Re:The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
by joshlemer on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @09:17PM
(#21001668)
I'm the one you're responding to and I'm not making six figures, you can't assume everyone lives in USA making amazing salaries and bonuses.
Re:The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
by ken on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @09:46PM
(#21001777)
Forget I mentioned money, then. That doesn't change anything else I wrote.
I guarantee I earned less money in the past year than anyone reading this (I don't work in tech any more), and it didn't stop me from volunteering my skills. Being rich is not a requirement for contributing.
Re:The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
by joshlemer on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @12:11AM
(#21002319)
Sure, point taken. I'm not saying don't give to charity or volunteer for a good cause, I just question if contributing to open source software is really an effective way to go about doing good. If the project you contribute to has some special positive impact on the world, then probably, but if you're just contributing to the general software ecosystem, then it's hard to see how that directly benefits anyone other than, at best, a bunch of well off software developers (though that's not clear to me either) and at worst, only benefitting profit seeking corporations which we would normally expect to fund work being done to run their business.
Companies may not care about volunteer work when making hiring decisions, but that should not be why you do it.
You say most open source software is used by companies to better their bottom line, but if you’re making six figures through skilled work and not giving anything back to your community, I fail to see how that’s any better.