I'm not good enough to work on open source software • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#21

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:13 PM UTC

cynicalkane wrote: post #17

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravo and bingo. These are the exactly the frustrations I tend to feel as an unpaid, open-source coder. And the next level of the phenomenon is that the entire software industry has shifted its business model to avoid having to compete with piracy or open-source. There are now, to my knowledge, two major for-profit companies building their own PC operating systems: Microsoft and Apple. There are four or five building…

Now, another scary thought: what if someone stole the code and databases to your web-service? This exactly. It's easy for a community oriented around mostly around things like webapps, SaaS, enterprisey stuff to hop on the anti-IP bandwagon. It just so happens that there's no convenient ways of pirating their software.

It doesn't "just so happen". SaaS and web-apps arose deliberately on the marketplaces as a way of producing software that could not be pirated without actually getting past firewalls and cracking private servers.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#22

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:17 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #19

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravo and bingo. These are the exactly the frustrations I tend to feel as an unpaid, open-source coder. And the next level of the phenomenon is that the entire software industry has shifted its business model to avoid having to compete with piracy or open-source. There are now, to my knowledge, two major for-profit companies building their own PC operating systems: Microsoft and Apple. There are four or five building…

Ugh, I hate the use of the Chinese as the boogeyman.

Then imagine the Indians, or the Germans, or (to a much lesser extent) the Israelis. The point is, what if someone says, "My comparative advantage will be that I steal your code and localize it for people who don't speak your language"? Baidu is Chinese Google, Wallah is Israeli Yahoo. Once you've got web designs out in public, or important algorithms like PageRank in published research papers, these supposed "trade secrets" to running a web-service are actually dead easy to copy/steal.

The only reason Google doesn't feel the pain from Baidu is that Google never depended on China as their primary market. While we're talking about the Chinese versus other nationalities, by the way, the Chinese currently share the attribute of many rising superpowers (including, in its day, the USA): complete disrespect for "intellectual property" as subordinate to actual production.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#23

Post by j_baker » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:18 PM UTC

gcp wrote: post #10

j_baker wrote: post #5

As someone who has been paid to work on OSS, let me say that it is absolutely not about skill. Most notably, Google and Mozilla pay plenty people to work on Firefox and Chromium. Even Apple has some OSS projects (Webkit and Darwin come to mind).

Maybe its better to say that "there is no need to be a superstar programmer" to work on OSS. The companies you list aren't known for hiring unskilled workers :-)

Indeed, but they're by far not the only ones working on OSS. They're simply the most recognizable. I've worked on OSS for companies with far less stellar track records when it comes to hiring.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#24

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:19 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #21

cynicalkane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, another scary thought: what if someone stole the code and databases to your web-service? This exactly. It's easy for a community oriented around mostly around things like webapps, SaaS, enterprisey stuff to hop on the anti-IP bandwagon. It just so happens that there's no convenient ways of pirating their software.

It doesn't "just so happen". SaaS and web-apps arose deliberately on the marketplaces as a way of producing software that could not be pirated without actually getting past firewalls and cracking private servers.

[deleted]

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#25

Post by gte910h » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:22 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #20

gte910h wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do OSS full time? Release libraries that are better maintained by a community than a company and do your day job.

1) Because, as I tried to explain, some projects cannot be done as day jobs, and almost have to be done as open-source nowadays. 2) What day job?

You aren't giving examples of 1

As to 2, If you code, it's a very hot job market out there right now.

You make a lot of what seem like handwavey notions that OSS coders should get paid or go on strike or something like that without really convincing why.

Most professional coders know what they use daily has some strong OSS roots (then there are other branches which have little involvement there). A subset of them do work on them.

The fact people make stuff in the evening that happens to be OSS is often a sign of they like to program not some economic crime.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#26

Post by antirez » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

I guess that in some way a lot of companies are taking from open source without giving enough back. Open source is much cheaper than proprietary software to produce, a team of a few guys do the work of what would be a much bigger team in a proprietary software, and there is no need to have a profit, paying the developers is enough, so... if companies using open source would give back even a small amount of money...

