> When the bug didn't get fixed, they personally emailed me asking me to fix it as a consultant within three days. When I said I didn't have the time, they then asked me to do it anyway for free because they still had their own three-day deadline and shouldn't I just want to help them out?
I feel like we need a professional ethics code to handle situations like this. To me, if someone is willing to throw money at me to solve a problem, it behooves me to want to help them out. The only consideration here should be, "how much." I would have looked at my current obligations, and quoted them a price at which I would have been willing to drop everything to come up with a patch for.
His unwillingness to help them out is, in the eyes of the business world, unprofessional. I get it, we're coders and we do this for fun. But how are we ever going to get the rest of the world to afford us the same respect that doctors and lawyers get if we're unwilling to play ball?
If I'm running a business and I need something, I should be able to pay a reasonable amount of money to get it. What's reasonable as determined by a negotiation between me and the party providing it. If I went to him and he was like, I need $10K to do this by Friday, that gives me a baseline. If I balk at the price, but I can get by if I push it to next Tuesday, can I get it for $6K?
If he tells me he can't do it at any price, then that means I can't rely on OSS as a pillar of my business.
These are the problems I wish Stallman would apply his huge brain to solving. Not saving us from Facebook.
Saying "no" to work that you cannot do in the timeframe requested is a eminently professional response. It happens all the time in the business world. It is unprofessional to accept work that you cannot perform.
> If he tells me he can't do it at any price, then that means I can't rely on OSS as a pillar of my business.
That is a false dichotomy. With OSS, you are the only person that can block your use of that software.
Ironically, your argument applies in spades to commercial software: try asking Microsoft if they are willing to change something in Windows for you. Then demand it be completed in three days. When they refuse, do you have the option to fix it via an independent company, a contractor, or yourself?
> With OSS, you are the only person that can block your use of that software.
In theory I could build my own railroad. Enough patents have expired. In practice, I need engineers, because there's not enough time to learn everything.
Elsewhere in this thread you asserted that "there's a price", and you don't particularly care about cost. Very well: Hire engineers and pay them a market rate.
You contact the vendor, which is a capitalistic enterprise and so will generally entertain your needs and either provide you with the support you need, at a price, or point you towards authorized alternative service providers.
I'm aware that this paradigm couldn't possibly work with the OSS production model, but there's no reason the community couldn't band together and come up with something better than "hire an engineer or go fuck yourself."
With a little bit of creative vision, I think the FOSS world could make a ton of money. But good luck herding those cats.
>> With a little bit of creative vision, I think the FOSS world could make a ton of money.
Notably, I have considered this, and as I was reading this thread, I was reminded of the BitCoin effort[1] by OpenWhisper Systems that appeared on HN not too long ago. The thing is, it's hard to get money-making models to work for "free (libre) software" in an era of increasing entitlement. That said, if there were another such system like that of the BitCoin one (but not using BitCoin or Paypal like everyone seems to resort to), I'd definitely be interested.
I sometimes feel like I'm living an crazy-land. Any other sector of the economy, somebody contacting you, personally, offering cash over the barrel to do something you do every single day of your life, is a great day.
I mean, if you have reason to not take them seriously, that's fine, whatever. But only a programmer would actually be insulted by a serious offer. Boggles my mind.
The blog author was insulted by (1) the person demanding work for free after he turned down doing it for money, and (2) on the demanders schedule.
It's any professionals right to say, "No, thanks." For whatever reason. There's nothing unprofessional about so doing. Your assertion that just because you offered money someone is obligated to take it -- or do anything for that matter -- is the aforementioned entitlement.
Perhaps he/she was on vacation. Or wanted to see his / her kids. Or wasn't in the mood. Or had other clients that were paying less but were in a long term relationship that is more important/valuable than a one day consulting fee. Or didn't feel like dealing with the accounting hassle of taking a one day fee. Or had an employer that isn't a fan of employees moonlighting. Or just wanted to stare at paint on the ceiling. Any of the above are perfectly good reasons to say no thanks, and that's the end of the obligation, full stop.
Because they have a different mentality. Other types of people wouldn't give you something for free, much less something they slaves hours over making. And you somehow think these same people are like everyone else?
But with OSS you are not starting from scratch, you've got a (presumably) working base to start from. You don't have to learn everything, just the part you want to improve/fix. I don't think the railroad analogy helps.
Not having time is not unprofessional. There are many different reasons why even throwing money at it might not be enough to get someone to work for you on short notice.
