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[Union demand proposal] Should software development (and all other IP-producing labour) get paid residuals? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, the current system of paying programmers for as long as they're employed works in that case. In my experience, you tend to work on much the same software the whole time anyway. If it were more like phone apps, then yeah, you kind of do get residuals in the form of a 99¢ payment each time somebody buys it. Another analog is software licensing. I don't know about you, but I hate "renting" software. I'd much rather just pay a lot now and be done with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t know about you, but I hate “renting” software. I’d much rather just pay a lot now and be done with it.

I very much agree, though I'd much rather it be free (open source) software, at which point there would be zero residuals because it's free. Obviously that creates an incentive against working for companies producing FOSS that I didn't think about beforehand. It then starts to look like those 20th century "homeowning initiatives" from the USA to make people invested in property rights, which is exactly the opposite of what I'd want. Not sure how that'd play out in practice, but it's worth considering.

I also didn't think before the post about the corporations "outsourcing" the costs to either costumers or other employees, and I'll definitely consider that. Though in my shallow defence, it's mostly because I already see most tech corporations as very "lean" and have gigantic profit margins, so they already have very deep pockets that we could reach into. And there's also lots of them that actively operate at a loss to disrupt the competition, at which point I'm not even sure how residuals would be calculated, because profit vs revenue would yield vastly different numbers.