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> If you're in a creative industry - and I consider software a creative industry - giving away your creations for a wage is psychically harmful. If you're genui

> If you're in a creative industry - and I consider software a creative industry - giving away your creations for a wage is psychically harmful. If you're genuinely creating something of value, you want to own some fraction of its value - its revenue-generating value, its future cash flow. If you work as a freelancer or partner in a small agency that does software development for non-technical clients, then keeping ownership and reselling your work is often possible. You can negotiate to sell the client a non-exclusive license. But it's not realistically possible for an individual contributor at a medium to large tech company. There are too many people involved with each project or product, and no part of it is individually useful. You can't resell a git patch that fixes a bug in an existing codebase.

barrkel 9y ago
You can't resell a git patch that fixes a bug in an existing codebase. This isn't an act of creation, usually. I'm thinking more around creating UI components, or developing libraries that add whole new facets of functionality, or enable new ways of working with data. Things that could be reused elsewhere, or enable higher-level programming of application features. But it's not realistically possible for an individual contributor at a medium to large tech company I wouldn't agree to being an individual contributor on a wage-only basis, at this point, without major compensation. A possible exception would be something vocational: going back to working on developer tools, perhaps.