Open Source is Not a Career Path 378
codermarc writes ""If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career path, you're doing something wrong." It's not that Linux creator Linus Torvalds thinks open-source programmers should work for peanuts (he doesn't), but rather that they should be properly motivated. Call it software with a soul, if you like. Only the truly passionate need apply."
untrue (Score:5, Funny)
Software is only as popular as it is easy to use.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So while I see his point, you're right -- it's from a narrow persective. Developers like Linus aren't the ones that get approached when the rubber hits the road, maintainers are. He may look at less famous developers than himself and see little chance of them making money off their work (or less chance of them developing something decent because they are expecting to), and he may be right. He's looking at the wrong group of people, though.
Yeah, pretty much. It's the "science" that isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
The parallels between scientists who pay the bills and get their toys by developing applied science to OS core devs that get hired on by companies for research work are pretty strong, and in that case, I'd say the playing field is a little more equal, though I doubt it is fair.
I picture the heavy OS developers as sort of floating in between the two mostly -- what they want to develop has more of an applied nature, so they don't get the respect pure scientists do (when they do), but at the same time, the spirit of the developer is more aligned with that of the pure scientist -- they want to explore things on their own terms.
If software was truly considered an "engineering" discipline, rather than "computer science" then maybe that would make a home for developers as research fellows at engineering colleges. But even that third category (which I must fess up to belonging to) doesn't consider it really to be "hard core" enough to qualify for their accolades.
Re:untrue (Score:5, Funny)
An example was a meeting I had some days ago (about a website), and we talked about iframes, and each and every time he called it "frameworks" and when we talked about URLs, he insisted on saying UNIQUE RESOURCE LOCATOR (yes, he almost shouted it everytime, hence the caps) - that may not seem too weird if you're english-speaking, but considering we're danish, it was pretty obvious he was hoping for the "wow"-effect.
Re:untrue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:untrue (Score:2)
URIs and URLs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:URIs and URLs (Score:3, Funny)
What's the www for that site?
Re:untrue (Score:2)
If you wanted to play buzzword penis length, you could have told him, "They're called URIs for the past few years now." [w3.org]
Re:software development, not support (Score:3, Insightful)
And if they can get paid doing it, more power to them. Not that I w
Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
That applies to almost any job if you want to do well. Remember all the faux-geeks that went to school during the dot-com-bomb for the money? Those are the ones now working the help desk in their late 20's/early 30's or doing crap work for a 5 PC shop (assuming they're still working in the geek biz)
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical elitist slashdot attitude.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
No passion == A Job
Passion == Fun
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously they complain a lot, but this is because they love complaining. They secretly wish every day for someone to call up wondering why their computer didn't restart when they turned off the monitor, or for someone to call in because they forgot they had to click the print icon to print.
help desks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's missing from the analysis is that even though there's no money in *writing* open source, there's plenty to be made in implementing and maintaining open-source based solutions.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, that hit the nail right on the head.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
A dramatic oversimplification. Even in IT there are interesting and dare I say "geeky" jobs to be had. If you step into a room full of people talking about computers, it doesn't take long to understand from their verbage which ones really enjoy doing systems engineering (figuring out the best and most efficient way to assemble systems and systems of systems, be it hardware or software), and which are the MCSE's (not that there
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, really? Would an writer settle for inking the press? Would a race car driver settle for a lifetime of changing oil?
Being in IT is fine, as you have said, but IT, when all is said and done, operates as the supporting cast for the main business of a company. In no way is it comparable to the grand creative act that the engineering that goes into bringing a product/project to fruition is
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
There may be good indian outsourcing firms somewhere, but I have never dealt with one, or heard of one.
Not that I haven't worked with good indian developers and managers... but they weren't living in india.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if someone was, oh I dunno, a bricklayer, but during the late 90's got an MCSE and started doing tech work, then stopped when the market dried up, sure, that's a poser.
I do what I do because I love it. Never went to school for it. I am desktop support. I'm also a streaming karaoke jockey. But wait, why do I stream karaoke now if i'm desktop support?
I also have my own consulting company. I built a freeswan VPN for my current customer using mandrake MNF boxes. Am I geek enough yet?
If someone is working in a screwdriver shop, or has a support job after the dot bomb, good for them, good hustle. Way to be on the ball so long as they love what they are doing.
