zlacker

>>jashke+(OP)
> We take some of what we earn, money that could e.g. go into our retirement savings and instead use it to hire people to work on Clojure and community outreach, some full-time. To be honest, I could use that money in my retirement account, having depleted it to make Clojure in the first place. But I love working with the team on Clojure, and am proud of the work we do.

... and then this...

> Open source is a no-strings-attached gift, and all participants should recognize it as such.

Is control of the closure project part of lead dev's business model, and the part about dipping into retirement just an "open-washing" of "I decided to start a business?"

Otherwise this sounds like an extremely unhealthy and unwise "gift" on which to spend one's retirement savings.

>>jancsi+J7
Aren't gifts _usually_ at the giver's expense? Anything else is a transaction, surely.

I think the only point being made there was that this gift is expensive but he's happy to give it. The way I read it, he's happy to give out free iPhones, but asking/demanding a battery-charging case and extra Lightning cable on top might be pushing his generosity.

>>zapzup+W7
> Aren't gifts _usually_ at the giver's expense? Anything else is a transaction, surely.

Usually with open source the "gift" is the author/maintainer's time. "Gift" in quotes because there is usually immense pleasure in creating and controlling a project.

If the author/maintainer is ranting about the sacrifices they make for the project, that usually means something has broken in project development process. And I've never heard of another project where the author dipped into their retirement savings and built up less savings than they should have to support their authorship of a project. That's a problem that should never happen, not ammunition for rationalizing the pecking in a project.

The iPhone example doesn't work. I can't send a patch to ostensibly improve the hardware (or even software) of an iPhone. The audience the author was addressing was other developers presumably complaining about low patch acceptance and long wait times. In that light, process conservatism and generally low patch quality are persuasive arguments for the status quo. "I'm sinking my retirement into this" and "community-driven development is a myth" are not.