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0 pointscyphar9y ago0 comments

> you first quoted 80% and chided me for not reading the article linked to because it supposedly implied/had it in there.

Sorry, I assumed that 80% and 86% were close enough that a reasonable reader would be able to see that I had mis-remembered the second significant figure for statistics I heard a while ago.

My apologies.

> easy test: would you continue to work on linux with the same pace/effort if your company stopped paying you for it? yes/no?

Yes (though my work is not generally kernel work, I would still continue to contribute to the free software projects I currently work on at the same pace).

> if you answer yes then i also expect you to pay them back any past salaries you cheated out of them ;).

... why? An employer pays you to solve technical problems that rise from their business. That doesn't mean that as an individual I wouldn't work on similar problems anyway, it just means that I get paid to work on specific problems rather than whatever I find important.

Effectively an employer pays you to change your priorities to match your employer's priorities. How much your priorities actually changed is not relevant.

Let me ask you a question. If one of your customers found a security issue in grsecurity or found that one of the features of grsecurity was broken, would you prioritise fixing it over whatever interesting feature you were working on "in your spare time"? If yes, then congratulations you're paid to develop grsecurity. If no, then I wouldn't pay you for support because I would have gained very little for my support contract.

> in our case, it's not 'some time' but 'all the time'.

You can continue to claim that, and I will continue to call bullshit. While you might be able to argue semantics and say "technically we never were paid for any particular features" I find such discussion disingenuous.

> puts the original statement into a very different light:

That statement doesn't say "developed for free" it says "provided for free". If it said "developed for free" I wouldn't agree with it. But by the same token I don't agree that there isn't a significant proportion of development that is not paid, and I don't lend credence to hypothetical predictions about how Linux would be developed without anyone being paid.

Despite what you say, Linux was developed for free for the first year or so and was mostly developed for free for several more years.

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2 comments · 1 top-level

PaXTeam9y ago· 1 in thread

> Sorry, I assumed that 80% and 86% were close enough that a reasonable reader would be able > to see that I had mis-remembered the second significant figure for statistics I heard a while ago.

vs.

>>and the source of those numbers is...? >GregKH, who you linked in a cousin comment.

the article i linked to has neither number.

> An employer pays you to solve technical problems that rise from their business

not at all. an employer pays for stuff it can't get done for free. it's basic economics at least but i'm sure some shareholders would also have trouble understanding why the company would waste money that way. you just admitted that you'd gladly do the same work for free yet you somehow failed to tell that to your employer who are thus paying you for something that they could get for free and spend that money on other important things instead. that's doubly damaging to your employer.

> Let me ask you a question. [...]

it doesn't have to be a security bug and it doesn't have to come from a customer, we look at them with the same attention and priority regardless. money has nothing to do with it, we do it (and we have done so since the beginning) whether we're paid or not. i think you just have a hard time imagining that what customers pay for isn't R&D (though we're open to such contract work too).

> That statement doesn't say "developed for free" it says "provided for free".

yes and it's disingenous as to be able to provide linux 'for free' someone has had to pay for it which is very different from our situation.

> I don't agree that there isn't a significant proportion of development that is not paid[...]

you're arguing semantics ('significant' vs 'majority') with Greg at this point, i'll let you two work it out.

> I don't lend credence to hypothetical predictions about how Linux would be developed without anyone being paid.

fortunately you don't need to predict anything, just compare the code of linux 1.0 and 4.11.

> Despite what you say, Linux was developed for free for the first year or so and was mostly > developed for free for several more years.

i never said anything like that unless of course you can quote me back on it.

anyway, you're clearly more interested in insults and ad hominem than a rational discussion, so you can have the last word.

cypharOP9y ago

> yet you somehow failed to tell that to your employer

Were you involved in my hiring process? Are you my manager, or a stakeholder in my employer's business? How could you possibly know that I failed to tell my employer that?

> i think you just have a hard time imagining that what customers pay for isn't R&D

I don't have a problem imagining it, I just don't believe that your customers see it that way. If I was a customer of yours, I would expect that more R&D work would happen because I'm paying you (mainly because I firmly believe in free software businesses and that such R&D should be paid for).

> (though we're open to such contract work too).

Heh, so it's not 100% unpaid after all? ;)

> just compare the code of linux 1.0 and 4.11.

Wow, code gets better over time? Holy shit!

> so you can have the last word.

Gladly. :D

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