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Open source devs consider making hogs pay for every Git pull (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 day ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/opensource@programming.dev

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Opinion: Careless big-time users are treating FOSS repos like content delivery networks

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[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

This plays in to my idea that every HTTP request could have a microtransaction (like 0.001 c) attached and those who couldn't pay would have ads on the browser level and not on the page level. Altermatively you'd get a fixed monthly budget as part of your ISP plan.

What I am essentially advocating for is that part of what you currently pay for your mobile data plan should go directly to the sites you visit.

[–] bless@lemmy.ml 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I agree in principle, but do you have any idea how many useless http requests the modern web makes? Open the network inspector and load any modern page.

Between fonts, analytics, and web frameworks, that will add up very quickly :(

[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Yeah, my impression is that ordinary human activity in a browser creates a lot more http requests than scripted automated activity through command line tools.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess a question is who would set the prices. If sites could set them themselves, then some would set it at zero to have an advantage, and resort to the same surveillance-based funding model they rely on currently.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

One option would be to enforce a price floor that would be set to whatever the server operator could prove is the cost of serving a single request. (per byte, also fixed costs when there's no traffic mess this up). This would absolve website owners of the need to find any other funraising methods if they want to break even, and thus remove the incentive for installing spying ads. It would still keep in tact the incentive to make servers as cost effective as possible.

I'm not sure if such a means-tested price floor mechanism has ever been used in the past, so idk how well this would work.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Looks like a self-enforcing tax rate (comparable to price floor) has at least been proposed:

[...] have proposed having owners self-assess the value of their property under penalty of having to sell at this self-assessed value.111 This has the simultaneous effect of forcing truthful valuations for taxation and of forcing turnover of underutilized or monopolized assets to broader publics.

From https://plurality.net/read/5-7/