The dispassionate developer

Mark is awesome.

I'm betting on this article being controversial here somewhat. The point on OSS is hilariously true though. Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? OSS is great for almost everyone, don't get me wrong, but in whole, the largest tech companies in the world have gotten an entire community to test, fix, and develop software for them at zero dollars. Small devs can make some use of it, but the gains mostly go to FB, Google, MS, and more. Those OSS contributors who believe their work is bettering the community based on the (entirely moral good) concept of Free and OSS who have had their house gaslit against them do not get paid for their work that the large companies gain from.

I almost feel like that for-profit companies of a certain scale should be charged a reasonable licence to use OSS software and that money should be re-distributed. I know there is GitHub Sponsorships but now that MS runs that, well, there went that. Large companies are parasites that have zombified OSS with cute "X Beyond that, the bit on passion being a weakness is incredibly important. I have been mulling that over the last few years in America. Extreme political movements tend to cater to a popular passion that they can then bend to their will (such as religion) that they then try to tie their movement to it. (E.g. "You are not a [religion/passion here] if you support [political opponent here]", even when the usurper's agenda is not clearly aligned to the religion.)

It's interesting to read blogs, they almost universally make these leaps of faith that x implies y without noticing that they do it and spend the rest of the time operating on these faith-based assumptions.

Let me give a couple of examples from this blog:

Software devs had anti-capitalist values -> free software -> unintended consequences -> customer is the product

Do you see where the leap of faith occurred? The last arrow. If you're young and you don't know, when app stores on mobile phones started and apps got built, most of them weren't free. When facebook got started, it was free, but it had nothing to do with anti-capitalist values, etc.

Another example:

employers want people who are passionate -> do open source to prove your passion

Where's the leap of faith? The initial premise. Let me give another example that'll perhaps illustrate: when women get polled about what they look for in a man, they say: sense of humor.

Does anyone take that seriously? No, right? We know people are full of shit and say one thing and mean another? Well, not people who write blogs or comment on twitter a lot of the time!

So much of blogging and twittering, is taking false premises or helping start new ones (first example). Guys/gals, I can forgive people who have never heard of A implies B in their lives. You have, please check that A = true and A actually implies B, every step of the way.

Apply mental-tests to your own thinking - it's great that you get software to compile, please get your view of the world to compile to a level a random stranger on the internet can't tear apart within 10 seconds.

> Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right?

Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit.

There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.

Working in the industry kills one's passion. It did for me.