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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. tripple edged sword by l3v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As all B5 fans know, truth is a tripple edged sword. Sun has right, but to a very limited extent. Let's think about it this way [what's coming is a somewhat pessimistic speculation, take it as such]. There are ten thousand people who contribute to a huge FOSS project. Then comes a company and says, hey people, you did a great job, we'll compensate you, and they pick some of these people based on some rules and give them something for their work. What will the others think, what will happen to them ? Will they think hey, we worked and they think our work isn't worth a dime ? So what will they do, stop contributing ? If so, who'll continue the work ? Those who've been "compensated", which pack would probably become smaller and smaller, in the end landing the whole development in the hands of the "compensators".

    Offer prizes for some goals, make donations for larger and/or more important projects, or to people whose work is sympathetic to you, but when you start differentiating smaller groups of people based on blurry criteria I don't think you're working towards helping FOSS as a whole.

    There is a need to work closely with those in the open-source community to share revenues, said Green. - share theirs or share yours ? :))
     

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
  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.