Off Topic Issues

[bbertucc]

Equalify is focused on web accessibility. Still, we should be a humanistic project and have a place for discussion of off-topic issues. This is that place. Speak freely, but I might not respond because I'm focused on web accessibility.

[bbertucc]

@beatboxchad - Moving our comments here because they were not a question or reply with projects to issue #278

On 3/7 you wrote:

I'm willing to work on Equalify Everything and web accessibility, but not willing to evaluate the codebase/issues and prepare an estimate/proposal for free. You can do lots of big-time commercial consulting on top of this OSS product -- I'd guess that web accessibility is a regulatory/compliance issue (especially in the EU), which means there's probably an under-served pool of large corporate clients. Anyone who spends time on this tool deserves to be compensated for that time, and that classic business model can support the expense. If I was a consultant in this area, I'd be more willing to make a personal investment.

Meanwhile, I've got something burning on my mind that I'll share here in the spirit of the previous comment (click to expand):

Proposal

Value Context

I believe that the creative suite is not a luxury like our culture claims it to be. Rather, they are communication tools. Accessible tools for all people -- even on older hardware -- allow cultural voices that are otherwise disenfranchised to be heard. These voices have crucial insights pertaining to our future, but commercialism and imperialism limit access to communication tools.

Creative software is also a powerful educational tool: I learned all my heavy math and signal processing, as well as how to code, as a high-school dropout by using and creating open source digital tools to produce art and music.

Right now people from all over the world are learning and expressing themselves with open source digital production tools. It's important that these tools receive professional maintenance, which also constitutes education since it's OSS.

Problem statement

SuperCollider's USB Plug N Play code (HID) hasn't been maintained since the initial crowdfunded effort in 2013. The library it depends on has matured and changed since then. This code is crucial to turning the SC coding environment into an educational musical instrument. Very recently the HID component of SuperCollider ceased to function altogether, with several related modes of failure.

SuperCollider along with some of the more mainstream tools need a lot of help. Competent C++ developers are somewhat rare compared to PHP, JavaScript, etc.

Proposal

Budgeting is hard, software is difficult to estimate past the prototype phase. That said, I consider myself a competent C++ developer and would like a budget of $2000 to spearhead the following work over the next 2 weeks:

• Use upstream hidapi 0.14.0 with hid_get_report_descriptor on all platforms supercollider/hidapi#18
  update SuperCollider's HID client to use the latest HID library from libusb, replacing its 10-year-old fork which is no longer necessary
• HID support is broken on supercollider 3.13 linux (arch) supercollider/supercollider#6016
  restore functionality so that myself and many others can get back to learning and sharing with SuperCollider

Notes

I have already built a prototype on my machine and am preparing a PR, but I'm out of groceries and bills are going unpaid. Lots of my work languishes like this. I'm tired of it. I have a lot to contribute.

(Later on I want to add Pipewire support to SuperCollider so we can have server-side MIDI on Linux, but that's a separate bid after an RFC to the SC community. And I want to work on Blender, OBS... One thing at a time though.)

I responded

Starting a thread with "$11,000" in the title was an opportunity to discuss money things, so I'm glad you spoke up @beatboxchad!

You're right – there's a huge opportunity for Equalify's accessibility tools, and I'm serious about compensating experts for every minute of their work. That said, I'm not interested in working with folks who just want the cash.

When I've commissioned work before, I've commissioned folks because they are passionate about Accessibility. When you're working for passion, as I do, money is just something to cover necessities. I'm working toward a bigger picture! Related my notes on commissioned/sponsored time.

If someone is only going to do an accessibility project for cash, they should look elsewhere. This is an opportunity to work on a web accessibility project - money should just help folks cover necessities so they can work toward their a11y passion.

You replied:

Cash is easy to decry when you've got capital and security. You can afford to work based on passion. Unfortunately, in our society food shelter and medicine are behind a paywall, and so are many of the basic tools of production in every industry. This is a mechanism of the war machine, to specifically filter selected people out of the act of thriving.

I want to work for passion too, but I can't afford to because I don't have security in my basic necessities, and neither do many of my neighbors. This creates an environment that isn't conducive to software development or any advanced creative self-actualization. It's more conducive to generational trauma, addiction, struggle. People don't make the best intellectual decisions when they can't even guarantee food and shelter. Last year my neighbor got addicted to meth and started shooting his gun in the yard, all kinds of scary drama. I didn't have coffeeshop money, let alone any means to help. Do you think I got a lot done that year? In the summer I took in a homeless traveling musician and helped fix his RV. I was so disturbed by his situation, having endured a similar one myself multiple times, that I was compelled to personally intervene with the limited resources I have. It helped having someone around the house, but things were pretty stressful all around with my utilities shutting off and limited food, not to mention the deeper traumas that underly these situations. Do you think my passion projects moved forward? A little... but the world would definitely be a better place if I had been able to share my best. Now multiply that by the millions of others in my situation.

Cash is a basic form of power, the easiest and most flexible to build basic material security. That's why they call it liquid. I haven't eaten yet today, and I'm trying to code in C++ while I catch up on messages. How effective and sustainable do you think this is? Doesn't matter -- it's all I have to work with right now. I could bike all around town hitting food banks, but I'd rather spend time on my life's work, which has languished for 10 years in these hostile conditions. I'm genuinely angry about it, and all the similar waste I see all around me in this brutal short-sighted war culture that dresses itself in sanctimonious piety while it burns dead bodies and living souls for fuel to shelter a mediocre minority from the facts of life.

