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Dare Obasanjo Jul 22, 2023

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...

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Wayne Myers Jul 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.

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❓ucblockhead

@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.