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by privong·11y ago·view on hn ↗
> Not to mention I've heard stories of developers whose motivation to work on open-source projects has gone _down_ since getting paid, since it makes it seem like work instead of a hobby.

I am having trouble finding a good link, but I believe this effect is well documented in several areas – where compensating someone for an activity winds up with them being less likely to do it.

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Dan Ariely talks quite well about the subject of social norms vs financial norms and how just assuming you can move an activity from one to the other is very ignorant.

http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%...

If some "pay for open source work" scheme got github level popular it would completely destroy open source for a long time. Right now there is more work being done than the community could pay for. But at the same time, it's handy to use bribes to get some necessary but boring stuff done.