Dare Obasanjo

Residuals are a rather fantastical compensation mechanism when compared with other industries. Imagine if software developers kept receiving a paycheck as long as the company was still making money from your software.

Marc Andreesen would still be getting residuals from Firefox for code still around from the Netscape Navigator days. Similar for Windows 95 code in modern Windows. https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/14229/is-there-any-code-in-firefox-as-of-2020-that-comes-from-netscape-navigator

Is there any code in Firefox (as of 2020) that comes from Netscape Navigator?

Inspired by comments on the previous question Is it true that Netscape Navigator eventually became Mozilla Firefox? (Answer: Yes). In 1998, Netscape released a large amount of their existing sourc...

Retrocomputing Stack Exchange
Jul 22, 2023 at 11:43pmWeb
Show threadJon (now at neuromatch.social)Jul 22, 2023
@carnage4life Then again software developers get stock options (or grants), which is better than the $0.07 checks the screenwriters I know get every quarter. And to some extent Andreesen's entire career has been a residual from the Mosaic/Netscape days.
Show threadTechronic9876Jul 22, 2023

@carnage4life

you’re getting dangerously close to reinventing blockchain and smart contracts 😛

Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Jul 23, 2023
@carnage4life if tech had residuals, I'd probably make enough money by now to focus on open source & my company full time — I've so much code that I know is still in production! Code I wrote in 2015 is still used & maintained, an app I worked on in 2019 is now the company's core product, a product I built in 2014 is still live, etc.
Show threadJoe ❌👑Jul 23, 2023
@thisismissem @carnage4life Except that movie industry residuals are tiny except for a few big stars, so you wouldn't be getting much.
Show threadWayne MyersJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life Imagine if software development was, except for a lucky few, a field notably difficult to get consistent work in even for people at the top of their game, and that most of what work was there was not actually all that well paid.
Show thread❓ucblockheadJul 23, 2023

@conniptions @carnage4life Exactly. I have worked on a lot of projects that either failed, or were only ever used by a handful of people. The success or failure of the projects I worked on were nearly always entirely out of my control.

On the other hand, currently I have stuff out there used by hundreds of millions. Not because of my own skill, but because of the projects I stumbled into.

Show threadMutesplashJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life Code might be worth more if it were good and aged well
Show threadAlex LeveneJul 23, 2023
@Mutesplash @carnage4life
The same is pretty much true of actors tbh
Show threadMark DownieJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life Developers cede our copyright to the company we work, I am not sure the last time I thought about it. Authors have the Writers Guild of America, not many developers are unionized in that way. Really interesting comparison though.
Show threadJoe HarrisJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life stock grants are basically residuals.
Show threadSteve Dinn 🇨🇦Jul 23, 2023
@carnage4life I wish I saw an extra dime when salespeople closed a deal for software that I wrote. But I don't.
Show threadMark vWJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life Assign your copyright to your boss, and the boss gets the rights forever! Programmers are professionals! They don't need no stinking unions!
Show threadClio DunnJul 23, 2023
@markvonwahlde @carnage4life
I remember this discussed years ago on an article about the white collar sons of blue collar fathers rejecting unionization. Looking ahead is hard! 🤦‍♀️
Show threadJim WinsteadJul 23, 2023

@carnage4life It’s not dissimilar from the fights you see around licensing of things like libraries and how that intersects with open source. Some people get very worked up about not getting a share of revenue when they feel like someone downstream from them is making more than they do.

The history here matters a lot. Screenwriting sort of developed out of playwriting where you have licensing for performances, which makes the idea of residuals entirely reasonable.

Show threadEPD Total LandscapingJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life electrical engineers with a couple classes in C under their belts would have been getting residuals from the code in automotive control modules until they die.
Show threadScott GrimmettJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life Unconvinced.
Show threadforrestoJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life I get "karma residuals" for decade+ old Stack Overflow answers.
Show threadJonathanJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life what about patent licensing? If I invent something you can use it as long as you continue to license it from me. There are plenty of examples in tech of this.
Show threadRaphael LullisJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life software, unlike movies or books, is never finished. Also, how do you assign monetary value to code that is freely distributed?
Show threadSaphire LatticeJul 23, 2023

@carnage4life probably would give a lot of incentive to keep the developers around instead of firing them at random?

Like... If you are going to keep paying someone, might as well have them work for /you/

Show threadNerdenatorJul 23, 2023
@carnage4life I’d say that shareholders receive that. And in many industries, lots of execs get stock grants.
Show threadspheruliticJul 27, 2023
@carnage4life one of the great things about open source is that developers retain copyright on the code they contribute for the whole process.