My gut answer is “yes!!!” or “revolution” but I want to hear what y’all think. For those unware, some creative professions such as film writers get paid a small portion of all revenue generated by their work after it’s been produced, which is called a “residual,” and it’s part of their current fight with hollywood not properly paying those residuals due to the streaming loophole.
Since most programs that are profitable are based on the work of long gone developers (basically capital that gets worked on by machine labour), I think this might be a great demand for an eventual software development union.
What do y’all think?
No.
Working as a software developer, creating software is a team effort. The developer doesn’t necessarily come up with the requirements. The business is the driver of what the software becomes. You would have to account for the product team as well. What percentage would go to whom?
How would you quantify usage? Number of API requests? Number of downloads? What if the app is only run locally. Are you going to phone home every time the data parser is fired up and charge users on a per row of data processed basis?
What about features being disabled or removed? Refactored by another dev? Now you are talking about algorithms to monitor source control to track who receives residuals. Sounds like a mess.
Sounds like an entire governing body would need to be in charge of how to track residuals. More bureaucracy is bad.
Someone else mentioned responsibility for code after you have left a company. I think one of the most relieving things about getting a new job is the mess of systems you leave behind (only to walk into a new mess).
I’ve signed a contract with every employer I have worked for that states what I work on is their IP. Employees should go in knowing that.
Another issue is fair pay. Ideally everyone would be payed fairly for their work. In the U.S., software engineers are known for being compensated well, so I don’t think that is an issue.
To tie this back to the current situation with writers, a precedent has been set in that industry, where residuals are expected. I do believe there is creativity in software development, but the extent of that is on a person to person basis. Many people write convoluted code their entire careers, which simply gets the job done. Often times creating more work than they realize when it comes time to extend.
This concept also seems to go against those most vociferous pioneers of the industry who advocate for free and open source software? Torvalds, Stallman, Jimmy Wales etc…
If other people work at developing the software, however they do, they should also get residuals too under this scheme. Which is why I wrote “(and every other IP-producting labour).” And the metric for it is actually pretty simple: “How much money did the company make from the software that lists these developers in its credits,” much like how it works for writers, actors and other film workers. Nobody will be charged more for it, specially since tech companies already make boatloads of money from digital (zombie) labour with their IP anyways.
And in my experience, software development is also one very overworked profession with lots of companies with ridiculously high employee turnover rates. You mentioning the US is particularly troublesome because many of their states have “right to work laws” meaning people can be laid off without any proper compensation, and their corporations also offshore a lot of their development work to lower income countries, which complicates their “median salary” statistics.
Thankfully, I don’t live there, but the idea here is specifically to counteract the allure of gig economy outsourced freelancing with stable income from well done jobs. Now, all those questions of how things should be done once it’s decided is for the union to decide, but we already have examples of similar issues having been worked out by the WGA. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
P.S.: I don’t know about the other 2, but I’m pretty sure Stallman’s take is along the lines of “don’t you ever work for a company that produces non-FOSS software!” so I don’t know how you think he’d be particularly opposed to this one vs the current state of the industry.