March 25, 2025 at 8:08:20 PM UTC

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Bluesky	May 2023	1,039	8,236	23,127	2,380
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GitHub	Jul 2010	179	5,777 3,520	33,866	3,317
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bribecoding is a new phenomenon where you pay open source developers a living wage to work on projects that your business uses

Also posted to Mastodon.

70 replies

Mia [data-css=poetic] Mastodon 2 min later

@zachleat Is there a 'bribecodable' list I can join? Please do bribe my code, thanks.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 9 min later
  
  I can pretend that a systemic problem is an individual problem for $10, if that helps
  1. baconandcoconut Mastodon 1 hr later
    
    @zachleat Lolsob
  2. Mia [data-css=poetic] Mastodon 2 hr later
    
    @zachleat
    I heard that in Jeopardy! voice: "I'll take Systemic Problems Left To Individuals for $10, please Alex"
    1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 2 hr later
      
      @mia even jeopardy is pinching pennies with that category award $ amount
esmevane, sorry Bluesky 3 min later

surely you've already said 'why vibe when you could bribe' out loud by this point, right?
1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 9 min later
  
  I have now!
  1. Private reply Bluesky 1 hr later
    1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 hr later
      
      I prefer atribecalledquestcoding where you just listen to questlove playing drums while having a cardiac arrest
      1. Private reply Bluesky 1 hr later
        
        Private reply Bluesky 3 hr later
        
        Private reply Bluesky 3 hr later
Tim Fish Bluesky 6 min later

Bribe suggests some kind of nefarious activity
1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 10 min later
  
  just nefarious enough to be cool
  1. Tim Fish Bluesky 2 hr later
    
    We should decriminalise paying open source developers
    1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 hr later
      
      *looks around* are we sure crime doesn’t pay
Jason Garber Mastodon 13 min later

@zachleat more like bropen source amirite fellas
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 13 min later
  
  @jgarber …wait
  1. Jason Garber Mastodon 17 min later
    
    @zachleat I’m in my own toot and I do not like it.
2. Sara Joy Mastodon 28 min later
  
  @jgarber @zachleat don't forget the SaaSterhood
  1. Jason Garber Mastodon 35 min later
    
    @sarajw @zachleat 😂😂😂
Ville M. Vainio Bluesky 13 min later

Paying?? I thought we could just vibe it to existence with Cursor now
1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 16 min later
  
  you’re paying bribes to the wrong people
Daniël Franke Mastodon 16 min later

@zachleat No that’s called “a win win win situation”
Ray Gesualdo Bluesky 43 min later

Read this as "bridecoding" and was very confused for a minute.
Greg Haase Mastodon 1 hr later

@zachleat Sorry, but open source bounties have been around for a very long time.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 1 hr later
  
  @haaseg you don’t have to be sorry about that
  1. Greg Haase Mastodon 1 hr later
    
    @zachleat Oh, I meant "I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. Corporations paying Open Source Developers is not 'new'." Not only have bounties been in play for a while, but many companies openly contribute full time staff to projects"
    1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 1 hr later
      
      @haaseg sorry, I knew that but I was matching your energy 😅
      1. Sam Livingston-Gray Mastodon 2 hr later
        
        @zachleat @haaseg I love Mastodon; one can always count on someone to fail a Poe's Law saving throw
        
        Greg Haase Mastodon 3 hr later
        
        @geeksam @zachleat sorry I failed at the 'pointing out that "new phenomenon is not new"' test. I'm still not sure I get why I failed that.😞. But I'm glad you got to tell me about Poe's law! But I don't get how that's related either. I'm probably getting trapped into an implementation of nested Poe's law. Let's go one level deeper.
        
        Sam Livingston-Gray Mastodon 3 hr later
        
        @haaseg your reply appears to have been predicated upon an assumption that @zachleat was not, in fact, shitposting
        
        The Long Tail Mastodon 13 hr later
        
        @geeksam @haaseg @zachleat It's always sh1tp0sting.
𝙋𝙨𝙖𝙡𝙙𝙤𝙧𝙣 Mastodon 1 hr later

@zachleat
FOSS = $8.8T value addition
Billion dollar companies: But we can't afford to pay for things!
Techsorcist Mastodon 1 hr later

@zachleat I dunne, that just sounds like #Communism with extra steps
EmB Philo Mastodon 1 hr later

@zachleat
Great point, but…
In the past, open source developers have extorted clients to extend the life of sub-par apps they have created or have done maintenance on.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 1 hr later
  
  @MBtrueb example?
  1. EmB Philo Mastodon 2 hr later
    
    @zachleat the company where my husband worked, Follett Corp., Chicago, had a custom database system that really wasn’t that good, but company was dependent on it. The man who designed and maintained the database, Chicago Cypernetics, nursed it along, but wouldn’t ‘allow’ true upgrades. But that was a while ago…
    1. Dec [{()}] Mastodon 16 hr later
      
      @MBtrueb @zachleat
      A custom database from an open source developer?
      1. EmB Philo Mastodon 18 hr later
        