There's also all kinds of geeks.
Gaming Geek
Electronics Geek
Phone Geek (Phreak)
Programming Geek
Network Hacking Geek
I can go on and on.
Your post is a troll dude. Bah, i'm done pointing that out. I bit.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone has their own talents. It is an affront to computer geeks when hair stylists or marketeers try to be and don't grok it.
Sadly, there are so many of them...perhaps we should put them all on a ship across the galaxy; make up some doomsday story, then send them off first on a trajectory that will cause their ship to crashland on a deserted planet far away, without the possibility of return...
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
He wasn't saying that being in tech support makes you not a geek.
He was saying that all the poseurs that tried to ride the dot-com boom into sea of easy money when they really didn't have any passion deserved to be dumped off the train. I did personally know somebody who had zero interest in computers but was majoring in Comp Sci for the money. I doubt they went very far.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:2)
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:2)
Next, now serving #42
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, it is apparent that FIRST you have to build a good reputation and merit by actually giving away (freebeer) your initial versions, so that your customers would trust you, then slowly, as your project matures, raise your fee.
I didn't even made this up! Name any succesful (profitable) OSS provider and you'll see that they already do more or less as explained. Red Hat, any of the embedded Linux RT-ers, ...
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
THE TRUTH COMES OUT (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, paying people to write software hasn't exactly given us bulletproof and easy to use products...why NOT have people write code because they like to.
what am I saying? software is the only paychek I ever had!
Re:THE TRUTH COMES OUT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:THE TRUTH COMES OUT (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true of any creative endeavour. Musicians who sing / play because they want to get rich are rarely better than those who play because they love music so much they want to dedicate their life to it. A carpenter who loves working with wood is almost certain to prod
However (Score:3, Informative)
Re:However (Score:2, Informative)
Re:However (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Source vs. Free Software (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the OSI has effected great positive change in making business aware of the benefits of Free/Open Source software, but I think they were pretty arrogant and short-sighted to try to 'dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with "free software"'. The idea that freedom is important for its own sake may be confrontational to a lot of businessmen, but that doesn't make it any less true.
I think a lot of conflict could be avoided if RMS would admit that business cases are important for Free Software and ESR would admit that freedom of Open Source software is important in its own right.
Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)
I do it for shits and giggles.
If I could sell any OSS what I write I probably would, but having writtena good deal of proprietary software for close to a decade, I doubt the value of anything I've written exceeds the cost of the meagre bandwidth it takes to have it.
Nonethless people keep downloading what I write (and posting feature requests and bug reports and their own little tweaks) and I keep having fun doing it all and so long as there's intrest beyond my o
Re:However (Score:2)
I think I got the current job because of my involvement with OSS. Funny, though, the OSS stuff I do (some of it was featured on Slashdot) has nothing to do with what I'm doing on a day job.
Not a Career Per Se (Score:5, Insightful)
Also remember that some open source developers are// paid and do make a career out of it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Passionate software? (Score:5, Funny)
This couldn't be truer (Score:5, Interesting)
Shameless Karma Whoring (Score:3, Informative)
Open Source is Not a Career Path
"If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career path, you're doing something wrong." It's not that Linux creator Linus Torvalds thinks open-source programmers should work for peanuts (he doesn't), but rather that they should be properly motivated. Call it software with a soul, if you like. Only the truly passionate need apply.
That's the message Torvalds and several other open-source luminaries have for the next generation of programmers. "A career path is not a motivation," Torvalds said during Tuesday's Open Source Development Lab's enterprise Linux summit. A reluctant visionary, (he blushed a shade of bright red during an intro that mentioned his inclusion in Time Magazine's list of most influential people) Torvalds is nonetheless passionate about his life's work, an open-source operating system that has blossomed into a major force in the technology world.
The future of open-source software depends upon bright, motivated programmers filled with ideas and initiative rather than programmers promoting their own, or their employer's, self interests. It's a concept that has been embraced by many but is nonetheless counterintuitive to an entire generation of programmers conditioned to view code (rather than the code's problem-solving capabilities) as a competitive advantage.
