Young Programmer, Stop Advocating Free Software! 1452
Lansdowne writes "Clemens Vasters, in an open letter to a young developer he met at a software conference, asks him to consider the consequences of writing software for free. "Software is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again."" While I don't particularly agree with all of the points made here, this is the type of question that needs to be answered to continue to get people involved in Free/Open/Libre/GNU/whatever source/software/code.
worth? (Score:4, Insightful)
why is worth always measured in money?
Icculus is making the loot (Score:2, Insightful)
The value of software (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't have it both ways ... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not great, but human nature is to take the cheapest alternative that works. Sure, some companies will choose more expensive options for support, or ease of use, but most people want something that works, and something that's cheap, and if an open source / free (cost) solution does what your expensive product does, count yourself out of a job.
Free Software (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Something like an painter, generally you're painting for free until your talent is discovered, and then you rake in the big bucks...
Don't misunderstand the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you write a successful application, you have book deals.
OSS is a sure and quick way to show your prowess and become moderately famous overnight.
And Most importantly, I haven't yet met a boss who could take free code and use it. No matter how free and open code is, there is still a job market for people who can use it, tailor it, and integrate it into a business.
The list goes on. But as you can see. Writing OSS isn't throwing your time away.
Its a support issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
Write the software for free and then earn a lifetime's wages in supporting it.
Problem solved.
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have a better idea? I cannot think of one.
So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well unless the letter was a very elegant piece of irony (and I doubt it). He should STFU and help these young subversives bring down the pillars of the temple that has so elegantly enslaved us all. Ok that last bit is a little severe but it's pretty close.
Re:worth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you plan on living with your parents your whole life, money is what keeps you alive.
You can say that knowledge is priceless, should be free or whatever you want. The fact of the matter is that your knowledge is what gets you the job that pays your salary that puts food in your mouth. Knowledge has a monetary value.
Funny thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most work in this world is brain-grinding, soul-sucking tedium. It isn't satisfying. We do it to get paid... and maybe we like the field itself. But the majority of any job is jumping through hoops.
So you go home, and what do you do for fun? Maybe you watch TV... or maybe you do the part of your field that was really why you got into it. The part you like... the part you rarely get to do at work.
Giving away recipes? (Score:2, Insightful)
wow.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If free=valueless, how about the letter itself? (Score:5, Insightful)
Applying this logic to the letter itself, offered for free (the horror!), an interesting conclusion is reached regarding its value.
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly because it's money that puts food on the table and a roof over the head. And in the end, those are two very important things in life.
Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a troll, I use open source software and have contributed back, just I have a family to feed as well. This is why I prefer the BSD license to the GPL ...
PS to letter (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't help your fellow man, it's a screw everyone before they screw you world.
The only thing you need to measure yourself with is money. If you do something and don't make money from it, you're a failure.
Don't try to help your fellow programmer and accept no help from them, and beware their code! After all, they may be after your job...so best you be private and screw them before they screw you (see above)
If you learned to do something in school, you MUST make money from it, or you're a failure (again, see above)
With best wishes for your future (but not really)
Clemens
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
People will get it as they get older.
Doing stuff for free is great, as long as it doesn't interfere with putting food in my belly and doesn't stop me from living my life the way I want to.
I think a lot of the people who are screaming free everything haven't yet had the pleasure of being on their own, or being responsible for their house, car, food, clothing, utils, wife, etc.
Of course, I'm sure someone here will correct me, I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about.
Re:worth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not programmers, but companies should release OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of companies paying programmers good money to write free software. They want the software, and they believe that the quality of the software will increase by releasing the source. Or they believe they will sell more hardware when the software running on it is free. Or they sell support on the software they release.
Nobody asks a programmer to work for free. The author of the letter thinks that releasing code for free equals not getting paid for writing it. Think again.
It's increasingly a two-way thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where most coders work, this is where most of the money is (unless you happen to write windows or office) and this is why Windows so dominates the desktop environment, because MS made it easy for people to create bespoke applications.
People will write free operating systems and database engines and paint programs, but if I want a bespoke package written to my spec to run my company then I have to pay for it, and that's where coders make their money.
Indeed.. Only corporations should exploit (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine a guy with 10-20 years of experience as a technologist.. He ends up taking a $40K/year job as a sys admin to pay the bills in the down market..
