It is a privileged solution. And a stupid one, too. Because $1 is worth a lot more for someone in India, than someone in USA. If you want to implement this more fairly, you'd be looking at something like GDP or BBP plus geolock. Streaming services perfected this mechanism already.

This might be by design. Almost anyone writing software professionally at a level beyond junior is getting paid enough that $1 isn't a significant expense, whether in India or elsewhere. Some projects will be willing to throw collaboration and inclusivity out the window if it means cutting their PR spam by 90% and only reducing their pool of available professional contributors by 5%.

Indian here. You are correct. Expecting any employed Indian software developer to not be able to spare 1$ is stupid. Like how exactly poor do you think we are?!

It's not that outrageous. Apparently, 90% of India is living on less than $10 per day (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-living-with-less-th...)

I suspect most of these people are not software engineers with a computer?

I think the point was that if an aspirational minimum wage worker on a borrowed computer wants to put up a PR then it would cost them less than ten minutes of wages to afford $1USD in the US, while the same worker in India would need to put up about half a day's wages.

This is very noble in theory, but in practice you're not going to get many high-quality PRs from someone who's never been paid to write software and has no financial support.

so we continue to make the rich richer and the broke students struggle more to get valuable experience. Very easy to point in 10-20 years under the coming "engineer crisis" why 'suddenly' can't support the systems we built.

You misunderstood the point. The point isn't that you are poor. The point is that the burden of the money lies on average heavier on you than someone from USA. This creates an uneven playing field.

I like to compare it with donations. If you get a USD donated, that is the same USD regardless of who gave it. Right? Right?!? Either way you don't know how heavy the burden is on the person who donated. You probably don't care. But it matters to the person who donated.

Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

A $1 fee is fine for Indian software developers and it kills the spam. If it's a greater burden for people in India than the US, well, not all solutions are perfect, but some are useful.

Because it discriminates a marginalized group which is by tradition very important to the FOSS community: students

Also, no it wouldn't kill spam. The spam would be moved to pwned machines where the owner would suddenly have an incentive (financial) to fix the system, if they know.

What remains is people who would be so rich that $1 means nothing to them. Ie. white collar criminals who are already rich enough to not care.

>Like how exactly poor do you think we are?!

I get laid off and suddenly I'm poor and am weighing optins. And I'm American.

So only employed software developers are allowed to make PRs?

I've contributed almost full time to free software as a student. When I became a professional software developer, suddenly I lost the time to do it.

Students don't have a lot of money to burn here. They're borrowing money to study. You'll miss out on them. However, you're unlikely to notice. I mean, there is no control group in such experiment.

I think the open source ecosystem would definitely notice long-term. Most people who become regular contributors start out in university or earlier - that's wen you have the most time to spend on hobbies like oss.

Not that word, in the context of contributing to an open source project that you're likely already benefiting from.

ie, if you want to contribute code, you must also contribute financially.

>contributing to an open source project that you're likely already benefiting from.

Yes, but many people benefit for free. You see the backwards incentives of making the most interested (i.e. the ones who may provide the most work to your project) pay?

And none of that even guarantee support. Meanwhile you donate more and you get to tell people what the build. It's all out of what.

You get it refunded

The default could should be to refund.

That would make not-refunding culturally crass unless it was warranted.

With manual options for:

0. (Default, refund)

1. (Default refund) + Auto-send discouragement response. (But allow it.)

2. (Default refund) + Block.

3. Do not refund

4. Do not refund + Auto-send discouragement response.

5. Do not refund + Block.

6. Do not refund + Block + Report SPAM (Boom!)

And typically use $1 fee, to discourage spam.

And $10 fee, for important, open, but high frequency addresses, as that covers the cost of reviewing high throughput email, so useful email did get identified and reviewed. (With the low quality communication subsidizing the high quality communication.)

The latter would be very useful in enabling in-demand contact doors to remain completely open, without being overwhelmed. Think of a CEO or other well known person, who does want an open channel of feedback from anyone, ideally, but is going to have to have someone vet feedback for the most impactful comments, and summarize any important trend in the rest. $10 strongly disincentives low quality communication, and covers the cost of getting value out of communication (for everyone).

$10 will be a honeypot for scammers.

I don't think most people are going to pay $10 to get an email through without checking.

Might be worth strongly suggesting a check, at permission time.

But I am sure you are right.

Maybe receivers don't get the money. They just get to burn whoever is sending them email they don't want? A thought anyway.

It is simple: we simply add a whitelist for the child prodigies.