Times are changing, and the developer community needs to get with the times, said Brian Behlendorf, who shared Tuesday's OSDL keynote with Torvalds, Mitch Kapor, founder and chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation, lead Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton, and OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen. Behlendorf, chief technology officer of CollabNet Inc. and a founder of the Apache open source project, pointed out that the traits that make for a successful open source developer are different from what makes for a successful proprietary developer.
"In open source, you have to be a better communicator and to be able to defend yourself," Behlendorf said. He added that a thick skin also is a requirement when laying bare one's work for all the world to see and criticize. "There's not a lot of room for prima donnas."
Re:Shameless Karma Whoring (Score:2)
If your criteria for being a luminary are CEOship at two public corps and a black mock turtleneck, you're leaving out just about everyone but Steve Jobs, who is certainly a luminary but is not the only luminary in the biz.
You could just as easily say that a couple phone service pirates in greater Frisco selling their VW and scientific calculator to hawk homebrew boxes under the name of a piece of fruit shou
Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
"otherwise"? How about getting an MBA so you can actually communicate with management in their language? This allows you to work with them to drive the projects which are "right" for the business but don't necessarily fit into the small window of the world provided by an accountant!
On that theme, I'd declare that "getting an MBA in an attempt to get into management" an equally dumb decision. You should never consider an MBA an immediate path to management nor
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
Fruitless (Score:2)
An MBA is a tool explicitly designed to land you square in middle management. I'm not sure I'd advocate anyone shoot for that goal, no matter what they are good at. I do not think an MBA prepares you really to lead, to have vision, or how to leverage technology in any kind of intelligent way.
Why would you want to learn to communicate with a group of p
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
Just a slightly unrelated note: I too completely wanted to be a programmer when I was a kid. I mastered assembly, C++, etc as a teenager. In university though I ended up developing several other interests, changed major and pretty much lost interest in it as a career. I would never have believed it if you had told me when I was 13, but I don't want to be a programmer anymore.
I'm just say
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2, Offtopic)
Maybe you should study English a little more.
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
How did you reach that conclusion? Of course people can misuse their own language. A language is not some arbitrary collection of words to use at will. There are rules which, yes, linguists do study (syntax and semantics are just as important in linguistics as history and evolution).
Congratulations on learnt thou
+1 Misguided but Funny (Score:2)
[*] froopsixac - the act of disillusioning one who holds an unlikely, albeit amusing, belief.
Re:Getting into IT as a career path is stupid (Score:2)
Developers versus "support" (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, there are other good reasons to do open source. My current one is perhaps a little more "real world" than those I have had before:
USCVprogs [sourceforge.net]
No such thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing anything for pay is a great way to guide your career. Here's the thing: You never know what the next step will lead to. That's really essential.
I was reading about a guy in Ohio who married a Japanese exchange student. They were dirt poor, he was only, through odd jobs, able to bring home about $100 a month. They lived in his parents' basement and it was really a terrible life.
So his wife suggested that he and she move to Kyoto, where she is from, and she could have better job prospects and he could work as an English teacher. They moved and actually did fairly well in Japan.
Then he decided to follow a "career path" and started his own English school. It failed, miserably. They were forced to move further out into the countryside of Japan.
Out in the country, there was less demand for English teachers, but the wife was able to make enough to survive on.
The husband was experienced in some carpentry since he worked a little with his father in Ohio building houses and furniture. So he built a house for the family out in the countryside of Japan. Very Western. Next thing you know, his neighbors are asking him to build houses and furniture and to redecorate homes in Western style.
Well, if he had followed his career path, then he'd be flat broke and living on the streets of Ohio or Kyoto. But because he was flexible, he was able to find a way to make money and support his family.
There is no such thing as a "career path" except for people with very narrow minds.
Reminds me of an OLD story (Score:5, Insightful)
Walking home through the city after his last day, he really wanted a smoke, but could not find a place selling cigarettes. So, he took what little money he had and opened a small cigarette stand on that street.
People bought cigarettes from him. He opened another one. And he opened another one. Finally, he had too much money to keep under his mattress and went to the bank.
The banker was impressed at all the money he had earned considering he was not literate. The banker says to the old man "imagine where you could have been if you knew how to read and write." The old man replied, "I don't have to imagine, I would have still been a janitor."
hm.. (Score:2)
Re:No such thing. (Score:2)
BS. For every crazy story like you told there are a hundred about people doing fine because they devoted themselves to a career and stuck with it.
open source under-cuts? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironically, the open source developers who developer "for free" in their spare time are, in a way, under-cutting their cousins who are getting paid to develop software for a living.
