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Sun Says, "Compensate OSS Developers"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-haggling-over-the-price dept.

krelian writes "Talking at Netbeans Day, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current open source model in which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up and generate huge amounts of revenue. Green said, 'I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.'" Green didn't provide any details about how payments from Sun or others might work.

2 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting stuff is at the bottom by achten · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the FTA
    Meanwhile, author Tim O'Reilly said at CommunityOne that the days in which developer salaries differ based on the nation where the developer is located were numbered. Developers overseas now are asking why they should get paid less than others, he said. "We're actually coming to the end of cheap outsourcing," O'Reilly said.
    When these numbered days are over, a great wave of levelling will start if our friend TOR is proved correct.

  2. it might make things more difficult by cies · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i remember debian compensated some people to get 4.0 out quickly... this complicated things; some unpaid contributers to the debian project protested by working very slow. the compensation policy had the opposite effect of what was intended.

    i also think that a large part of the reason for FLOSS to be of high(er) quality (than proprietary software) is that it is written from for fun and from passion. people dont like to produce low quality stuff for fun and from passion. nope, that kind of stuff is produced for money, e.g. compensations!

    so: sun, please dont pay us, but make some anonymous donations to some projects without letting know why you did it. this will keep us healthy.