Should he follow his normal work ethic and work 60-80 hours a week or put in a 'six figure salary' effort? Hell no!
If you can't get what you feel you are worth in the market, donate your time and skills where it will be appreciated and have a greater impact.
Not getting paid as a C++ programmer because you are a sys admin? Then don't answer development questions for your at-will employer.
Re:worth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Eeeep. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source != free (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone should put together a license (if it does not exist yet) that allows a corporation to use an open source software product only after paying a fee to the project owner (an individual, a group, a community, etc).
3 words: Work For Hire (Score:5, Insightful)
Passion and Warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
You can always code at job, and if your passion is so strong to let you stay awake and code during the night, well, what's the matter in that case?
Most of the times, coding at work is not so exciting, challenging or stimulating...just because there's some company's logic to respect...
Nothing, in the coding world, is comparable to the immense satisfaction you get when some people email and thank you for the stuff you made publicly available.
Day job (Score:5, Insightful)
Most OSS developers are very talented (they wouldn't love what they are doing otherwise). They shouldn't have much problems landing a good job.
Or does the old fart indeed think that a guy should found a business on a project they create during their studying days? Does he think that the guy doesn't have what it takes to get a day job, so he should grasp the first straw he can get, i.e. his OSS project.
Getting bundled on a Linux distro is a bigger honor than most of us in OSS will ever get.
Or maybe his writing skills are worth nothing? (Score:3, Insightful)
A programmer's worth may not manifest itself in the price of the software. While I am vehemently against copyright (and copyleft), I am not against the right of people to make money with their skills. I feel a good programmer is worthless without others.
A good programmer needs to first be able to produce something that others want. If that programmer wants to be able to make money, they can do it in a few ways. Sell the software (which requires good marketers, good distributors, and good retailers). They can also offer the software for free and find a way to entice software installers/consultants to reimburse the program (maybe for updates, etc).
I can see how giving away software seems to value that software at $0, but that is never the case. Businesses always look at the total cost of ownership, even if they don't seem to outright. A business that pays zero for software may discover a year later that they had more outages, bugs, and employee frustrations, and the cost of ownership may have meant lost business.
On the other hand, the company may have bought $500 off the shelf software, and had no employee complaints. Even though they didn't directly assess the TCO, the software stays valuable because "if it ain't broke..."
If you're the world's great programmer, it won't matter unless you work with others. That's called the free market. Writing the most bug free version of "Hello, World" will get you zilch, because there is no market for it. It has no worth to anyone.
Writing a competitor to Windows might have worth, but only if your software can be marketed correctly, can be distributed efficiently, can be installed effortlessly, can be supported by a variety of consultants, and can run with little downtime for the end user.
If you keyhole the programming industry, you ignore the most important facets of the free market: individuals, groups, and corporations working together to provide what everyone wants. Some need software, some need money, some need uptime, some need someone to hold their hands to comprehend why they need to provide some of the above.
Don't pay attention to just one individual, you'll fall prey to those who want to control you and force you to make bad decisions.
Well, I suppose he has a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't misunderstand the issue (Score:1, Insightful)
But most don't actually have anything to do with programming, as you show in your own examples below
Once you write a successful application, you have book deals.
But I don't want to write a book. I want to be paid for writing code.
OSS is a sure and quick way to show your prowess and become moderately famous overnight.
Again, fame does not necessarily lead to money (just ask RSM)
And Most importantly, I haven't yet met a boss who could take free code and use it. No matter how free and open code is, there is still a job market for people who can use it, tailor it, and integrate it into a business.
Does that involve programming? Maybe the "tailor" part, but how do I get into that again?
The list goes on. But as you can see. Writing OSS isn't throwing your time away.
You are going to have to think of more credible examples to convince me
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a small company that makes money by selling proprietary software. I'm the DBA, and get my work done using primarily free tools (MySQL, PHP, Perl, Apache, Linux, BSD.) I also write open-source software on my own time. Everybody wins.
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope I'm not alone in thinking thats a very sad state of affairs. I'm not saying that coding for money is a bad thing. it's good to be able to afford to put food on the table, feed your family, hell, even buy toys. however why can we not also do things for the good of mankind?