Like if a bunch of mechanics openned a garage after work and fixed cars for free, wouldn't that hurt the income of the mechanics who are open for business in their off-shift?
Just saying -- hopefully the effect will be to force companies to produce better and more innovative commercial software, but I feel sorry for the poor Borland employee who lost his job because his buddy is working on Eclipse after hours.
Just saying,
Sam
Yes but (Score:2)
Yes but the car pool will be safer and more fuel efficient benefitting the society in general more than it hurt the mechanics.
You point is valid though just too narrowly argued
Re:open source under-cuts? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:open source under-cuts? (Score:2)
I don't think your analogy is very good. A better analogy might be a bunch of mechanics that decided to make cars after work and give them away for no other reason than that they enjoyed making cars with better performance than those available from industry. Yes, the car dealers might lose some sales, but some people will prefer t
Re:open source under-cuts? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not 1984 or Brave New World, things in the real world change and shift. Change is not bad, unless you are an old school conservative but that's another point. If OSS makes better and cheaper software than good for them. However, OSS developers also make money somehow so in the need the total economic eff
Not really true (Score:3, Insightful)
Involvement with popular open source packages is very impressive. Being able to say to your employer "I added feature _______ to project ________" is one way to put something unique on your resume before you graduate college. It's worth double if the employer knows the product, and tripple if they use that feature.
IMHO that's important. It is a career path. It's not a career (except for a few lucky souls). There are a few who make a living off of it (Mozilla hackers for MoFo, IBM, SUN, Google, Novell), RedHat, etc. That is a career.
But to say it's not a career path... that's a boatload of BS. It's been a career path for many individuals.
Not to mention it's one of the greatest learning experiences. I think I've learned more from open source than any class. Much more.
It's about motivation. (Score:2)
I started properly the year I left school, in 1999. Over the couse of six years I've gone from being The Windows Guy at a Unix shop (I got an MCSE out of high school), to a Linux sysadmin working short-length contracts doing everything under the sun, to a relatively well known Linux journalist as the Linux columnist for PC Authority (and t
Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source code is about scratching your own itch, doing what interests you (and potentially no one else), and the pleasures of problem solving associated with writing software. Yes, some open source projects have resulted in success for their developers because it turned out that what that person was interested in writing was somethign that a lot of people were interested in using. In the end though, almost all the really successful open source coders are people who did what they wanted to do for their own reasons. People who are passionate and interested in what they're coding (an advantage an open source coder has, being able to code whatever interests them) are far more likely to write good code than those disinterested in their projects, which has helped make some open source projects highly successful, but it is no guarantee of success or popularity.
The advantage of open source from the developers perspective is that they have the opportunity to do exactly what they want to do, exactly what interests them. The disadvantage is that what interests you may very well be of interest to very few others.
Jedidiah
Mac OS X if you want to do unix for $$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac OS X: Unix with paying customers.
Are there any? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still being in school, I see a LOT of people who went into computers just to make a quick buck, all of them are very strong microsoft advocates.
Are there people who go into OSS just to make a buck? from what I've seen, people who are primarily interested in money are also huge proprietary software supporters, sort of like if the only thing you care about is money, you can't imagine anyone else coding for the love of it, and therefore can't imagine F/OSS being any good at all.
Re:Are there any? (Score:2)
Money is the wrong reason to do anything that requires hard work and dedication.
Tovalds the Great (Score:2)
Sheesh. Maybe Linus and Steve should work together?
We agree (Score:3, Insightful)
is probably doing it for themself.
Linux as a career path (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I used to be a graphics designer until the dot-bomb implosion. I was left with unemployment or entry-level in a new career. After a year and a half, I chose IT. My choices were Windows or Unix. I chose Unix/Linux because it seemed that there were too many MCSEs and A+ certifications flooding the market and I had been "playing" with Linux for a couple of years. I went back to school, got a Unix SysAdmin Certification.
