Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

shafyy·

Sorry, but what are you talking about? How does this "insurance" solve a problem, with or without crypto?

View on HN

Business: I want to make sure that if there are bugs in my OSS dependencies, they're fixed quickly.

OSS dev: I want to make a living from my OSS work without starting a business around it or seeking employment.

OSS dev: I'm frightened of the personal risk of having bugs in my code suddenly mean that money is hoovered out of my bank account since it is extremely difficult be confident my code contains zero bugs.

Insurance usually goes the other direction. Large organizations can amortize risk. Individuals need to mitigate risk. Having somebody buy insurance on my code makes me less likely to want to release it rather than more likely.

Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27842848

OSS devs would risk future earnings only.

So, I've developed some software, gotten a bunch of users and developed a bit of an income stream, then there's a big bug and now I have no chance of future earnings from that software. I'd probably abandon that project and move on to something else instead; maybe get a job at $BIGCO or become a turnip farmer. So some people got an insurance payout, but the software they were using and considered important enough that they would pay for insurance on is now abandonware for them and for any other users that happened to be out there.

The OSS dev literally wants to avail themselves of public infrastructure and money, while paying nothing back in. That's all this is.

All you did there was state the basic tenet of capitalist wage labour, except no taxes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com