I don't recall mother teresa making a big buck out of her ceaseless efforts (unless I've missed her unofficial biography). okay, so she was supported by others but her unselfish acts had a big impact on many people.
many great artworks and musical works were done for free.
jees, come on guys. does our every act have to be for money? there are other things in life.
dave
free software? not really... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:worth? (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm a capitalist... (Score:5, Insightful)
But when I was just getting started... when I was just a "young programmer" I wrote software and gave it away for free. This was long before the idea of GPL and such (AFAIK). My first big give-away success was FRPBBS, a piece of C64 BBS software that was unique in that it focused around running online roleplaying sessions. Those were the days!
That part of my life was absolutely essential to what I do today. I know employ a goodly number of people and contribute to our economy. And I owe a lot of that to the early experiences, encouragement and sheer fun of being able to put my code "out there".
Shall we do away with the Olympics because all endevors should yield an immediate profit? Small minds fail to graps the big picture yet again.
Re:wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Giving away recipes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I'll rattle off a few: Elaines, Wolfgang Puck's Spago, Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, Commander's Palace...want more? Let me know.
But please, you MUST know that a recipe is only one part of a meal at a restaurant...it's also the way it's prepared, WHO prepares it and what could be substituted at what it goes with etc etc.
Re:worth? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have obviously not witnessed the asshole at the company who does not get laid off because he refuses to transfer his knowledge about XYZ product. Value is all relative. In this case, Asshole has a significantly positive value on his knowledge and his abillity to hord it.
Yes, I was assuming we'd consider knowledge and implimentation hand-in-hand, although they're not.
think of it as an abstraction (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly with society: to a taxed economy, the total amount of cash available is less important than the amount of flow of cash - it is the flow that is taxed, and hence allows governments to do their (supposed) good works. Equally it is the flow of cash that causes anything to be done. (I build you a fence, you mend my car; if the cash exchanged is the same then nothing has changed other than we now have one fixed fence and one mended car)
I think the same is going to become true of software. I have maintained for a long time that if the only thing you have that makes you valuable is your source code, then you are doomed. It is the ability to create the source code that has value; otherwise when something new is needed, there is no way to make it.
If the idea of free software takes off, the software industry won't die, it will become like the legal profession (yuck
Wow, is this off the mark (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you are a OSS developer, it does not mean you work for a company that writes OSS. This guy's letter is, well, to quote him: "It's idiocy". You can't assume that a company is just going to buy/get software for their needs. A lot of companies house their own developers write custom code for them.
Sorry, just ranting.
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
His letter is basically "What's your plan for moving out of your parents' place?"
Simple reason, everyone wins (Score:5, Insightful)
So what do you do in your spare time? You work on your pet project, in which you can apply all the knowledge and nifty things you learned and/or you ever read about. And hey! It looks good on your resume too, because your real job doesn't give you the experience in those new technologies that your future employer/customer wants/needs.
And besides, Open Source is good for everyone, because the guys who do use your stuff can concentrate on delivering value to their customers, ie. writing boring business apps that implement the functionality that their customer asks for in their bizarre and overly vague requirements. And they also save time, so they can meet the deadline that their horse ass project manager has set all on his own.
Everyone wins with Open Source I think. It gives you the opportunity to start programming at a higher level of functionality.
When it is called 'culture', everybody agrees that it's been a good thing for ages.
PS. That's why software patents are bad. They block this culture, this incremental growth in knowledge.
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:5, Insightful)
if an open source / free (cost) solution does what your expensive product does, count yourself out of a job.
So what you're saying is that if you charge for your product, you'll get no sales because someone else does the same thing for free? And if you don't charge for your product, you'll earn nothing and starve? Nice, a lose-lose situation!
How about starting out writing OSS (instead of shuffling burgers or doing tech support) and when you're built some experience and reputation either start charging for support/book deals/customizations or accept a reasonably well-paid job coding for money and keep doing OSS on the side? I don't see Linus starving...
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with making money. There's also nothing wrong with being motivated by other things. Have you never made a donation, or volunteered your time, or even held the door for someone? Did you expect money for these activities? If you did, then I pity you... you live in a very small, cold world.
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:3, Insightful)
And if that other closed source package does what your expensive product does for less, you can also count your self out of a job.
Just because there is free software does not mean it all has to be free anyway. I use Linux, and contribute to a host of 'free' software programs. I also write software that is not 'free' that I also happen to benefit from.
Most people code for 'free' software to add a feature to a product that does almost what they want. Its a lot easier than writing an app from scratch.
