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Offset Bad Code, With Bad Code Offsets
An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, The Daily WTF's Alex Papadimoulis announced Bad Code Offsets, a join venture between many big names in the software development community (including StackOverflow's Jeff Atwood and Jon Skeet and SourceGear's Eric Sink). The premise is that you can offset bad code by purchasing Bad Code Offsets (much in the same way a carbon-footprint is offset). The profits are donated to Free Software projects which work to eliminate bad code, such as the Apache Foundation and FreeBSD. The first cheques were sent out earlier today." Hopefully, they work better than carbon offsets, actually.
It's actually a great idea. Essentially its a way to donate to Open Source projects and better coding without having to decide which one and going through the hassle of contacting the project manager and trying to get his paypal information to send some cash over.
It is not so much a penalty as it is a donation, simply because no one is forcing you. They simply structured it around an already existing system (carbon offsets) - probably to give it a more meaningful feel to it.
More or less yes, but the principle is sound. Offsets are voluntary so those who feel "guilty" pay.
Essentially, no individual person or company pays for pollution - we all do, all across the world. I'm talking about any and all kinds of pollution, not just greenhouse gases.
Carbon credits - the government taxy, non-voluntary way - is a good idea because if, say, GM releases a bunch of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, they don't need to pay for it, or any of the costs it inflicts on the planet. Instead, everybody does.
Credits are a perfect example of free-market ideals - polluting becomes a cost of doing business, and as the cost of polluting rises, companies will become more efficient or less profitable.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
It's from the FreeBSD shutdown.c source file.
I've never actually met or talked to somebody that thought carbon offsets weren't a scam, except for those trying to sell them. I get your point about derailing the thread, but have to ask... do you actually think carbon offsets are legitimate?
There are two kinds of carbon offsets. The Wikipedia Carbon offset article describes them as two markets, right up top.
The larger carbon offset market is based upon laws limiting total industrial carbon dioxide emissions, and in this market companies buy carbon offsets in the amount of carbon dioxide they are emitting, and, yes, sell any excess ones they have to other companies. The difference between this and a simple tax on carbon dioxide emissions is that the total amount of offsets available in any year is limited. These are legitimate to the extent that companies aren't cheating on emissions, and in theory somebody is checking for compliance. The "caps" link in this discussion on Wikipedia leads to a topic on emissions trading, where you can read about similar systems, including the system limiting sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States which has been around since before anybody heard of carbon offsets. However, since there is no law limiting the amount of bad code people can write, this does not compare well to "bad code credits". This is probably why GP considered it a poor example.
The smaller, consumer carbon offset market is what you're thinking of. This is where people effectively donate money to environmental causes, theoretically to pay activities that either prevent carbon dioxide from being emitted or remove it from the air. I won't argue with you here; I agree that at least some of these are not legitimate, or have other problems that make them not effective. And it is this kind of carbon offset which is more relevant to the discussion at hand.