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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone else noticed a cultural shift around monetization of output? I think there wasn't as much back when I first started using open-source programs, both as a user, and a small-time contributor for decades now. And I've noticed this on other things too. A short while ago, someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me.

I think if people want a revshare on things then perhaps they should release under a revshare license. Providing things under open licenses and then pulling a bait-and-switch saying "oh the license isn't actually that you're not supposed to be doing that" doesn't sit right with me. Just be upfront and open with things.

The point of the Free Software licenses is that you can go profit off the software, you just have certain obligations back. I think those are pretty good standards. And, in fact, given the tendency towards The Revshare License that everyone seems to learn towards, I think that coming up with the GPL or MIT must have taken some exceptional people. Good for them.

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> A short while ago, someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me.

Did you respond by asking them how Reddit makes money?

The anti-corporate mentality isn't new, but it does surface in different ways and communities over time. The Reddit hivemind leans very anti-corporate, albeit with a huge blind spot for corporations they actually like (Reddit itself, their chosen phone brand, the corporations that produce the shows they watch).

The Reddit style rebellion is largely symbolic, with a lot of shaming and snark, but it usually stops when it would require people to alter their own behavior. That's why you got dog-piled for doing something productive on a site where user-generated content is the money maker.

Hell, reddit hates on reddit all the time. Spez in particular is hated across the board.

Agree that they largely don't change behavior. Although I will say, I've not logged into my account since the API shenanigans and don't regularly visit the site anymore. I'm mostly just on here and fark.

Most left leaning forums look negatively on profit motive, and reddit is largely very left wing. Whatever that means nowadays. It's reasonable to be wary of incentives, but sometimes that zeal is misplaced.

Having said that, I don't think any site can go mainstream and maintain a semblance of quality discourse. If nothing else, it will become botted and infiltrated by shills. But even without that, normies will ruin it much earlier than any sophisticated attacks are necessary.

Haha, that's funny. I didn't think of it at the time and I was more surprised than anything.

By the way, I have had your comments highlighted for a while now and I've never regretted it. Good stuff.

... There's a highlighting feature?

I just have a Chrome extension. It's not a HN-native feature. Link in profile if you're curious.

Avoiding every corporation that does stuff you disagree with just isn't feasible. All we can do is weigh their business model and other practices with the value we get out of it. People on Reddit who also have a problem with Reddit are obviously on Reddit. That is tautological. It doesn't mean they aren't avoiding other companies for similar reasons, which wouldn't make them a hypocrite either.

> Avoiding every corporation that does stuff you disagree with just isn't feasible.

That would be all of them. They are all dirty.

The idea of 'voting with your dollar' is ridiculous - they are all terrible, so there's nothing to vote for. But yes, modern life requires that we engage with their nonsense, no need to think of the interaction as anything more that begrudging extraction.

At least all publicly traded companies are 100% completely psychopathic. It's just what they are. Their objective to create shareholder value just trumps everything else.

With private companies you have whatever morals the owners have. It's a very mixed bag.

I don’t know. I’m more wary of a company that makes its money from advertising than one that profits on the goods it sells me.

Do you think any corporate isn't extracting data from you? Put techno companies to one side (as if not all companies are not actually tech nowadays) - what about pharmaceuticals, cars? All extractive as well as selling a product. Supermarkets? Financial companies? If you think there are companies not observing the data as well as selling the product, I don't think you're paying attention.

>Do you think any corporate isn't extracting data from you?

I think they are extracting and sharing data to varying degrees and that some have a business model which pushes them to one end of the spectrum.

If you take the example of supermarkets you used nearly all of them push loyalty cards which they use as a mechanism to manipulate your purchasing decisions but the one I frequent doesn't (Aldi UK).

They clearly aren't all the same.

Even in the example you use of a friendlier corporate, you have no idea what is being monitored. You only know there are no loyalty cards. You don't know if they are tracking consumers through the shop, over visits, etc. They do do that. They're not making a profit to do right by everyone.

No ethical consumption under capitalism

So what is the implied call to action there? What's actually the solution?

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops.

The rest of this site might disagree though.

Yeah thanks for answering, im also in the camp of understanding the truths underpinning the steel man argument behind the original phrase but not seeing a widespread clear path towards a better future with the proposed solution. What's the solution for class conflict? The meat packing workers coop wouldn't be as favorable to work in as the elementary school teacher worker coop nor as the carpenter worker coop. How do you handle technological innovation? How would you defend against other nations attempting to invade and steal your stuff? Would the weapons worker coop take the hospital builders materials to produce weapons?