Why should we all spend our time reinventing the same wheel for different companies? Just so we can get paid? Sorry, that kind of behavior belongs to politicians.
Important point missed (Score:3, Insightful)
I think of my code released under GPL as a sort of repayment of the above. I don't feel like the sucker Clemens tries to convince me that I am.
Free/freedom.. again (Score:5, Insightful)
The writer is correct from his point of view: if you are already employeed writing closed software for sale open/free software gives you no benefit. It competes for customers, and the free/open software developers do not necessarily get payment in return for their work.
The truth is a little fuzzier: most software in this world is not written for commercial sale. It is written within companies to solve particular problems in support of business processes. If no commercial alternative exists, or if an external entity cannot create a custom product then a business creates their own. Since this development is a sunk cost, sharing it, and possibility benefiting from someone else's work has no negative effects on the bottom line.
The other angle is this: as a purchaser of business software I look more favorably on open than closed software. With closed software the vendor controls me. The vendor can increase costs, withdraw support and make pretty much whatever demands he wants. With open software I have a escape clause... if my relationship with the vendor becomes negative, or I need a feature the vendor cannot/will not supply I can always take the source and find someone else to support me. If customers start demanding this option, closed vendors may not want to become open, but they may have to in order to compete. (Free/open products give control back to the consumer, a plus for the consumer, a minus for the producer)
Re:wow.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Worth (Score:5, Insightful)
In science there is the opportunity to work in an interesting field while working for a corporation. The problem is the work will become patent encumbered and proprietary as soon as it has any value. To let other people share in the success, and even improve upon it, something like a University grant is required for which the pay is lower.
You do your best every day of your life, make major discoveries and solve complex problems, and then you die. If you work for a corporation it's likely that your work will remain the private property of that corporation long after you're dead, with most people associating your work with the company and not you. However, if you gave up potential money to share your work then it is more likely to live on with little chance that your work will be associated with anyone besides you. So, ecide which you find more compelling.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, back in the day we used Tomcat and wrote most of our stuff in-house. We had a need to write a custom security layer for authentication/authorization against both LDAP and a windows domain controller. Nothing like that existed, so we wrote one ourselves using the Tomcat SecurityPrincipal interface and simply pluging in our extensions. Took a day, at most, to write and test, whereas we would have had to jump through hoops for weeks on an IIS system.
That's where your money comes from. Taking what's already written and what nobody wants to write again and adding business-specific logic, and integrating it with other systems. One of our vendors has changed their business model. They make virtually nothing on software sales and support, but they survive on their consultancy business. IBM is also doing this, and you can see by Microsoft's latest ISV push that they recognize this trend as well.
The question now is do I pay for closed-source software and lock myself into consultancy from that one vendor, or do I use an open source package as my base and pick and choose the talent that I bring in to improve and maintain it? If it were my business, I would choose the latter.
Re:Google and Linus (Score:2, Insightful)
The next question... (Score:1, Insightful)
What R. Stallman and others try to do is to say "hey, forget ego, let's free our spirit and make it a value". In that case the value is only the name of the author that programmed the software, no financial value, a lot less of ego involved. This way the game is purer and simple: you know in advance that you own "nothing" and therefore don't live in the illusion that other people may have. What is the value of not living under illusion? That's the next question.
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm 41 years old. I "got" that there is more to life than doing things for money a long, long time ago.
Fortunately, no one is demanding that you not feed yourself, or that you not live your life as you choose. Why the "Straw Man"?
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really; that's what it boils down to. Whether or not someone develops software for free or for money -a situation which is entirely independent of whether or not the source is open- is that person's own prerogative and no one else's.
This guy's just mad because he can't compete on price and doesn't want to compete on features or support.
Re:Day job (Score:2, Insightful)
From the letter, it sounds as if the student thought having a day-job, producing closed-source software, would be an affront to his belief system.
If that's the case, the student does need to grow up, or else get a day-job that has nothing to do with writing software. Sure, maybe he could be one of the lucky few that works at RedHat or something, but realistically, that's probably not going to happen. If it does, good luck to him. If he can develop his own revenue generating OSS software support scheme, more power to him. But the odds are definitely not in his favor.
--
Slashdolt
Re:wow.. (Score:3, Insightful)
once I have a program "out there" as it were, the program is going to be so improved vastly by people who have vastly more knowledge than me.
