The more I talk to people about how to make software sustainable, I'm reminded that most people haven't spent time thinking about how anything gets paid for. Most employees haven't really considered exactly how it is that money ends up in their paychec...
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@oscarjiminy @matt coding can be done by an ai today. It's just not sufficient. Because producing valuable software is about more than producing text tokens in the right order.
Just like the power of rockets isn't the main reason we're not on Mars. We could take a bunch of people to Mars right now. They would just die shortly after.
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@polotek @matt I think robots on mars may be more illustrative, a given set of problems resolved with a given set of technologies.
I don't mean to reduce developers' skills and talents to mechanical simplicity, as someone who doesn't code it seems entirely possible to me a codebase may be like an epic novel or symphony. I have zero doubt there is a ton of artistry but there are a ton of artisan professions that don't exist anymore due industrial developments.
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@polotek I find this whole thread/conversation confusing because sometime it smells like it's talking about custom work ("build this app per my spec"), other times having a cluster of apps, similar-but-different (e.g. note-taking), some-FOSS-some-paid, and make a choice ("this app looks best, but my #2 choice is free, how do I decide?")
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@billseitz I'm not sure why you need the conversation to be about only one thing. Maybe try asking some questions?
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@oscarjiminy @matt it feels like you're working backwards from a conclusion. I'd rather not.
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@polotek @matt Ok but my position was that the principle of FOSS addressed a problem that is generated by corporate ownership and control. Corporates harnessed the idealism embodied by the FOSS community to establish and fortify the market they would foreclose on were it not for FOSS.
Developers deserve the same security as any other workforce but they have to fight for it. Picking at the idealism that undermines complete corporate control of the industry is working against your own interests.
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@oscarjiminy @matt
> Picking at the idealism that undermines complete corporate control of the industry is working against your own interests.No it isn't. You're doing that thing where you assume that becuase other problems exist, we can't be responsible for our own choices and actions. I don't subscribe to that. Nor do I subscribe to the notion that if we just talk nice about ourselves and ignore these issues that it will somehow fix corporate interests.
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@oscarjiminy @matt I do want to reiterate something I've said to you a number of times. If you want to have a conversation with me, please start by framing what that is and asking questions. Please stop drawing me into debates you're having inside your head and making me work to suss out what your responses mean.
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@polotek @matt You’re making a lot of assumptions here Marco, something you often complain about others doing. We’ve once had an exchange in the past but I guess one’s a number too.
My position’s clear. Your industry needs to organise to unionise or whatever demands you might have’ll only be met where and when convenient to corporate bosses.
Suggesting folks who ‘work for free’ are somehow undermining your objective to be fairly paid, fairly treated is a misdirection. I can see how you might reach that conclusion but it’s a symptom of denial of the situation the profession finds itself in.
I can see you don’t enjoy exchanges with me, which’s fine. I’ll endeavour to hold my tongue and keep my views to myself (I’m clearly not your intended audience).
No hard feelings, best wishes.
Oscar -
@oscarjiminy the only assumption I'm making is that you can't actually tell when you've switched to talking about some shit that I'm not talking about. You keep repeating to me what you *think* I'm saying, and you're just fucking wrong about it. You don't really seem to be open to that possibility though. Because you rarely ask questions before creating your strawmen. So I guess I can stop giving you the benefit of the doubt.
This will be where we go our separate ways. Take care.