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

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

#41

Post by gte910h »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #30
gte910h wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 payr…

>some projects cannot be done as day jobs >OS kernels

It's funny you mention that one: My day job for a number of years to was to do linux kernel drivers and other patches.

The fact that Linus didn't work fulltime on Linux seems to contradict your assertion that some projects require full time workers.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

bunderbunder wrote: post #29
npsimons wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by human_error »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #30
gte910h wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 payr…

> He started the kernel when he as a Master's student in Finland, too.

No. He released Linux in 1991, he received his master degree in 1997.

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

#44

Post by kisielk »

An interesting perspective. I too would like to spend more time writing open source software. The main reason I do not, and something which I think holds true for a lot of people, is that even if our company wanted to open source some of our software it's fairly difficult to do so and of questionable value.

Many of the components and practices in our software are quite specific to our business and environment. They'd just be useless or, worse, an impediment to other people wanting to reuse the software in a different context.

Even if we were to refactor parts of our code base to produce some "clean" components that didn't rely on the specifics of our business or other processes, there are many cases where that would just add to the overhead of maintaining the software for us.

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

#45

Post by riledhel »

kisielk wrote: post #44

An interesting perspective. I too would like to spend more time writing open source software. The main reason I do not, and something which I think holds true for a lot of people, is that even if our company wanted to open source some of our software it's fairly difficult to do so and of questionable value. Many of the components and practices in our software are quite specific to our business and environment. They'd…

You are understimating the value of your software. You never know who can find your work inspirational or educational, even entertaining.

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

#46

Post by davidw »

ajross wrote: post #34
antirez wrote: post #26

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... B…

I don't think resources are really the problem. There's a ton of money out there that pays for full-time open source developers. Basically all the core contributors of all the "serious" projects (i.e. things shipped in high-revenue-producing contexts) are already on staff somewhere. It's true that there's a much larger population of people (like me) who want to work full time on open source and would take a job if it…

> There's a ton of money out there that pays for full-time open source developers.

I don't know... I'm not sure it's really a ton. And a great deal of it comes from companies that derive their revenue from something else - in many cases, proprietary software. Ubuntu, for instance, is all about Mark's millions made from the sale of Thawte.

> So basically the solution, if you want one of these jobs, is to get off your butt and make something people want. Then give it away. :)

And then hope it's useful to someone who makes a bunch of money via proprietary software or something else that's scarce, and that they hire you. Why not just make something proprietary of your own to be more in control?

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

#47

Post by davidw »

crcsmnky wrote: post #7

Interesting perspective but I have to say there are quite a few companies working the whole "open source the code, charge for consulting, etc." thing. Just in data alone, Cloudera, Data Stax, Basho, 10gen and Hortonworks come to mind. My point is that thousands of people get paid to work on open source projects. The project might not be their original creation but they still get to give back by producing something th…

The problem with consulting is that you first have to have a product. That can take a lot of time and money to produce. Then, if you start consulting, it's all about billable hours. Hours spent fooling around making the product better may not translate, at all, into more money for the company.

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

#48

Post by CPlatypus »

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.

Do you seriously believe that's why developers went that route? I always thought web-apps arose because people thought the web was the best way to connect with their users, and SaaS because they felt that was the best way to keep costs down. In neither case does the protection of intellectual property enter the picture at all . . . but let's say, for the sake of argument, that that was a significant motivation. Would that be right? Would it refute the GP's point? I don't think so. It's still awfully easy to say that other people's code should be free. If anybody really is adopting these approaches to avoid having others "pirate" their code, I certainly hope they're not "pirating" or freeloading themselves.

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

#49

Post by ajross »

davidw wrote: post #46
ajross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think resources are really the problem. There's a ton of money out there that pays for full-time open source developers. Basically all the core contributors of all the "serious" projects (i.e. things shipped in high-revenue-producing contexts) are already on staff somewhere. It's true that there's a much larger population of people (like me) who want to work full time on open source and would take a job if it…

> There's a ton of money out there that pays for full-time open source developers. I don't know... I'm not sure it's really a ton. And a great deal of it comes from companies that derive their revenue from something else - in many cases, proprietary software. Ubuntu, for instance, is all about Mark's millions made from the sale of Thawte. > So basically the solution, if you want one of these jobs, is to get off your…

For some definition of "ton" anyway. Developers are cheap, comparatively. But the point remains: all the major kernel developers are paid for. All the big X.org people too; the Gnome people (though I'm told that investment is lacking on KDE); virtualization folks behind Xen and kvm; Android obviously comes right out of Google's payroll, likewise Chrome and Mozilla products.

Really, if you were handed a big check and told to build a team of open source people, you'd have a hard time doing it without poaching from Red Hat, Google, Novell or Intel.

And the final point was exactly what I was getting at. Getting yourself a free software gig requires pretty much exactly the same things as getting yourself a funded startup. In some sense it's a subset. Whether you want to make proprietary things or not is, I think, a personal decision.

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

#50

Post by jdost »

Oddly, in the age of the internet, it is easier for someone to do open source at least part of the time for their employer. With the internet, a lot of the money for web based companies is not from the software itself, but the services the software provides. This allows for the company to open source a large chunk of the code base and still make money to pay the developers. (see things like 37signals/RoR)
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