Currently, I work for a commercial software company that creates Linux specific softw
OSS does make a living... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, it's a great path, as long as you go in as a CONSULTANT ($$$). Otherwise, it will always remain as a part time job (unless you work at Sun or IBM though
Software is a field that demands interest (Score:2)
It strikes a sore spot in software people, because they know that they are competing with passionateless people for the same jobs, and being sized up as one and the same by their peers every day.
Not really (Score:2)
As for the competition side of things
I just don't see software a
Utter crap (Score:5, Insightful)
It all depends on what having an "Open Source Career" means to you.
I write database-driven weblications with Linux/Apache/PostgreSQL/PHP. I get plenty of opportunities to contribute to the OSS community, (and I do) typically by providing documentation.
I don't primarily make my living actually writing OSS code, but I frequently release libraries and codebases I consider "commodity". I help out other people.
I contribute to email lists, online forums, etc. and use Open Source software as a platform to provide services for small to mid-size organizations.
No career in OSS? PFFFT!
Here's a thought (Score:2)
No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Bah. (Score:5, Insightful)
SoupIsGood Food
Replies so far seem to be missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"Great hackers think of it [coding] as something they do for fun, and which they're delighted to find people will pay them for."
The other part of it is pointing out that choosing to go into open source like you'd choose to work in a supermarket at uni, really wont work. In the open source world it gets you almost nowhere because being a good coder is something you can't fake. If you're doing it for the bullet point on your resume then it'll all seem like too much work the first time somebody rips on your code.
why not put the whole article in the summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that this is a new phonomenon or anything, but it seems to have gotten way out of hand lately.
Re:why not put the whole article in the summary (Score:2)
probably not, or they might realize when they're about to post it for the third time
The Most Important Point? (Score:2)
No shit. You mean there are actually people take exception to your existence if you disagree with them?
I was told by a friend of mine about a science conference where the speaker was openly and harshly challenged in public by his critics about his conclusions and interpretations. Taki
That's what everybody who's LOVES their field says (Score:5, Interesting)
Computer geeks say it about IT.
Lawyers say it about law.
Doctors say it about medicine.
But what about the fields NOBODY likes? Did you ever hear Joe Toiletscrubber say "don't clean toilets for the money, do it because you like it!"? Highly doubtful.
The truth is, people do go into fields for the money -- including the computer geeks, the lawyers (especially corporate and IP lawyers), the doctors, and so forth. People take up jobs as garbage collectors, NOT because they're passionate about it, but because it's a job few other people are willing to do -- and it pays well because of that fact. Garbage collectors do it for the money.
So do strippers. And prostitutes (indeed, prostitutes in Nevada have been known to work for about 3-4 years, then retire for life with over $1 million in income for their time in bed).
There are people who get PhD's in the natural sciences NOT because they enjoy their academic field of study, but because they know they will make more money with a PhD than a lesser degree.
Telling people to "do it because you love it" is a nice ideal. But ultimately, all things revolve around money, and people will work in IT because there is decent money to be made there (yes, even now with the offshoring and the lack of dot-bombs to leech from, IT is still a relatively well-paying career path).
Be honest: are YOU passionate about processing business reports? How about maintaining 25 year-old COBOL apps? I sure as hell am not (though the theoretical side of "computer science" does interest me).
Are you even passionate about writing code for other people in general when the project is not one of your choice or even really particularly interesting? I'm not -- but I do it anyway, because there are far worse jobs (waiting tables, shoveling shit in Louisiana) that pay far-less too, and I can find ways to trick myself into liking the work I'm not interested in.
Anybody who says "do it for the love of the work" probably enjoys their work so much that they're at the top of the pack -- and Torvalds is probably the best example in the world. If you love your labor, more power to you.
The rest of us, however, will work at what we do because we're competent enough to get paid for it and we enjoy it just enough not to do something else we enjoy more instead -- but we're mentally-balanced enough not to revolve our lives around our work.
MOD Parent up. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's what everybody who's LOVES their field s (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing as I like to look at everything from an economist's eyes, I look at the OSS movement, and what I see are idealistic college students and Europeans whose welfare states enable them to live in meager homes with meager food and no job so they may sit at home and write code. As with any hierarchical structure (in this case, of recognition), a few get paid well (the Linus Torvalds' of the world, who can afford to live on the California coast a
I object! (Score:2)
-Open Standards: Open source many times means open standards for file formats and API's. When you leave the company they can cut and paste in a worker that is trained on the proprietary version with little hastle.