On the one hand I'm glad that you derive pleasure from seeing your work go out into the world and continue to grow and develop. On the other hand (assuming that you want to write code full time) that warm fuzzy feeling is going to be offset by the growling of your empty stomach.
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other people's time contributing to this software is worth *more to me* than complete ownership of what I can write on my own.
If we put numbers to it, it would look something like this:
I can spend an extra 500 hours a year trying to sell it (opportunity cost of 500 hours development which I'd rather do). I make a total of $10k off this software. But I've hired out testers, coders, designers, etc. since nobody works for free anymore. I spend $268,000 on them. I lose $258,000.
Or, I work on it and buy the participation of others with sharing of the software.
I think what really drives these guys nuts is that there are leeches who might be willing to pay for something but don't contribute to it. This lost potential gain isn't the same as a loss. It's just the price of doing business in the free software world. Maybe that person is contributing to another software project we're using. Maybe they just spread the word and that ends up drawing in a new developer's time somewhere. Maybe they just like using our software and all we get is satisfaction for having created something (when was the last time you got that on a proprietary contract?)
Imagine if no doctors did volunteer work or worked below their earning capacity. Ever had a teacher who could have been doing something else that paid a lot more? A lot of firemen could do better financialy (not to mention safety) to work somewhere else. There is a definite value in doing what you want.
bussiness model (Score:1, Insightful)
Do bussiness really need to buy massive made or specific/customized software?
Which model allows them to take mode advantage of the benefits that a piece of software aims to bring?
Most business needs specific purpose software, there are no two similar bussiness who has the same procedures, same organizational model, same management and so.
If you have made customized software for this bussiness you'll agree with me, a piece of sotware shouldn't change the management, production or bussines model, it should adapt to it and improve bussiness production, I mean it shouldn't tell bussines how they should work, it should allows them to take adavantage of its benefits.
the answer seems clear to me.
btw. I wonder if now he owns a bar or disco, seems he properly invested their incomes when he was young.
I dont write Open Source code but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I dont need to answer him, merely look back on history for the last few hundred years. If everyone who ever lived had their sights set on that sort of goal, this world, this life that we live, these things that we see around us in our daily life, would not exist.
Everything that you see, around us, everything that we use in our life, everything that makes our lives a bit more easier, a lot more sane, are because of people who gave up that dream to have a home at 30 and living with a beautiful girl. And if it had not been for those few, we would never know our true potential.
Not everyone will achieve that dream of true greatness, thereby inspiring the rest of the world to be like them, but if we dont follow in the paths of people who inspired us, then what good we are, as fellow geeks, as fellow human beings.
Missing a point (Score:5, Insightful)
See, there's so much I can do on my own. But if I want something done, and by letting you use my code I'll get some of yours in exchange, I've actually gained something, I've gained the hours of work it'd have taken to add that code, correct my bugs, or whatever that other person who uses my code gives me. That's the heart of the GPL.
If I have to put a value of n dollars per line of code, does that mean someone who sends me (or the public repository) y lines is actually giving me/us money? Is code worth a lot? Yes, that's why getting extra code on top of mine is a good value I get for releasing my software for free.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:5, Insightful)
Clemens is condescending and deceitful (Score:3, Insightful)
"However, I start to wonder where your benefit is. You are - out of principle - not making any money out of this, because it is open-source and you and your buddies insist that it must be absolutely free. So you are putting all of that time and energy into this project for what? Fame? To found a career? Come on."
It's not about direct personal benefit, Clemens!
"The whole thing about 'free software' is a lie. It's a dream created and made popular by people who have a keen interest in having cheap software so that they can drive down their own cost and profit more or by people who can easily demand it, because they make their money out of speaking at conferences or write books about how nice it is to have free software."
Clemens' letter is an obvious attempt to support his means of making money (and age-ism), that's for sure.
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly because it's money that puts food on the table and a roof over the head. And in the end, those are two very important things in life.
Yes, they are two very important things in life. But they're not the only two very important things in life.
Plenty of people who write free software are putting food on the table and a roof over their head. Some of them are doing it through that free software work; others are doing it through other things they do. Why is it an either/or proposition? Are you really suggesting that each and every free software developer is housed and supported by their parents?
Re:Linus (Score:3, Insightful)
Most free software projects I see resort to panhandling for compensation. "If you like this program please send 5 dollars to my paypal."