The scarcity I face is a direct result of my principled decisions about who I'll work for, on what. So is our dialog right now. Pretty much all of my problems would go away if I and most of my peers had stable access to food and medicine (I finally got stable shelter thanks to family, but most people aren't as lucky as me and for me this situation is relatively new. It's also due to an exploitative private housing market that actively causes the homelessness of many people just like me, which I know from experience and also socially isolates me because of the resentment it causes -- also a feature of the war machine).

So since cash is the prevailing tool to create basic security, that means you're decrying the basic means for survival to most people outside your sheltered peer group. I'd love to see the basics provided unconditionally, but if you're gonna pretend that's true now you're part of the reason it's not.

Money is a basic tool. If you take people's time and expertise, you pay them. You pay for the whole process, not just the fruits that you can exploit. This way they can be empowered to make investments based on their principles and ideals, just like you. An even, accessible playing field. Hoarding that basic resource with this pious attitude is actually just a classist power move. You're filtering out the people who, though they may not make the most athletic contribution at first, might offer the deepest wisdom about accessibility. You might not like what they say or think. But you're the one with funding and connections -- the investment is yours to make. And you'll get a return. You're better positioned to reap the cash returns on this project than the people you hire. You're building consulting expertise and a viable product. Cash is liquid power. Why are you gatekeeping accessibility to it?

I hope some day to be able to afford to work strictly on passion. I've sacrificed a lot for my integrity. Until then, I and everyone else in my position (the vast majority of Americans IME) must insist on CASH so that my passion can be fully activated in peace, safety, and security. Cash is your easiest means to spread accessibility to that power, which so many geniuses in our culture are starved of to support short-sighted power games. Ditch the bug bounty and pay some market-rate salaries, mentor some new talent by mixing it with senior staff, and this software will generate billions as it matures. That's why you're getting private investment capital. It's not your charm and discipline and authenticity, all of which are wonderful. It's cash. You can build a billion-dollar consulting firm on top of this software once it matures. That's the game plan of the capitalists who are investing. I've worked in corporate, this is a viable business model. Don't exclude the people who help you build it from the opportunity to build capital and do that. No matter what you say or how many journals you share, this is the reality of the situation and power dynamic.

Use cash correctly. It's just a tool. Give people the autonomy they need to thrive and contribute. Deploy your capital and watch it splash back. Don't self-righteously judge people for sticking up for their right to eat and play and build basic security. You'll lose a lot of value. Cash is the tech we use to represent value in a flexible and portable way. This creates accessibility. Cash is the primary, ubiquitous accessibility tool in our society. Put your money where your mouth is, and see what happens.

My new reply:

I want to work for passion too, but I can't afford to because I don't have security in my basic necessities

Focus on that @beatboxchad. Get your security. When you have that, focus on passion until you have to get security again. That's my model at least.

This money will probably go toward people who have some sense of security. Unfortunately, I can only focus on one problem at a time and I am focused on making the Internet more accessible. Other issues will have to be solved in a different thread on GitHub.

[bbertucc]

@beatboxchad said:

That's not true, I was responding directly to the opportunity and how it wasn't accessible to those who don't already have security, and how that's an easy problem to fix by simply paying people for their time with the ample funding that this commercially-viable OSS product has and will continue to attract.

In reply to my comment.

[bbertucc]

In reply to my comment, @beatboxchad said:

Thanks.

Look, I wouldn't be worried about someone else doing it. I'm honest about my capacity, my strengths and weaknesses. I'm disabled and can't work full-time. It's more about being paid for my contribution so that I don't get entirely excluded from the process.

Mature OSS projects get contributions from staff at the businesses that are consulting or building services on top of them. If you're still bootstrapping, you might want to instead put in the legwork of deciding which issues have priority and preparing some resources. I still don't like the flat-rate bounty structure, baseline. One way or another, paying developers for all of their labor is crucial to a healthy ecology. I should have been paid for that "interview" -- I might be more generous with you now, because we are aligned. I would still criticize this approach. This (unfortunately common) practice you are engaging in is anti-labor, and therefore anti-accessibility. There's a better way to structure this opportunity.

It's somewhat personal, I have felt genuinely ripped off by people in your circle, but it's just an unhealthy culture and a misunderstanding of how to create the most value together. I understand your defensiveness about my long posts interfering with the clarity of this discussion. I appreciate your transparency in preserving my original comments (my irritation at the obfuscation stands, but let's de-stigmatize conflict so that we can all accommodate each other).

I will take care to make these my final remarks on the topic. I respect your time, but you're being paid to engage with me here and I think I'm giving you something valuable.

I don't recommend anyone post a feature or bug that they are worried about someone else doing.
Well, that'd be a deal-breaker if I was a potential funder -- this is the kind of stifling of creativity and development that happens when ideas flow freely but resources don't. It's a shame. Long games beat short ones. "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

@bbertucc responds:

you're being paid to engage with me here

I am not. I only get paid for coding Equalify features. Please allow me to focus on coding.

[beatboxchad]

You're the one that decides who gets paid for what. You should be billing for your PM time, that's the professional thing to do. You're still obfuscating my on-topic feedback about how you're approaching this. If you had proposed a technical feature, would you remove every comment in the discussion that you disagreed with?

[bbertucc]

My focus Impact. I don't care about the professional thing to do. I don't think I disagree with you. I just want threads to be lazer focused.