notes &mdash; Webmink In Draft https://the.webm.ink/tag:notes Things cooking in the Minkiverse. They move elsewhere when the oven pings. Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:30:00 +0100 A Note On Who To Pay https://the.webm.ink/who-to-pay <![CDATA[In the context of my earlier essays about volunteering and social framing, the question recently arose of who should get paid when an open source project receives donations. The short answer is "people who make it happen but wouldn't get paid otherwise" but the thinking behind that is more complex than you might expect. !--more-- Open source is not meant to be free of charge. It is just meant to have no internal ledger (everyone contributor bears their own costs and derives their own benefit from the greater work) - but since open source has to make no distinction (internal=external) that also resolves as no external ledger, by accident. (Aside: This by the way is a major issue legislatively, where the "internal" development of open source code ends up regulated much more than that of proprietary code.) But that's unfortunately led to a worldview that wants to treat all engagement with open source as philanthropic, denying those engaging in supporting roles any means of compensation and guilt-tripping anyone who needs support into silence. I call that "dictating other people's sacrifices" - it happens all over the charity sector too, where people seem to think skilled workers should work for peanuts "because it's a charity". I try to make sure that all the places where I have a say pay as many people as they can all they should, and then leave it up to those people how to spend (or donate) the resulting income. ---- Tags, Links and Mentions #OpenSource #Community #Sustaining #PayTheMaintainers #FreeSoftware #SoftwareFreedom #Governance #Notes Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. a href="/About"More/a.]]> In the context of my earlier essays about volunteering and social framing, the question recently arose of who should get paid when an open source project receives donations. The short answer is “people who make it happen but wouldn't get paid otherwise” but the thinking behind that is more complex than you might expect.

Open source is not meant to be free of charge. It is just meant to have no internal ledger (everyone contributor bears their own costs and derives their own benefit from the greater work) – but since open source has to make no distinction (internal=external) that also resolves as no external ledger, by accident. (Aside: This by the way is a major issue legislatively, where the “internal” development of open source code ends up regulated much more than that of proprietary code.)

But that's unfortunately led to a worldview that wants to treat all engagement with open source as philanthropic, denying those engaging in supporting roles any means of compensation and guilt-tripping anyone who needs support into silence. I call that “dictating other people's sacrifices” – it happens all over the charity sector too, where people seem to think skilled workers should work for peanuts “because it's a charity”. I try to make sure that all the places where I have a say pay as many people as they can all they should, and then leave it up to those people how to spend (or donate) the resulting income.

Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. More.

]]> https://the.webm.ink/who-to-pay Wed, 27 Nov 2024 23:00:00 +0000 No "Big Tech" in Europe https://the.webm.ink/no-big-tech-in-europe <![CDATA[An interesting repeated motif in the anti-trust conference I attended yesterday in Brussels was the assertion that there is no big tech in Europe like there is in America and that Europe is sandwiched between big country (China) and big tech. The question I kept wanting to ask is "why is there nothing you recognise as 'big tech' in Europe?" !--more-- I did ask a few of the speakers this question and they seemed slightly bemused by it. The most stupid answer was someone who should know better saying Europe had spent all its energy on regulation and none of it on innovation - you may guess that was someone from the merger industry! It's not like Europe has never had big tech. The dominant technologies in mobile phones arose from a European context and I can think of several other examples of world-monopolising technologies which have arisen in Europe in previous generations. I don't think it's overregulation either, although I defer to subject experts on that. What I do wonder is whether the legacy big tech of the mobile & consumer electronics industries has resulted in the regulatory capture of European standards by the winners of that event, and that has led to the stifling of each new technology wave as it has commenced in Europe. What innovation has happened has then moved elsewhere to avoid the problem, usually by acquisition. --- #Notes #Policy #BigTech Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. a href="/About"More/a.]]> An interesting repeated motif in the anti-trust conference I attended yesterday in Brussels was the assertion that there is no big tech in Europe like there is in America and that Europe is sandwiched between big country (China) and big tech. The question I kept wanting to ask is “why is there nothing you recognise as 'big tech' in Europe?”

I did ask a few of the speakers this question and they seemed slightly bemused by it. The most stupid answer was someone who should know better saying Europe had spent all its energy on regulation and none of it on innovation – you may guess that was someone from the merger industry!

It's not like Europe has never had big tech. The dominant technologies in mobile phones arose from a European context and I can think of several other examples of world-monopolising technologies which have arisen in Europe in previous generations. I don't think it's overregulation either, although I defer to subject experts on that.

What I do wonder is whether the legacy big tech of the mobile & consumer electronics industries has resulted in the regulatory capture of European standards by the winners of that event, and that has led to the stifling of each new technology wave as it has commenced in Europe. What innovation has happened has then moved elsewhere to avoid the problem, usually by acquisition.

#Notes #Policy #BigTech

Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. More.

]]> https://the.webm.ink/no-big-tech-in-europe Thu, 01 Feb 2024 12:12:21 +0000