I really dont think it nets a higher standard of living and will introduce millions of deaths. Not sure how thats more ethical

> What's the solution for class conflict?

The solution is to dismantle the class system altogether.

> The meat packing workers coop wouldn't be as favorable to work in as the elementary school teacher worker coop nor as the carpenter worker coop.

This is giving us a chance at a true meritocracy. You can test into any of the more favorable coops as long as you have the skills.

> How do you handle technological innovation?

I don't see how that would be any different?

> How would you defend against other nations attempting to invade and steal your stuff?

This is premised on a world revolution. No other nations.

> Would the weapons worker coop take the hospital builders materials to produce weapons?

I'm not sure there's much overlap between those two.

Thanks for the reply.

I dont see a mechanism for dismantling the class system at the global level. What information do you have in your mind where you can see a path where the entire class system is dismantled? I am imagining 100 human clones in the jungle where one happens to be closer to a large stick, the person picks up the stick. Now you have a class system. The stick bearers and the non stick bearers. Its as intrinsic to human systems as set theory is. You'll never get rid of it. Unless there is a class of nonclasssystem enforcers that can tear down anyone who tries any funny business. How do you prevent abuse? Brain lobotomies? AI nanobots in the bloodstreams?

Theres not enough time and energy for everyone to have an equal chance of testing in every coop with equal playing fields.

How are you going to have a world revolution without massive genocides given how real politics works?

Both require steel, labor and intelligence to say the least.

Also geography itself will create classes of people. Those that populate among the shorelines and those that populate in the landlocked regions.

How will any of it actually work fairly and enforced without having more of the same bs we have in current power structures. (Oligarchs/autocracies with a working class that can threaten revolts occasionally)

How does that prevent anything? You'll still have the exact same issue. Unless you think a google employee would be the same class as a small mom and pop employee just because they both own a share of their workplace.

The defining feature of class dynamics is ownership of the means of production vs labor participation.

If everybody owns the means of production and everyone participates in the labor force, class distinctions disappear.

If you look at it through a lens of a specific theory that may be true. But that theory does not apply nor translate to reality. Everyone already owns captial its called a 401k or investment fund. There is still class. If that was taken 1 step further and everyone owned a part of their workplace there would still be class. Being forced to own your workplace reduces mobility and traps people. Shutting down a coal plant would just cause 1000 layoffs it would financially destroy 1000 people. Its a stupid idea that only children still believe in.

> Everyone already owns captial [...]

That's a wild statement.

Italy has a lot of employee-owned business. Apparently it works well for them.

I've never publicly scolded someone for doing free work for tech monopolies but I do understand the impulse. The problem is that it's a completely one-sided relationship, and there are perfectly legitimate concerns about how the biggest tech companies are using their wealth and power. At this point I doubt much of anyone would expect a large tech company to go out of its way to lose money in order to support human communities. They take what they can, and ruthlessly kill products and services the minute they think it helps their bottom line.

Google and others don't need to rely on free volunteers, but it's certainly more profitable for them. Does Google making an extra $10B/year make the world a better place? Maybe, I don't know, but it's not crazy to think the answer is no.

It not a completely one sided relationship. I'm using google maps for free!!! That's HUGE benefit to me. That google makes money from it is irrelevant to me. They're paying me by providing a free service that I get tons of usage out all the time.

Yeah, and you made a fix for both yourself, and presumably other people as well. Additionally, some people submit fixes for recognition, too.

It's not free. The cost is the information about where you are and what you're looking for basically at all time.

I hate when my navigation app knows where I am!

Sure, your navigation app needs to know where you are in order to function

Does the company that owns your navigation app have to remember every route you've ever taken forever? Does it need to do meta analysis on your location data to figure out where you likely work and life and where your friend are? Does it need to sell that data to law enforcement and businesses so they can track your movements and pattern match your behaviors?

Seems to me there's a huge gulf between "location app knows where you are" and "we have used that to collect every scrap of information about your movements everywhere you go and weaponized that information against you"

It's free, but it's a dependency.

I don't have sharp rhetoric for it, but I could find bipartisanship with right-wingers if they apply the "big government giving you welfare means they can take it away from you" to free web services.

OpenStreetMap is always behind on business data, but it has data that Google doesn't have, and it can't be taken away near as easily. And requires no account at all.

This, I submit photos and corrections to maps all the time, because those photos and corrections help me as well as other people. I derive way more benefit than I personally provide but I'm OK with that and google is too.

>I'm using google maps for free!!! That's HUGE benefit to me.