But maybe some global "fund" should be used or something like that, I don't think that giving to the project you use is going to scale (we don't want a few guys rich, and nothing for all the rest, otherwise it's a company). But then bureaucracy starts to be an issue, who selects the right projects? And so forth. Not trivial.

Or maybe the solution is that if you are an enough large company, hire N open source developers. Like charity there should be a non written rule that most tech corps should follow. Like the 1% rule: hire 1% of your work force to write open source (and probably this would end being a largere return about branding than many ADs large companies run for more money than that).

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#27

Post by npsimons » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:31 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #15

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravo and bingo. These are the exactly the frustrations I tend to feel as an unpaid, open-source coder. And the next level of the phenomenon is that the entire software industry has shifted its business model to avoid having to compete with piracy or open-source. There are now, to my knowledge, two major for-profit companies building their own PC operating systems: Microsoft and Apple. There are four or five building…

I think it might be instructive to think of what the world was like before the idea of letting people who create intellectual products maintain some ownership of (and therefore be more able to make a living from) their work: - Serfdom was still legal in most of Western Europe. - Professional artists occupied the same social rung as prostitutes. - An intellectual professional's primary option for making a living off h…

I can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source. When you bought a program (if they didn't throw it in for free with the bloody expensive hardware) you ALWAYS got source code. People still sell open source software; I've never understood why people think that commercial software is incompatible with open source. It isn't.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#28

Post by jasonlotito » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 4:46 PM UTC

The article is confusing. He talks about intellectual property, copyright, and open source. He seems to confuse intellectual property and copyright (or at least, use them interchangeably), and seems think that open source and copyright are at odds. That open source licenses rely on copyright indicate this isn't the case.

Maybe I just misread the entire thing, but I honestly don't see the message he's trying to get across. It feels like their is a massive amount of context that is missing from this.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#29

Post by bunderbunder » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #27

bunderbunder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be instructive to think of what the world was like before the idea of letting people who create intellectual products maintain some ownership of (and therefore be more able to make a living from) their work: - Serfdom was still legal in most of Western Europe. - Professional artists occupied the same social rung as prostitutes. - An intellectual professional's primary option for making a living off h…

I can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source. When you bought a program (if they didn't throw it in for free with the bloody expensive hardware) you ALWAYS got source code. People still sell open source software; I've never understood why people think that commercial software is incompatible with open source. It isn't.

I can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source.

And yet, computing professionals were much less free than they are now. Because programmers almost universally worked at the King's pleasure.

The exception to that rule was small garage shops. Like Microsoft and Apple.

Re: I'm not good enough to work on open source software

#30

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 5:14 PM UTC

gte910h wrote: post #25

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because, as I tried to explain, some projects cannot be done as day jobs, and almost have to be done as open-source nowadays. 2) What day job?

You aren't giving examples of 1 As to 2, If you code, it's a very hot job market out there right now. You make a lot of what seem like handwavey notions that OSS coders should get paid or go on strike or something like that without really convincing why. Most professional coders know what they use daily has some strong OSS roots (then there are other branches which have little involvement there). A subset of them do…

>You aren't giving examples of 1

OS kernels. Linus used to work for Transmeta (sorry if I misspelled the name) as a chips-and-assembly guy before they got enough charity funding to put him on full-time Linux kernel coding, remember? He started the kernel when he as a Master's student in Finland, too. It took until the late 2000s (after having started in 1992 or so) for the creator of Linux to be put on full-time payroll working on Linux.

>As to 2, If you code, it's a very hot job market out there right now.

It's a very hot job market but very, very specialized. I cannot tell you how many things I've applied to and never heard back, gotten interviews with and been turned down for having the wrong skills (ie: C, C++, Java, Scala instead of Ruby on Rails, HTML+CSS, iPhone, Android), been turned down from for no given reason whatsoever, been turned down from because I had admitted to applying to PhD programs (and that was simply the coolest company I ever loved interviewing with that turned me down like this, and a HN-featured start-up too!), and just generally not had offers forthcoming.

Honest to God, if you'd like to see my resume so you can tell me what the fuck's wrong with me that's creating this pattern, I'll send it to you, have at it.

Oh, and then there's the companies with broken jobs websites. There's nothing I hate more than trying to apply for a job I'd love and finding myself facing a page that says, "Oops, an unexpected error has occurred!"