

    SVG is too important to the web
    to let it whither and die.

There must be some other way to continue this kind of work sustainably. What else can you think up?

Reference

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox

[1] https://busybox.net/about.html

[2] https://busybox.net/oldnews.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

I don't see what this has to do with the argument that "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

You can argue the point 2 ways

1. Bruce Perens did BusyBox for fun and gave it away for free. After words some people were bad and got sued. So what does his making it for fun and free have to do with after words people got sued

2. Bruce Perens did Busybox and fun and gave it away not for free. His price is that if you it in a product (or portions of it, details don't matter to the point) that product (or portions of it) must also be GPLed.

If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story have to do with "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

"I don't see what this has to do with the argument ... If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story ..."

Complains a lot.

> After words […]

Do you mean 'afterwards' or 'after an altercation took place'?

I think he meant the former.

> If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story have to do with "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

Why should writers be relegated to only ever being allowed to "do it for fun" while programmers are not?

I mean, that depends on what you are writing and programming.

If I want someone to pay me for programming, I have to write something they want. The same is true for writers.

The point the original post was making is that if not enough people want what you are writing (code or text), you can do it for fun and give it away free. You can't expect to get paid for doing something you love. It's amazing if you can, and I'm incredibly lucky that I do, but it's not something I expect.

Hopefully in the future with enough automation people can just do things for fun, and all the jobs we need can be automated. We aren't there yet - but most people can work a job and have time for hobbies in modern developed countries.

Now, arguably, there is a lot of value in this work and we should be supporting it. That may be true, but that is a separate problem. The solution to this may be getting enough people to take note and care, and this post might be a start on that.

> If I want someone to pay me for programming, I have to write something they want. The same is true for writers.

Yes, although the argument in this particular thread is that writing is ~broadly~ underrewarded and that is OK because markets. Attempting to influence a market to reward people better is considered to be a bad thing - the only way people should be able to do that is by not participating in the market, according to many. Unless it's to do with programming. But not game development.

"Selling used bubblegum also suffers from being underrewarded. I spent all this time chewing gum and nobody wants to buy it? How's that fair for me? I chewed the gum - I deserve to be paid!"

Just because you do something (regardless of the value of doing that thing) doesn't mean you deserve to be paid for doing that thing. Especially if nobody is interested in paying you to do that thing.

So yes. It is "OK because markets". If you expect to be rewarded for your writing, make sure there is a marketable interest in what you will be writing. You may have to make an MVP (maybe the first and second chapters) to test the waters, but that isn't different from a programmer needing to make an MVP to test the waters for their potential product.

The issue is that the exact same communities which decry writers for asking that they get paid what they think they're worth, will cry that the entire software development market outside the SV bubble is "unfair" to developers because it's not paying SV market prices.

They also cry about immigrants taking their jobs at lower rates, outsourcing, people choosing to hire the new grad instead of the expert, and plenty of other things that could be responded to with "it's OK because markets".

This doesn't seem like a failure to dream up a way to compensate software authors, this seems like simple copyright infringement/theft.

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