Is it? You are doing labor (usage) that harms yourself (brain damage). The fact that google makes money isn't irrelevant, it's the whole point.

Why would using Google maps cause brain damage?

Apparently not stopping every five minutes to look at a paper map causes brain damage now.

I assume it’s some extreme take based on the speculation that outsourcing thinking to LLMs makes people dumber.

It’s not free. You’re selling your data, location history, and advertising real estate in exchange for maps.

There’s a cost, it’s just not in dollars.

Maybe that cost is meaningless for GP (right or not).

You can't demonize Google, in binary fashion, and remain intellectually honest. Economically the big tech relationship is clearly one-sided, but that ignores what the tech companies are actually providing. If we didn't find a need for their products, they wouldn't be streaming billions in revenue. Even before 2017, while deservedly subject to global anti-trust suits, they provided arguably the best and most popular search tool which empowered and connected its literal billions of users. In 2017 Google researchers published "Attention is all you need" for all eyes to read -- without a software patent. This came after a long trajectory of AI investment. This seminal work, more than any other single advance, birthed modern AI, an undeniably powerful and disruptive technology which is largely supplanting Google's search products. While I am supportive of big tech giving back in the form of higher taxation upon their profits, you can't deny the arguably insane research gifts they have bestowed upon all. But you still certainly can ask the question, "is this technology making the world a better place?" as you have suggested.

They have been selling our attention, that is worth demonisation.

> Has anyone else noticed a cultural shift around monetization of output?

I think it's simply due to the economy being in the shitter for the non-"Capital Ownership Class".

1977-2007 was generally a good time in the US if you survived by trading your time/knowledge/expertise for a wage as most people do. This is also the time in which F/OSS came into existence.

If you had a decent job during that time, then the future looked bright and you didn't think twice about giving some of your leisure time away for free.

> 1977-2007 was generally a good time in the US if you survived by trading your time/knowledge/expertise for a wage as most people do. This is also the time in which F/OSS came into existence.

FOSS came into existence during this time because computers and the internet became available, not because it was a specific economic situation.

> If you had a decent job during that time, then the future looked bright and you didn't think twice about giving some of your leisure time away for free.

This seems like rewriting history. Tech salaries today are higher than they were back then. There was even a whole lawsuit against companies caught suppressing wages during that time. Tech compensation went up significantly after the period you cited.

> because computers and the internet became available

Because of Bell Labs (inventors of the transistor & Unix & UUCP & so much more) which was so well-funded by the post-WW2 US economic situation.

The Internet? DARPA!

DARPA? Post-WW2 US M.I.C.-driven economy.

The list goes on and on and on. F/OSS owes so much to The Marshall Plan.

Is this a sweeping, reductionist PeterZeihan-esque argument? Sure, but I think it's valid.

> This seems like rewriting history. Tech salaries today are higher than they were back then.

So? Does the future look bright to you? Most of the SWEs I know wouldn't say so.

How bright you think the future will be has a direct impact on your long-term planning and, for many, results in prioritizing hedonistic activities in the short term, not F/OSS.

43k karma for 3 year old user account and not a single submission.

Make of it what you will.

Tech salaries today are higher than they were back then

Maybe at FAANGs or in the hottest spaces like AI, but I've been looking and listed salaries for senior positions are now lower than what I got paid my first year out of college in 1998, adjusted for inflation. My first job was for a small hardware manufacturer, not a Microsoft or a Google, and not in the Bay Area or Seattle.

MIT and BSD licenses are kind of obvious. They are academic licenses, named after universities.

The idea is that you have people paid to create something of potential value, but the value of the outputs has only a limited and indirect impact on their compensation. If someone finds the outputs valuable, they should mention it in public, to let the creators use it to demonstrate the value of their work to funders and other interested parties.

> I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me

The problem is that the big tech companies aren't holding up their end of the traditional social contract.

I like to think of the wider open source community as one giant group project. Everyone contributes what they can, and in turn they can benefit from the work everyone else has done. The work you do goes towards making the world a better place. I have absolutely zero problem filing pull requests for bugs I encounter or submitting issues on OpenStreetMap, because I know that in return I get the Linux DE and reliable maps in other towns. If you want to make it political, it's a "from each according to their means, to each according to their needs".

The big tech companies operate completely differently. They see open source contributors primarily as a resource to exploit. Submit a single fix on Google Maps? You'll get zero credit, they'll never stop bothering you with popups about "making improvements", design their map around what is most profitable to show, and they will of course log your location history and sell it to the highest bidder. And they are getting filthy rich off of it as well.