-Productivity: Ruby/MySQL/apache or C#/oracle/Windows Server?
-Portability: Mac, Windows, linux, Solaris... no OS lockin.
-Outsourcing: Say you have a shop in China. Wh
Career Path? (Score:2)
Passion for your Profession (Score:4, Interesting)
Linus's statement seems to have brought out the latent belief in a lot of people that "you can't make money writing Free software." This belief is a falsehood and it only takes a few seconds of rational thought to discover that.
1) Redhat makes money, the employees of Redhat make money. Redhat works with 100% Free software, thus working with Free software CAN and IS profitable.
2) Last I read, IBM currently has over 600 engineers employed working on Free software, maybe even just Linux alone. Those guys are getting paid and IBM ain't doing it for charity, they are doing it to add value to the services and products that they sell their customers.
The way you personally can make money from Free software is not by selling identical shrink wrapped copies, that only works for old-school, copyright-cartel, value-sucking companies. Instead, you make money by ADDING value to Free software. In other words, custom development. This works for the 1-man contract developer as well as huge consulting organizations like IBM's Global Services. Take currently existing Free software and build on it to solve a specific customer's specific requirements. You get paid for that work and, depending on the contract, the effort either stays within the client company or is shared back to the rest of the world. The GPL is designed specifically for that kind of situation and it is no surprise given that RMS often worked on contract tweaking GNU software for individual clients.
So forget all this baloney that Free software "takes away jobs" and the like because it doesn't. Instead, Free software is about not having to re-invent the wheel so that business that USE software can do more for less and are thus even more efficient in the long run. That efficiency helps the ENTIRE economy, not just a select few members of the copyright cartel.
Darn (Score:2)
So blowing $80k on a BS in Linux is a bad idea? (Score:2)
you find that the closed shop of Apple is a good old boys network that Just Ain't gonna Happen for you. And the world of Microsoft is a world of evil Evil EVIL!!!!
So you focus a lot of time and brain cells on open source, and GUESS WHAT?
There's no money in it...
Soooo, what do you do?
Bill Gates: "Roll up your arm and bend over - how do you want it? Regular or Premium?"
Depending on the kin
As i wrote in the comments on that article: (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people just like to read the things they want to read instead of actually try to understand it.
If you want to understand Linus' reasoning i suggest you get your hands on a copy of Pekka Himanen's "The Hacker Ethic".
I consider myself "old skool" IT. I became an IT because i love the technology and it's possibilities. Around me i hear other reasons.. "the job opportunities were good and i saw a chance to get rich quickly" or "well.. i didn't know what to do so i chose this". Linus just asks people to question their reasons. Are you an IT worker who is just in it for the fun or are you one who wan't to make a big career but don't care in what? The first does not exclude the latter and in fact history has shown that the first often leads to the latter. However, of late, new FOSS developers became FOSS developers because they are looking for a career instead of having fun and/or creating art.
They don't care about FOSS, they only care about their career which happens to involve FOSS right now but that can easily be replaced by the "next big thing" come opportunity and chance. They have no real love for FOSS or it's possibilities.
You can have a career in FOSS. A good one in fact.. but please.. do it for the love it. If you create something in FOSS, be prepared to support and or develop it for a long time. Do not abbandon it when you decide to get a career change.
Some clarification, i'm not a software developer. All i know is out of what i experience and read about. Wish i had the drive and passion for software developing.. but simply put.. i'm scared of it... sometimes i'm just glad i can get a piece of software installed (be it on windows or Linux, doesn't matter).
How does this apply only to open source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space (Score:4, Interesting)
And space pens were, in fact, not developed by NASA, but were instead developed by an independent developer.
Source. [snopes.com]
(I suppose I shouldn't reply to this, but whatever. It's always good to get the truth out there.)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
You ask this on Slashdot? I think you already know the answer.
Re:Beware of software communism propoganda (Score:2)
Uhh, senseless or not, the first half of your sentence simply can't be true. My guess is that many in the FOSS community are advocating software communism, just not reasonably enough to be taken seriously.
OSS is the next evolutionary step (Score:2)