        @dec23k @zachleat Okay, not valid or possible - I retract my comment…
2. kimapr ☭ 🇺🇿 ⚧ ⚢ ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜 Mastodon 2 days later
  
  @MBtrueb @zachleat We should do more of this
Mark Mastodon 1 hr later

@zachleat that's a neat idea. A more common approach is closing the source, running the product into the ground, then showing it to my boss.
Burton Smith Mastodon 2 hr later

@zachleat I think... I could really be on board with that.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 16 hr later
  
  @stuffbreaker I forgot to say that this is all on the blockchain
  1. westbrook Mastodon 17 hr later
    
    @zachleat @stuffbreaker That's how you get the investors excited, right?
    1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 17 hr later
      
      @westbrook @stuffbreaker you gotta NFTease them
      1. westbrook Mastodon 17 hr later
        
        @zachleat @stuffbreaker This is definitely my new band name... "The NFTease". Perfect for announcing from the stage, and singularly unreproducible?
        
        Zach Leatherman Mastodon 17 hr later
        
        @westbrook @stuffbreaker good for merch crossovers too
        
        Burton Smith Mastodon 3 days later
        
        @zachleat @westbrook you had me at "blockchain".
        
        westbrook Mastodon 3 days later
        
        @stuffbreaker @zachleat How did you know our first single!?! It's not even on my hard drive for you to hack on the Tidal, yet...
        
        Burton Smith Mastodon 3 days later
        
        @westbrook @zachleat great minds think alike, I guess. It's the new kind of "vibe coding".
Michael Roberts Mastodon 4 hr later

@zachleat It'll never catch on.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 16 hr later
  
  @vivtek I’ll pay you $10 to change your mind
  1. Michael Roberts Mastodon 17 hr later
    
    @zachleat To my great surprise, I find I can't joke about this.
    1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 17 hr later
      
      @vivtek because integrity is worth more than $10!
      $11?
Marty Fouts Mastodon 4 hr later

@zachleat by headcount the overwhelming number of open source developers are paid a living wage and have been for years. For example there are thousands of full time Linux developers and Android OSP is almost entirely developed by paid professionals.
There are very few successful OSS projects anymore that are entirely or even mostly developed by volunteers, although some of them are critical infrastructure.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 16 hr later
  
  @MartyFouts it’s almost as if “successful” OSS projects are ones that are funded — strange
  1. Marty Fouts Mastodon 17 hr later
    
    @zachleat Not nearly as strange as the myth that open source is entirely developed by volunteers in their spare time.
Renatus Ingenarius Bluesky 8 hr later

I thought it was called employment
1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 16 hr later
  
  wait hear me out what if we start a new gig economy app and ecosystem focused on stability where you can *favorite* gig workers which puts them on a subscription model — this means those workers will show up regularly to complete tasks for you and in exchange you give them salary and benefits
Knut 🏳️‍🌈 🇳🇴🧸 Mastodon 11 hr later

@zachleat god, you youngins are silly. Way back in my day #FOSS devs had to give blow jobs on street corners to pay for a dialup connection between 5 guys living in a 2 bedroom house next to a liberal college campus with Sun machines had to all share. And you're telling me people get PAID for this now? Where might I accept bribes?
Lorenzo Isella Mastodon 11 hr later

@zachleat I am not sure it is new. A case which does not involve open source (I read it on slashdot ages ago) involved a US employee who outsourced his job to an Indian developer. Said person was fired primarily for sharing company info without permission (otherwise, he did on his small scale probably exactly what the company used to do on a larger scale). Again ages ago I remember a proposal of someone from Manchester university to outsource research always to India.
naugtur Bluesky 12 hr later

Supporters get a copy of the source code that has meaningful variable and function names, everyone else gets the same working software but all names are misleading so that AI gets confused.
JamesTDG Mastodon 16 hr later

@zachleat honestly, we really should be diverting investments in Adobe, Autodesk, and more into the Foss alternatives. I would kill to have a version of autodesk's software that did not have the DRM that they bloat their shit with.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 17 hr later
  
  @JamesTDG hmm do you think vibe coding will increase bloat or decrease it
  1. JamesTDG Mastodon 17 hr later
    
    @zachleat probably increase, I have tried looking at some AI generated snippets of code, just to see how bad it is compared to what I can do on my own, and it's definitely a little bit of bloat, but on a large enough scale of usage from a large enough population, I could see it being a notable impact on bloat for software.
Amy Goodchild Bluesky 18 hr later

it'll never catch on
1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 18 hr later
  
  I’ll pay you $10 to change your mind
astrukme Mastodon 1 day later

@zachleat
I did this two decades ago as Project Manager Software Developer for a Startup.
There where 3 developers of addons for the CMS who where more than happy to be paid to work together to interconnect their 3 addons.
We didn't had to invent the wheel a second time. They were paid more than fair for their work. The time to market was limited.
Win. Win. Win.
1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 1 day later
  
  @astrukme triple wins!!