I couldn't care less about getting monetary compensation for some odd work I do in my spare time, but there's no way in hell I'm going to do free labor for some millionaire who's going to reward me by spitting in my face.

The amount of value Google Maps has given me is far beyond what I'd be willing to pay in actual dollars.

Agreed: the opportunity to be taken to a rocky dirt road through swamp grounds on the outskirts of a small town in Greece is something I'd never get if not for Google Maps :)

(and many similar stories)

I only use Google Maps for their live traffic info, which they so nicely collect out of majority of Android users driving around. I'd love it if OSM apps could leverage that information for navigation too.

I'm guessing that happened 8 years ago and you're still mad at it. I also have an experience where their map data was sightly wrong and I got into an argument with my mother.

Exactly, 8 years ago last summer. Today it still happily recommends me take the "fastest" route through a street that's under construction for 2 months now in the biggest city in Serbia. A week ago it happily tried to take me through a closed off tunnel that is actually marked as "no traffic due to road construction" on the map (at least graphically, the metadata is likely not correct).

I am not holding a grudge at all: any map data is going to be out of date due to things happening live. Keeping it up to date in the entire world is a hard problem.

But they are not a panacea, and I frequently nudge it to better routes instead of the ones it recommends (I only watch out for live updates from them like a crash or new roadworks somewhere).

Back when I started my career (in the eighties) I would have given my right arm for Google Maps or an equivalent.

I was on the road most of the time and navigating to customers was a complete pain in the arse.

> The problem is that the big tech companies aren't holding up their end of the traditional social contract.

This analogy feels too strained.

Google gives away Maps, Gmail, and other products for free. A little UI widget inviting users to submit fixes is hardly an onerous demand.

> and they will of course log your location history and sell it to the highest bidder.

Google does not do this, no matter how many times this myth gets repeated online.

I think a lot of people in the Reddit and Reddit-adjacent world believe this is true because it gets repeated so much, but it's not true.

Ironically, Reddit makes money by packaging up user's content and selling it to 3rd parties.

Neither Google Maps nor Gmail are given away for free. Both products generate vast amounts of revenue.

It doesn't even matter that it generates revenue, they could "give it away for free" and yet earn vast amounts of money with it just fine - but they never gave it away to anyone! They just let you use it "for free" right now, but could change their mind at a whim and stop, or even ban you specifically because they just feel like it. They're the only owners of data you contribute and it's not being given away, but strictly guarded.

Compare with OSM, which actually is being "given away for free" even though people still do monetize it. They just do it on the same terms as anyone else could.

Google does do this. I saw it first hand while employed by Google. They sell your location data.

Yes it’s not in the raw but it is sold as part of targeted ads

Absolute nonsense. If you have a smidgen of proof please tell us.

This cultural shift exists and it will intensify as long as consumer prices and cost of living continue to rise at the same time corporate profit margins do. This is a simple, easy link to make, pretty much everyone's now aware and has stopped buying the excuses. Consolidation and an increase in straight up, unpunished criminal monopoly and cartel activity within corporate America have given rise to this new culture. Luigi Mangione will not be the last of his kind.

Because the ratio of developers who do it for money to developers who do it for love of developing has dramatically increased, as computer science became a subject people studied for economic reasons, not just for fun.

I would like to offer a similar, but somewhat different opinion on one aspect of what you talked about regarding "revshare":

If I notice and issue on my own, and it bothers me enough / I feel that other users would benefit from it, I have no issue providing that information to the source maintainer for free.

If however, I am contacted by the maintainer in anyway requesting feedback, suggestions, or input (i.e. "Rate us on the app store!", "Email us with any problems you have.", etc.) I except any feedback I provide to be worth more than an unprompted message, and in turn, I expect something like a lower bill, a discounted rate on their store front, a credit in their auth page, or some other kind of material gain from it.

Basically, if I am being solicited and prompted to do something, it wasn't my idea in the firsr place, so it ought to be worth my time to do so. They have already gone to the effort of asking, so they (presumably) find value in it. I ought be compensated for that value.

Using Google as an example: one of the few products of theirs I like is Opinion Rewards. They actually pay you (in store credit) for responding to their surveys. It's a fair trade off. They ask me basic habits related to shopping, etc. I get a 25 cents or so every time I respond.

I think we've all been burned by 20+ years of exploitation in the guise of "free product." Google more or less spearheaded that movement. I agree we should all be community-minded and have nice things, but when you look at how the rewards (social and monetary) are shared it's overwhelmingly disproportionate.

> someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me

This tells you about Reddit's demographic and nothing else.

