Re: Bashing freelancers

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Mar 6, 2015, 22:32 UTC
Message-ID: <87sidhoiy4.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq8uf9ye4e.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 26 quoted lines

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>>
>>> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> Good work is worth good money. Suggesting that people who are not able
>>>> to work for free are morally inferior is not conducive for a cooperative
>>>> work atmosphere.
>>>
>>> Yes, but I do not think anybody did any such thing.
>>
>> "Of course, I am hoping that all the mentors are doing GSoC not for
>> money but out of love of our software and our community,"
>>
>> Huh.
>
> I did not intend any moral judgement in that statement, but after
> re-reading it, I would say that "not for money" would have been
> better phrased as "not only for money".
>
> Let me clarify.
>
> There _could_ be a mentor who hates Git the software and Git the
> community, who wants to mentor students only for the mentorship
> stipend.

Uh, mentors don't rise from beneath the Earth. They are project members. Do you want to suggest that you suspect those contributors to have worked on Git, which they hate with a vengeance, only so that they could cash in on GSoC? You know the kind of sum we are talking about here, right? Pocketing that makes sense only if you feel _indifferent_ about anything but money and are not planning on investing significant amount of work. It's too little to do something you actually hate.

> I do not want to see such mentors.  I would imagine that such a person
> surely can find something else that is more enjoyable and do the
> mentoring there for money, if competent enough to mentor others.  And
> that would be good for everybody.

I think Google would prefer a mentor who takes the money and does the job to someone who hands the money on to some more generic Git account out of love for the project and community and does not find the time for actually mentoring his student, but feels sort of ok about it because he did not in the end take the money.

Someone who hates Git will at least have a solid idea about where Git is most in need of improvement...

No, I'm not volunteering. I am merely sick of the income-bashing and consider it not doing a useful job for Git or other free software. Particularly not in connection with a program like Google Summer of Code which is _designed_ to let money make a difference.

-- 
David Kastrup