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#clojure-europe
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2022-03-10
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dharrigan07:03:45

Good Morning!

mccraigmccraig07:03:25

good dåning

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simongray08:03:45

good morning

pez08:03:35

Morning!

pez08:03:13

Now and then I get offers to sell some consulting hours helping people with stuff in Calva. I always turn it down and instead offer to look at things together briefly for no charge, Most often this is accepted and problems are solved quickly. Today I again got such an offer. I responded the same way and we have a meeting scheduled now. I also asked myself why I do it like this and if I shouldn't see it as a way to finance my open source work. My answer to myself was that it creates the wrong incentives. If I make some parts of Calva hard to understand, it would maybe drive more consulting hours. Does that make sense?

javahippie09:03:01

Bruno Lowagie is the inventor of iText, and he describes the problem you mentioned here. In the end he felt that he had to make a business out of it or else burn out from the effort of free maintenance

javahippie09:03:21

Other maintainers solve this via their GitHub sponsoring: From a certain monthly tier upwards you can get x hours of maintenance / assistance as a company

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pez10:03:24

Thanks! Will check out that book.

slipset11:03:51

I don't think you'd fall in the trap of making calva complicated just so you could earn money on the consulting gig. If there was anything I'd be worried about was taking money to implement specific features for specific customers. Another, and perhaps better reason to not charge for these sessions is that it lowers the barrier for people to ask for help. This means that you get to see more use cases and better understand your users struggles which in turn enables you to make a better Calva.

pez12:03:37

Yes, the latter reason is very real. I enjoy speaking to users and learn about how Calva can help them better. I don't feel these particular session risks burning me out. I am of course not immune against burn out risks, but the moments I feel stress from my Calva engagement is not when I meet and help users. Perhaps my reasoning around incentives could also be expressed in these terms. When I meet users and understand more of how Calva bites them, my empathy is activated and start to think about how I can improve things. It's a positive feeling. Creating the right incentives.

lread14:03:10

Interesting! For me I've avoided being compensated financially for open source work because I expect it will make it feel like an obligation instead of a voluntary fun interest. Sometimes I question my personal stance though. Perhaps if I could take compensation for the work I've already done instead of the work I might do in the future... but I don't think it probably works that way.

pez16:03:46

I do have generous Github sponsors, but that feels more like ”Keep up the good work!” and doesn't give me obligation vibes.

lread16:03:41

Hmmm… also interesting, thanks for sharing that.

genRaiy10:03:34

Good morning

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genRaiy10:03:49

I cheated by using the iPhone 🙂

Ben Sless14:03:57

"Oh, you're finally awake"

thomas11:03:36

I enabled DNSSEC and IPv6 for our domain... achievement!

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metal 1
orestis14:03:56

It's snowing again 🙈

otfrom14:03:00

I think you've had more snow in Athens than we've had in Dundee

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orestis14:03:33

When they start naming the weather you know it's trouble

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