Remember Reddit has a dedicated sub for antiwork. It used to have a sub for shoplifting (I'm not kidding.)

Reddit is…Reddit.

Here's a fan sub for a nonexistent video game with 85,000 members:

https://reddit.com/r/DCAllies/

Say what you will about shoplifting, at least it's a physically realizable activity.

I definitively noticed a major uptick in both my well-being and an ability to hold a nuanced opinion on the world when I have stopped using reddit. The medium is the message.

Really weird how you compare contribution to a commercial market leading company with open source licensing. How does that even make sense? If you give your knowledge or workforce away for free, do it. Google will not notice you in any case.

This has nothing to do with monetization of output and everything to do with power balance. Google can take your contributions and do whatever they want with it, including banning you from using the data you contributed ever again. This doesn't happen with OpenStreetMap for example, which can be and is being monetized just fine as well, because all contributors have equal rights to the data.

It's the same thing as with CLAs with copyright assignment in FLOSS.

Yeah, I think the paradigm has shifted. There's a perception that, while these companies have always profited off of our inputs, that we both benefitted. We contributed to a public good, they provided the platform, and profited off that platform.

Now it feels like the public good is being diminished (enshittification) as they keep turning the "profit" knob, trying to squeeze more and more marginal dollars from the good.

The system still requires the same inputs from us, but gives less back.

Yes, this 100x.

yes, and no. there is profit and there is excessive profit. if i build something to make my linux experience better and share that with the world, and a few consultancies use that to make the linux experience for their customers better, then that is fine.

but if my tool becomes popular and a megacorp uses it to promote their own commercial closed source features alongside it, then that's excessive. that's one reason i like the AGPL, it reduced that. but in my opinion the ideal license is one that limits the freedom to smaller companies. maybe less than 100 or 500 employees, or less than some reasonable amount of revenue. (10 million per year? is that to high or to low?)

and even for those above, i don't want revshare, just pay me something adequate.

Who is stopping you from licensing your code that way then?

It's not open source, because the definition of open source doesn't allow you to place any restrictions on who can use it or for what purpose. It's why licenses like "Don't use it for evil" or "Everyone except Anish Kapoor" aren't acceptable for a lot of Linux distros.

In practice your best bet is probably a license where everyone can use it, but which is incredibly hostile to use in a for-profit environment. Think AGPL, where you risk being forced to open source your entire unique-selling-point proprietary software stack.

some people are working on that, among others there is bruce perens: https://web.archive.org/web/20251206160538/https://perens.co... (sadly his site seems broken, the static files still work however: https://perens.com/static/DEVELOPMENT_LICENSE.txt )

FUTO is also exploring this space: https://sourcefirst.com/

It has always been like that, except we used to call it demos, sharewhare, beerware, postware,...

The free beer movement came out of UNIX culture, probably influenced by how originally AT&T wasn't able to profit from it.

The MIT license didn’t require a lot of thought.

> The MIT license

I still can't believe that developers got memed into this being the default license. 20 years ago, you'd always default to GPL and only opt for something else if it was a complete non-starter, and then you'd turn to LGPL (e.g., if it was a C library), and failing that, some BSD variant. But developers were always cautious to prefer GPL wherever they could to prevent exploitation and maximize user freedom.

It's crazy that even in compiled languages like Rust, MIT is now the default, though I think that's probably due to the lack of a stable ABI complicating dynamic linking enough to make LGPL less viable.

> that's probably due to the lack of a stable ABI complicating dynamic linking enough to make LGPL less viable

They could use MPL. It's an alternative "weak copyleft" license that's not concerned with dynamic linking

> submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me

After it became obvious that 1) these LLMs were trained heavily on OSS, and 2) that they (arguably) wantonly violated the licenses of the OSS they were trained on (as even the most permissive of which mandated attribution), 3) that LLMs could be used to rewrite code licensed with terms (e.g., copyleft) deemed unsuitable for certain commercial purposes to nullify those terms, and 4) that these LLMs would ultimately be used to reduce the demand for developers and suppress developer wages (even as cost of living keeps rising, and now even cost of compute, once deflationary, rises quickly as well, ironically thanks to LLMs), the culture of unbounded enthusiasm for open source amongst devs ought to have quickly been supplanted by one of peer pressure-bordering-on-public-shaming against open source participation.

Yet people still go out of their way to open source projects, or work, uncompensated, on open source beyond the "good citizen" stuff of reporting bugs (possibly with fixes) in things you use.

It really boggles the mind. Even if you can't starve the beast, why willingly feed it, and for free?

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