Re: Making money on open source, if not by selling _support_, then how?

[Justin Gombos <rpbkbq.xax.gld@uluv.kbq>]

On 2006-04-17, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>
>> And you think that you attract the best programmers by offering
>> high wages? That, together with meritocracy, has been shown to be a
>> myth. Job satisfaction is not guaranteed by just income.
>
> That might be true, but you should explain why low or no wages would
> function better.

You've misinterpretted Bauhaus.  Saying that high wages does not
necessarily attract the best talent is quite a bit different than
saying "low or no wages would function better".  I must start by
pointing out that this argument amounts to a strawman (because it
misrepresents Bauhaus' position), and it also contains a bipolar
logical fallacy (wages are not simply "high" or "low/nothing", at
least in developed nations).

Great talent includes passion for the discipline, and appealing to
such passion requires intrinsic motivators.  Significant extrinsic
motivation is more attractive to professionals who lack the passion -
and is in fact an essential component to this profile of creator.

To illustrate this, consider Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  JPL acquires
the top talent in aerospace, yet the pay is substandard.  JPL
engineers are capable of substantially higher income elsewhere, yet
JPL has a very low turnover.  So you have to ask, why aren't the
engineers leaving - the answer: because the intrinsic rewards are
high.  JPL has figured out how to attract top talent, and keep their
interest, essentially by making the work environment more academic
than what's typical.

The management style of creating a heavily micromanaged set of process
rules and simply paying employees high enough wages to ensure
compliance is the opposit extreme, and it's becoming obsolete
precisely because top talent is deterred from that model knowing that
workplaces like JPL exist.  

That's the short answer.  The long answer can be found in: "Intrinsic
Motivation at Work: Building Energy and Commitment" by Kenneth Thomas.

>> What are the software quality improvements to be derived
>> from differentiation by income? (Which I have nothing to say
>> against.) If you starve, you can't be productive, o.K..
>> But other than that, job satisfaction is not just money.
>
> Money is a part of satisfaction. In our "capitalistic" society
> everything is translated into money. I didn't even used this word, I
> talked about rewarding. Anyway, if you can propose a better social
> system, which would function, count me in. But in any system a
> contribution must be rewarded.  Use money, natural products, houri,
> whatever attracts people.

Under a capitalist system, you first have to accept the fact that you
only have to outperform the best competitor.  If you're rewarding
employees with an order of magnitude more pay (which according to you
would get the best programmers), and you are also offering high
intrinsic rewards, then you're a poor business person, because you're
not maximizing profit - in which case you'll be replaced by someone
who does maximize profit.  It's a balance that you can't escape from.
Under this system companies that have substantial intrinsic motivators
will pay lower wages, because they can.  And they will still retain
top talent.

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