Open Source is Not a Career Path
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Added this forum as a test of the newsletter editorial automatically generating one. Apparently I have some formatting work to do, but here are a few replies I've gotten in email.
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Linus Torvalds, the founder and father of Linux said this week that "Open Source is not a career path" at the ODSL's summit. That's funny, because I think most of you reading this and many people that are devout Linux users are thinking exactly that they can make a career of open source.
I've seen many open source writings about the ways you can make things work with examples such as Linus, the authors of Apache, the folks that wrote the Berkley-db, etc. and make a living. But most of these examples are people that are great programmers or technical individuals, the sort of which are rare and would probably succeed in many of their endeavors.
For the average Joe or Jane out there, we do need a career path. We are people that are happy to work and earn our money, but we're not the brightest of best stars in our areas, just competent or even very skilled individuals. For many of us, professionalism is the way and reason that we work. We take pride in what we do, and want to do well, but we don't do it for some ideal. And many of us aren't interested in continually lobbying our management that they should be spending resources and money on that ideal.
I'm sorry, I don't believe all software should be free. If people were more honest and upstanding in how they deal with code, and maybe a little less greedy, then maybe I'd be more for open source, but I think that closed source, proprietary code has a place in this world. I think programmers should be paid for their time as should companies. I think things can go too far in any direction and I'm not a huge fan of some of Microsoft's tactics to keep their platform closed or force upgrades, but I do feel that they have done lots to bring computing to the masses.
I know I'm walking the middle here, but that's how I feel. I like the idea of open source. I've learned many things from examples and other's code, but I've also written some things that I don't want to give away for free. Nothing in this world is free. We all pay in some way. Free TV has commercials, free giveaways from a store or radio station have some marketing appeal, free newspapers and other media rely on advertising, which in turn raises the prices we pay for everything. Free is non-existent and in many cases I think the Internet is conditioning too many of our younger people that things should be free as in beer when the intent was always free as in speech.
Steve Jones
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Robert A. Heinlein, in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, coined an acronym which applies.
TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
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You have blinders on, buddy. You DON'T have to be an amazing programmer to be an OS developer any more than to write proprietary code for a company. The fact that more people see your code means it's held to a higher standard, maybe (good inline notes, documentation, and secure), that's good and everyone can do those things!
On the trivial side, many people who post scripts on SQLServerCentral are developers who are giving thier code away. Without these examples SQL would be much harder to learn. We are all in debt to these people, and repay them by posting our own code. And nobody makes a profit (except SQLServerCentral, by selling advertising!
. Open Source is just a way of controlling how profits can be made. In the example above, it would be an agreement between SQLServerCentral that the developer gave up no rights to the code, and SQLServerCentral could not modify the code without making the modified code available. You don't have to write an operating system to be an open source developer. Of course all software shouldn't be free, but SOME of it should. That's OS.
You think that closed source, proprietary code has a place in this world, and it does. But some people prefer to see the code they are running (and be able to modify it), and that's OS.
You think programmers should be paid for their time as should companies. And they should. That's what I do. And no Open Source developer is going to write custom code for a company without compensation. If the company gets the rights to the code, then the developer gets paid. But if it's a project that interests us, gets our attention, then we'll write for free, without thought of personal gain. And to make sure no "greedy" people can legally make our code their own IP we'll make it Open Source.
I appreciate you saying there are some problems with Microsoft's business model. And you're also right that they have done some good. MS is not a good or bad company, there have elements of both (as in most things). But they are threatened by OS, and should be. Did they really think a billion Chinese people where going to pay them a relatively large amount of money for Windows and Office? Please....
As you say, nothing is truly free (except air...nobody's been able to corner the market on that one...yet). And Open Source isn't truly free, either. But it's more free, as in freedom AND as in beer, and that's a good thing.
Please don't be a mouthpiece of the man...you're to smart for that. And please take closer look at OS before you pass judgment.
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couldn’t agree more. Usually I don’t jump in on these, but it tires me hearing of people wanting things free, especially artistic and development work. The artistic community did not show nearly enough outrage over Napster, IMHO, and the next logical step would have been all purloined software would/could have been posted, with exactly the same copyright infringements. I tire of hearing educated people argue ‘they make enough money anyway’.
I think the equation is simple. It has been proved over and over again, that if there is a payoff, people will work hard. This includes artists and software developers. No payoff, then only those whose human needs have been met through birthright or good fortune will be creative, the rest will have to search out gainful employment.
In the Open source movement, the payoff is elusive. The top of the pyramid, as you point out, will have a payoff. The others will have to seek gainful employment. If they intend to use the same skills for their employment as they do for their open source contributions, then they face the paradox of wishing to be paid on one hand, and being prepared to donate free on the other hand, for like effort. Because I am closer to being average than I am to being at the top, I will choose my pyramid carefully.
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Wow, either you are hiding the real inputers or you have the whole split personality thing down to a science.
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I considered posting something about it being a one sided conversation, but then decided it really wasn't, considering all the personalities displayed!
Steve (not Jones)
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LOL, forgot to remove my sig. I didn't credit people without their approval. Only the first two posts are mine.
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While there's places for varying models, a working open source world has room for exponentental growth.
Imagine medical progress if each doctor kept private whatever he learned about particular diseases. He's learned one thing, another doctor learned another thing, but each one protects their turf and the overal growth in knowledge is negligible. The open medical model (which certainly does NOT inhibit doctors from making money) has made the explosive growth in knowledge possible.
The error here is thinking of profitability soley in terms of sale of shrink wrap items (which is a tiny amount of IT budget), rather than the much bigger world out there in the trenches. There is lots of profitable work to be done in applying, customizing, configuring, developing and maintaining applications. Whether the core engine is open or closed is immaterial to the profitability of most of us.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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Hey Steve, nice one-man show this thread
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
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