Marga Manterola's raises the issue of burnout:
Free as in Burned Out: Who Really Pays for Open Source?
live now here: https://live.fosdem.org/watch/janson
Major contributors to burnout in open source:
- developers are struggling to a make a living
- toxic behaviour from community members wearing developers down
Reclaim the web! But how?
this talk by Jah Kosha which may have some answers:
Digital feudalism is the reality today, argues Özcan Oğuz in their talk.
"You don't need to understand" is the new serfdom. Where people loose their freedoms, privacy, and control
Kosha created Akoopa, a fork of the Tor browser
Free & open source software development is work, says Manterola.
You may do it because you love it. Because you want to make the world a better place.
But it's still work.
Some other alternatives for getting money for open source development:
- Crowdfunding and donations, e.g. through github sponsors (Microsoft), open collective
- Government money, e.g. through NLNet
- Donations from companies, such as through Open Source Pledge
- Get regular work time allocated for open source development
It's not enough, says Margola.
It may require you to do pretty much a second job maintaining FLOSS, which isn't an option for many (and potentially also not sustainable)
The utopia, according to Margola, would be that everyone who wants to would be able to get paid a full wage for their work
Is this indeed a utopia? Would this be the desirable endpoint?
Money changes everything. What would this mean for voluntary work?
"I miss those days", says Kosha.
Peer-to-peer, openness, hacker spirit of the early internet in the '90s
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