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Comment by Taywee | Hacker News Reader

Mostly by looking at the level of functionality and comparing to other software, cross referenced against my career as a programmer.

Somehow, I constantly come across lifelong programmers who insist on working for free. They get software for free, give their software away for free, and very often have encompassing philosophies of software freedom (and often freedom of information and data in general). I find it very sad that the idea of mutual support and love of software and art without money changing hands is regularly met with such resistance from people who haven't experienced the joy of being in a community that doesn't constantly look to extract cash from their own.

I know what exploitation is, but it's not the group of programmers working for the good of one another.

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Food, shelter and electricity cost money. Unless these holier-than-thou programmers inherited wealth, they're going to have to do something to acquire money to pay for these necessities for keeping alive. If not, technology evolves at a crawl because everyone who codes can only do it as a part time hobby around their actual job. Which would go some way to explaining why half the open source software in the world such as Gimp is absolutely dreadful in comparison to the private offering.

Money is the best system we've come up with for the exchange of value of labour across industries, but you are welcome to go visit a farmer and attempt to agree on how many lines of code are equivalent to five parsnips and a dozen eggs.

I've been organizing a large-ish volunteer-run gaming convention for 20+ years. One thing I've noticed is that while people with stable jobs (such as developers) are often willing to contribute their expertise for free, freelancers (such as artists) often expect to get paid.

The reason is quite simple. A stable job is much like inherited wealth. Because your income is reasonably guaranteed, you can live your life without trying to turn every opportunity into a business transaction.

As some of us are professional event organizers, we often compare our convention to professionally run events. In some aspects, we are really amateurish, as we are just a bunch of volunteers doing things for cheap. In other aspects, we are better than professionally run events. We can choose to do the right thing without having to worry about business models and profitability.

Sometimes money is what gets boring but necessary things done. And sometimes money is the reason why we can't have nice things.

Hacker News: Home of the Mandatory "Go Fuck Yourself" Clause

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