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1. Joshua Barretto (jsbarretto@social.coop)'s status on Thursday, 17-Aug-2023 10:41:01 UTC Joshua Barretto

   It occurred to me today that the social value of the open-source work I do in my free time has probably been an order of magnitude more useful to the world than everything I've ever done as a paid employee. Needing to seek a wage almost certainly makes me a less productive member of society than I would otherwise be.

   • Marc (marc@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 17-Aug-2023 10:40:57 UTC Marc

     in reply to

     @jsbarretto
     I agree with everything except the word "almost"

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   • Aaron (hosford42@techhub.social)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:25 UTC Aaron

     in reply to

     • David Zaslavsky

     @diazona @jsbarretto I bet their open source work is probably still more positively impactful than their day jobs.

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   • David Zaslavsky (diazona@techhub.social)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:26 UTC David Zaslavsky

     in reply to

     @jsbarretto That's true, but I bet there are also a lot of people who don't feel similarly and thus are not reacting to this post. Obviously I can only guess at the real numbers, but I would imagine that among programmers (or writers, organizers, etc) who have worked on #opensource projects, only a small fraction of them have had a meaningful impact on the world through those contributions.

   • Joshua Barretto (jsbarretto@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:27 UTC Joshua Barretto

     in reply to

     The number of boosts this is getting implies that a lot of folk feel similar, and that's sad.

   • David Zaslavsky (diazona@techhub.social)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:31 UTC David Zaslavsky

     in reply to

     • Aaron

     @hosford42 @jsbarretto That's what I'm saying, I don't think so, at least not for most of them.

   • Joshua Barretto (jsbarretto@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:31 UTC Joshua Barretto

     in reply to

     • David Zaslavsky
     • Aaron

     @diazona @hosford42 The problem is that it's extremely difficult to measure the value of FOSS work. As an example, I maintain a variety of libraries in the Rust ecosystem. I had no idea who was using them, and still mostly don't. When I got my current job, I found to my surprise that several of them were already in their dependency tree. (1/2)

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   • HistoPol (histopol@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:33 UTC HistoPol

     in reply to

     @jsbarretto

     a perfect case in point for #UBI (Universal Basic income)

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   • Anders Eknert (anderseknert@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:46 UTC Anders Eknert

     in reply to

     @jsbarretto getting to work on open source for a living, and in some of my favorite projects too, has been the best experience in my career. I wish more people could, and I hope we’ll get to see more options for people to make a living in open source.

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   • J3RN :fedora: :elixir: :emacs: (j3rn@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 03:28:50 UTC J3RN :fedora: :elixir: :emacs:

     in reply to

     @jsbarretto I realized about a week ago that because I've contributed to the Elixir language, and Truth Social runs on Elixir, I've contributed to Truth Social. Honestly my contributions have been so small that few people have probably ever noticed them, but if they were substantial this would really give me pause.

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