If your business depends on that piece of software to the degree that you might need a very quick fix on short notice at an almost arbitrary price, then you need to pay for a support contract with some company that offers it for that particular OSS software. That is possible for many big OSS projects, just like with closed source software.
They could have previous commitments to their employer, breaking those without notice would be seriously unprofessional. They could have private obligations, which can't be weighed against money. They could be ill, ...
There is really no difference here between OSS and commercial closed source software. If you require that kind of guarantee, you need to pay someone in advance for them to make sure they'll have the capacity to help you on short notice.
Free Software does not mean "non-commercial" software. With Free Software you are not restricted to just one model of getting problems fixed.
It also doesn't seem correct to say that "it's cheaper" to buy software, when the issue here is fixing problems. Buying a software artifact is unrelated to getting service. Besides, it may very well be cheaper to hire a person to hack on a number of software projects than to pay for a service contract for each of the projects.
> His unwillingness to help them out is, in the eyes of the business world, unprofessional.
I disagree entirely that it's "unprofessional" to turn down work you don't want to do.
And I'm not sure I've ever seen someone suggest that before.
We have no "professional" responsibility to take jobs we don't want to take, for whatever personal reasons.
I don't think any other profession works that way either. Maybe doctors who have a professional obligation to not let people die. But lawyers, engineers, any other profession I can think of, have no professional obligation to take any job offered to them as long as the client is paying enough. That's just not a thing.
The beauty of OSS is that there are plenty of people willing to play ball, and they all can. So, in your hypothetical, one project maintainer is unwilling to quote you a price. Big whoop. Approach a company that professionally offers support for this project. Send a general RFQ to the appropriate mailing list and see who bites. There is an entire market worth of solutions.
Your hypothetical seems to be stuck in a vendor-client mode of thinking, with the maintainers just vendors-by-another-name, the implication being that they wholly control the ability to modify the software in question. If that were the case, 'no' would admittedly be a deeply unprofessional answer, and your conclusion would make sense. However, maintainers are not vendors. They're arbiters of what the public project is, but they have no control over what you do with the project in the confines of your domain. Acceptance of a patch into the public project is not a precondition for using it.
He did say he had no time to help though, and I think this is a legitimate thing to say.
In my mind, it's similar to walking into a high class restaurant and being told that no, they don't have any tables available for the next three days. If you wanted the reservation for tonight, it was your responsibility to know to book far in advance. You can't decide on your own that you're willing to pay $10k for that table tonight and expect the restaurant to bargain/compromise without any consideration for staff workload, fire hazards imposed by an extra table, restaurant reputation, etc.
The restaurant has the right to refuse service. This doesn't mean it's unfit for business or an unreliable food venue (since you'd certainly be guaranteed a table if you had you made a reservation). It just means your expectations are out of line with reality.
I think you're getting hammered on this because you have a very money-centric way of looking at OSS. For some people, sharing code/knowledge is for fun, not money.
>If he tells me he can't do it at any price, then that means I can't rely on OSS as a pillar of my business.
No one is asking you to make anything a "pillar of your business"! If you choose to, great - you should also think about arranging for some sort of support (either in-house devs, a company with expertise in the area, or some kind of arrangement with the author). You don't get to come along later and basically demand support in return for some cash. I think it's the "demand" part of your ethics code people have a problem with - "offer cash" or "ask nicely", folks will perhaps agree with.
I love dogs and give away free puppies, and you take one no-strings-attached (express or implied). A year later your dog throws up in the backyard and you want me to drive over and clean it up for $100. No thanks. If you up the offer to $100K, I might do it. Heck, I'll clean out the cat litter box too. But that's nothing to do with the free puppy - if you offer $100K to anyone capable, they'll come by and clean it up too.
To pick two examples, restaurants and tattoo artists can get booked up months in advance. When you ask about availability for tomorrow evening, they won't quote a price, they'll say "sorry, we're full".
You might be able to start a negotiation with them, if you're willing to spend way more than the default, but they won't start it for you. And they might say "no, not for any money" (which might mean something like: "I'm pretty sure my price is higher than you're willing to pay, and I don't want a reputation that I'm willing to balk on my commitments for money").
But if Frank Sinatra or POTUS wanted to buy up your entire restaurant and force you to invalidate all of the bookings for that evening, you'd accommodate them, right? There is a price you can buy a professional at.
