The anti crunch hours license

I will have an answer for you in a month because I am going to start trying this strategy out in my current job starting this week. :)

I found the expectations around what you're supposed to do during work hours to be very different between Brazil and US.

Extreme conditions obviously exist, (e.g. telemarketers, which are usually _continuously_ taking calls) but from my observation a significant portion of those 44 hours is spent idling or socializing.

I think proposing any change in work hours under the current political and socioeconomic climate (12% unemployment) wouldn't be feasible, and without the needed shift in work culture our productivity would probably fall further behind.

Also, I don't know many people who work a strict 9 to 5 in office jobs, many take work home with them or are expected to always be available even on weekends should something come up. Not saying this is good, but I don't think strict 9-5 is the norm anymore.

Can you explain this notation?

Here are some things I've learned from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States and linked pages :

- In 1791, carpenters in Philadelphia went on strike against "the prevailing sun-to-sun system, and the 75 hour work week" and fought for a 10-hour day. http://www.red-coral.net/WorkCoops.html

- The International Typographical Union, which had relatively well-off members, went on strike around 1900-ish initially for a 48-hour work week and then for a 40-hour work week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Typographical_Un...

- In 1907, the US passed the "Hours of Service Act," which limited railroad telegraphers to a 9-hour day. In committee the act was almost going to be a limit to a 12-hour day (i.e., the normal day was longer than that!), until the telegraphers spammed their congresspeople using their telegraphs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Railroad_Telegraphers...

I would say that software engineers, SREs, etc. working IC jobs maintaining large codebases/services at the direction of their bosses in large companies are far closer to the professions that historically have made up the labor movement—carpenters and typesetters and electricians and actors and journalists and composers and telegraph operators and so forth—than they are to the doctor running their own private clinic as their own business.

Which country is going to vote a LAW that writes: nobody works more than 45 hours/week?

The next day healthcare will collapse. Big corporations will lobby VERY hard against that.

But they don't necessarily arise if the demand from workers wanting to do that work is sufficient. For instance, game developers have relatively terrible work conditions by the standards of the software industry, because so many people want to work on games. You could reasonably argue that they get enough satisfaction from being able to work on games that they're willing to put up with worse conditions, but that doesn't change that their work conditions are relatively bad. The nice thing about somehow bringing about a reduction in developer working hours is that it wouldn't necessarily result in any loss in economic output or employer profit, as there's a wealth of research showing that working beyond a certain amount of hours daily is counterproductive, so it's a win-win, and could even increase productivity.

So collective bargaining is unnatural? Except when a corporation does it on behalf of its shareholders, of course.

We can all pretend that we have more economic power than our highly paid blue collar peers that worked in highly unionized work forces in the past, but the programmers that make the kind of money for that to be true are very rare. Nearly 30 years ago my father made 70k as a union welder. It is highly unlikely that I will be able to match that salary street inflation, and the world is more expensive: education and health care could eat us alive at any moment.

I don't know how much of our effort the capital owning class needs to strip from us before we take advantage of the massive productive capacities we have before we make it fair again, but I assure you, it will be organized, not natural.

Open source is definitely political, but it's also a very specific political movement. There can be other political movements with other goals. The reasons that open source advocates dislike licenses with restrictions on use are not just "we don't want to be political" or "we don't want to rock the boat." Some have a moral/ethical opinion that you should not restrict use via copyright, usually that you should not be able to restrict use via copyright. Some have a pragmatic opinion that attempts to restrict use will lead to worse outcomes.

The 996.ICU folks seem like they would be better served with their own movement that doesn't go by the name of "open source." We don't need to add that label to them.

Part of open sourcing something is accepting that very thing. It's volunteer work and a gift to the commons. Open source software directly helps people who can't afford expensive licenses of proprietary software, either because they are poor in a rich country, or because they aren't rich in a poor country. So don't say that open source software doesn't do good in the world!

> Choosing to 'not be political', is itself a choice for the status quo.

With this argument, most activism could be seen as "choice" for the status quo because you can always spend more of your time and money with activism. Barely anyone is spending all their time and money with it, so per your argument that makes most of them support the status quo.

The mere act of open sourcing something can already be seen as political action about the question of proprietary vs libre software. But that political action has limits, and I think those boundaries should be accepted.

Being non-political is analogous to abstaining in an election. Abstaining is the same as supporting whoever is the stronger force in that election. So it's not supporting the status quo, but whomever is strongest currently. There's a difference between the two.

Also note that activism, especially in non-democracies, often has negative consequences, onto your career, life, health, and of your entire family. Activism in democracies is dangerous as well, due to political discrimination by non government entities (which seems to be allowed in the US) as well as lone haters who resort to violence. And it's always possible that the democracy becomes totalitarian and the people in power take revenge on their prior opponents. This has happened in nazi germany as well as in russia and in other places. People shouldn't be required to ignore their own personal safety or career opportunities to fight for a political cause. Yes, people who do should be admired, but we shouldn't shame people who don't.

Last but not least, a society where people are forced to be activists is a totalitarian one and one where I don't want to live in.

> The purpose of this license is to prevent 996-style companies from using the software or codes under the license, and force those companies to balance their work schedule.

Doesn't sound like protest to me, but like extortion. Either you do what we want, or you can't use our software.

Why will the government avoid to use repressive measures against this? Otherwise they don't do their job of totalitarian government well enough. In a totalitarian state, I'd certainly be afraid to support this.

> Also, did you know that 996 is by law illegal in China? You can technically report your company if they force you to work 996. But: 1) After that, you will probably get fired for any number of excuses. 2) Your company is clever, they know many ways to get around the law.

Yeah, I've read the website. So technically, the license isn't needed.

> how to you protected yourself and help other developers just like you? The license idea come out naturally.

If you can't get the law enforced, how will you be able to enforce the license? I've heard that chinese courts generally don't meet western standards.

However, yes, I do believe that multiple 12+ hour days in a row is ultimately counterproductive. Also, I wonder if overlapping shifts would reduce the chance of errors.

What about companies that see respecting laws as a tradeoff between having less profits and getting fined? If breaking the law implies an additional fine due to this license, it may tip the balance the other way.