Ask HN: Why Doesn't an OSS Developer Union Exist?
I would like to open the floor for discussion.
I personally want an OSS Union for situations in which trillion dollar megacorps attempt to bully OSS interop project maintainers and give them trauma over C&Ds which they get almost no support for.
I would pay at least $20 per month to be part of this union. I would like it to protect all OSS devs even if they have no propensity to pay.
I think this will be an important tool to fight enshittification.
Comments
EFF and sfconservancy exist, they are probably closes to what you can realistically get in this environment. They are are non profits that can try to influence policy but not much more to "protect" individual developers.
Unions (at least in theory) have a way of bringing an employer to the negotiating table by getting a large enough portion of the employees to stop working and bring the employer's business to a halt. in the days of factory picket lines, they were able to prevent other people from working even if they wanted to. this is what gives a union negotiating power. I can't see anything similar for OS developers. What would be the threat? "We'll stop giving you free code?"
regarding a protection union, what you're talking about seems to be legal insurance, and that already exists, but it's significantly more expensive than $20/month.
I think most open source developers simply aren't facing this risk, the only ones that I can think of are Nitter and the various Nintendo Switch emulators...