If you did that, wouldn't the customers whose already agreed-upon reservations you just ditched be rightfully upset, and call your behaviour "unprofessional"?
I think the professional response here would be "sure, I'll sell the restaurant to you, but only after I had a chance to fulfill the obligations I entered into, as otherwise my professional reputation gets tarnished".
More or less, but they aren't necessarily going to admit that unless you can credibly signal that you're willing and able to pay their price.
Brett probably did have a price (say, a billion dollars), but the person in question didn't make the right signals, probably because they weren't willing or able to pay the price.
>I feel like we need a professional ethics code to handle situations like this.
>But how are we ever going to get the rest of the world to afford us the same respect that doctors and lawyers get if we're unwilling to play ball?
I would love for you to point out the part of the Hippocratic Oath where doctors agree to personally call on patients at any time of day or night--as long as they're offered enough money. Or an Attorney/Lawyer's Oath that has a clause where they must take any client at any time if they're offered a generous enough consulting fee.
Wikipedia says a "A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested objective counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain"
Wikipedia says of "professional ethics",
> Some professional organizations may define their ethical approach in terms of a number of discrete components.[5] Typically these include:
> Honesty
> Integrity
> Transparency
> Accountability
> Confidentiality
> Objectivity
> Respectfulness
> Obedience to the law
> Loyalty
Your idea that the main point of professional ethics is to require someone to take a job if their client is paying enough money... is a fairly novel one.
Yes, a professional by definition gets paid for your work. However, the whole point of professional ethics is generally a professional's ethical responsibilities to consider things _other_ than money. That's the ethics part.
I'm pretty sure you won't find your idea in any ethics course in any school or any ethics code in any profession. It's just not a thing.
I don't post on HN as a part of my business. If I did, then you better believe I would have already worked out how much my time spent on HN is worth to it.
There is life outside of business. But inside business, cash rules.
If a business sets itself up to depend upon a free open-source project, that business is responsible for understanding what the dependency really means to the business.
In this case, that means understanding who maintains the project, how to go about receiving help, perhaps looking at a history of how other requests were handled, and ultimately knowing what the options are (e.g. does the business have the means to maintain internal experts for all software dependencies, or even an internal fork for emergency patching, etc.?).
Otherwise, a business that “needs something” can wait in line.
'professional' people don't need $10k to be your personal bitch on a 3 day deadline. if you asked me, i would hang up the phone. not even worth the oxygen to respond, because you don't even exist in my world.
try cold calling a corporate lawyer, or surgeon, to do that. the realistic price is more like $50k, and anyone with half a brain or a shred of personal dignity is going to ask for it up front and with no contract.
> If I'm running a business and I need something, I should be able to pay a reasonable amount of money to get it. What's reasonable as determined by a negotiation between me and the party providing it. If I went to him and he was like, I need $10K to do this by Friday, that gives me a baseline. If I balk at the price, but I can get by if I push it to next Tuesday, can I get it for $6K?
> If he tells me he can't do it at any price, then that means I can't rely on OSS as a pillar of my business.
> These are the problems I wish Stallman would apply his huge brain to solving. Not saving us from Facebook.
To some extent, it's already solved: you can pay for commercial support on many Open Source products if you want to, but those services are from other providers. If you open a GitHub issue or send a message to a maintainer's personal email address then almost by definition you are not asking for a business support arrangement.
I actually think that a lot of these issues would be seriously helped if GitHub issues could make a clear distinction between code contributions and support requests.
I feel like we need a professional ethics code to handle situations like this. To me, if someone is willing to throw money at me to solve a problem, it behooves me to want to help them out. The only consideration here should be, "how much." I would have looked at my current obligations, and quoted them a price at which I would have been willing to drop everything to come up with a patch for.
His unwillingness to help them out is, in the eyes of the business world, unprofessional. I get it, we're coders and we do this for fun. But how are we ever going to get the rest of the world to afford us the same respect that doctors and lawyers get if we're unwilling to play ball?
If I'm running a business and I need something, I should be able to pay a reasonable amount of money to get it. What's reasonable as determined by a negotiation between me and the party providing it. If I went to him and he was like, I need $10K to do this by Friday, that gives me a baseline. If I balk at the price, but I can get by if I push it to next Tuesday, can I get it for $6K?
If he tells me he can't do it at any price, then that means I can't rely on OSS as a pillar of my business.
These are the problems I wish Stallman would apply his huge brain to solving. Not saving us from Facebook.