> The suggestion that paying OSS maintainers is a solution really misses some major issues.
As a maintainer, the biggest major issue is that I don't want their money.
> The suggestion that paying OSS maintainers is a solution really misses some major issues.
As a maintainer, the biggest major issue is that I don't want their money.
As an OSS maintainer, I'd be happy to receive a living wage for my work. But I wouldn't want all the negative externalities that come when money is introduced to the ecosystem. Nor would I want a change in expectations for what I deliver.
> But I wouldn't want all the negative externalities that come when money is introduced...
Even before you get to the broader ecosystem, I wouldn't want daily standups, weekly 1:1s, on-call rotations, weekly business reviews, monthly business reviews, quarterly reports, "emergency" all-hands meetings, mandatory compliance training, constant IT churn, zero-based budgeting, fighting for headcount, constant interviewing, fighting for management buy-in (and against active attempts at management sabotage), managing up, managing down, peer reviews, performance reviews, promotion boards...
I also don't want to spend six months negotiating a contract, sign an NDA, disclose tax records to prove I have other clients, maintain liability insurance, and etc., for one week's worth of work, during which I must track every fraction of an hour and itemize everything I do, followed by two months of dealing with some archaic billing system and another three months wondering if accounts payable will ever actually send the money.
I just want to apply my decades of domain experience in a community of deserved trust and feel like someone actually gives a damn.