A Programmer Union Can Save Open Source
chadnauseam.com
chadnauseam.com
This is all very, very terrible. 1% dues go to a pool to match charitable donations towards tooling? So the total maximum is 2% of all member pay? What's to stop a programmer from donating 100% of his salary to himself for developing his side project and doubling his salary?
Minimum bureaucracy? In an organization that exists entirely as a bureaucracy with the power to decide the level of bureaucracy? How does that work exactly? Might, perhaps, the legal fund take most of the money a year in, or the dues triple while the pool shrinks? Me thinks, probably.
Not to mention, the pool funding is decoupled from the license. At some point you're just shuffling money back to where the paychecks came from. Some people don't write code at a shop, they do it for fun. Why would they license it under a union license? Why would those people join the union? How would those people join the union?
More code licensed in this way decreases the pay from the pool, or, some tools don't get funded and you've basically given carte blanche to unionized companies to free ride on you. Such a scheme misaligns incentives significantly worse than the status quo.
What you think you've found is a game theoretical silver bullet to the tragedy of the commons. Pardon me if I'm too skeptical, this is a very hard problem. If the solution to such a problem looks simple, it's probably because you don't understand the problem space you're working in.
It's all convoluted nonsense, sorry to be harsh, it solves no problems, it is incoherent drivel that sounds like someone who is more interested in unions than solving a problem. When all you have is a hammer...
The solution to the free rider problem in software is simple: if you want to be paid for economic benefit people derive from your work, license it so that you get royalties if it's used as a dependency of a commercial endeavor. Most people don't do that, because most FOSS contributors don't consider it a problem. They're either happy to work on it, or they derive some other benefit, like having a tool available to themselves, having it on their resume, getting some level of control over industry standards, or something else. But if you don't want to work for free, don't work for free, it really is that simple.
Simple. I oppose being told that I have to join someone's club (a union) in order to work and earn a living. I oppose to part of my paycheck being taken from me without my consent just because a union controls a job/industry. I oppose to being told what I can and can't do with my own talents. All of these are examples of the bad things that unions do.
I support the right of people to form unions. But I also believe that the power of a union should be limited so that it does not interfere with the natural rights of an individual to work. In other words, I believe that people should have the right to form unions to the same extent that other people should have the right not to join that union. Unfortunately, in some parts of the US, unions have this overreaching power, and that is why I generally oppose them.
As GP said, "I'm strongly opposed to any idea that might force me to join one." I add emphasis on "force me", because it is, in essence, taking my freedom from me.
I disagree with your premise. I write open source. Tooling isn't a problem.