Blech
Excellent point (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed he has.
I am 17 years old, and I have been working on open source software for a while now. I would never consider closed source software as a preferred alternative to open source simply because once I have a program "out there" as it were, the program is going to be so improved vastly by people who have vastly more knowledge than me.
Not only that, with GPLed software all of those improvements by "more knowledgable people" are guaranteed to benefit your project, and hence you. Not only can you leverage your own knowledge and skills in having created or supported a free software product (consultancy, writing, system integration, etc.), you get to leverage the skills, time, and expertise of many others
Selling software for money directly is only one method of making a profit, and unless you are in a position to try and leverage the deepest underlying infrastructure in order to become a monopolist, it isn't a very interesting method. There is far more opportunity, and far more money, in selling services, turn key solutions, and other products built upon software, with value added by your work and expertise, than there is in selling software directly, and this can be done for more readilly, and far more profitably, upon free software than it can upon proprietary software. Not so much because free software tends to be gratis, but because free software is libre, giving one the freedom one requires to put together a compelling solution without running afoul of this or that EULA, or worse, finding one's vendor to be in direct competition and sabataging your product by deliberately breaking compatability at the operating system and C library level (as Microsoft did to numerous competitors in the 1990s, including Netscape).
The result is a rich environment full of financial opportunity. I am turning 40 this year, and have made a very fine living (probably much better than the author of this letter) for over a decade using and developing free software. I have benefitted immensly from the works of others, and others have benefitied immensly from my work (and I'm a very minor player in the free software world).
The opportunities for business and profit are far richer in the free software world than they are in the proprietary world, where for every Bill Gates or Bill Joy there are tens of thousands of programming serfs with no rights to their work (it being a work for hire assigned to one's employer) and no real way to leverage their skills and knowledge without walking a minefield of non-compete and non-disclosure agreements.
There is always someone in the world who can do something that you did, better, and that's what OSS is, doesn't that guy get it?
This guy is old guard, and frightened of the implications of a changing paradigm. He is doing what many frightened people do
Do what makes you happy (Score:2, Insightful)
I really appreciate open source because it gives me a lot of examples. By reading others' source I feel I become a better developer. I want to give something back to the community myself, to help others. I think open-source can be an excellent learning tool.
I'm a paid programmer for a company that normally develops proprietary software for research, but recently I've worked on two open-source projects. I also work on open-source projects in my spare time. I make money at my job, and I've had the luxury of getting paid for writing open-source. You can have it both ways, just do what you love.
I am an asset. Not my code. (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, they also use a lot of free and open source software internally (esp. bugzilla and apache), and see no problems with employees giving back.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:1, Insightful)
Failing to do so shows that this guy is just mouthing off without any knowledge of what he is talking about. What a waste of space.
P.S. Just how does paying a microsoft tax make Aiden better off. He will never make it as a commercial programmer since going through the Microsoft hoops will only be possible for big companies, but if he does Free Software then maybe he can sell maintainance for much more.
The thing a programmer most wants. (Score:3, Insightful)
James
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
He is trapped in the old thinking that software is a product that needs to be sold like it is scarce.
He thinks free software somehow makes it impossible to profit from.
Jeroen
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
I really doubt that we will ever see too many professional level games (for example) released under the GPL (though I have no doubt that older games will continue to release their code, as ID software did with Doom). HOWEVER that isn't really the point of the GPL. Stallman started it because he was prevented from improving his printer's performance by a combination of closed OS software, closed drivers, and NDA's. Operating Systems are a natural place for GPLed software, as are drivers (if anyone can add more value to a particular piece of hardware by improving its drivers it will help the hardware manufacturer sell more units; hardly something they'd be opposed to).
OF COURSE people need to be able to put food on the table somehow, its not mentioned in the GPL because its assumed to be a given. Only the very foolish believe that somehow the GPL and propriatary software are in a titnaic battle from which only one will survive. The world needs both. As a programmer/hacker I want access to as much code as I can get. Code I can learn from, code I can use (why reinvent the wheel?), code I can modify. By releasing some of my code under the GPL I enrich myself by producing an environment where more code is available to me. By releasing some of my code propriatary I enrich my self with cash. I see no problem doing both.
Will some propriatary software outfits either go out of business or shrink? Sure; that's hardly a catastrophy though. I personally suspect that the era of closed operating systems is drawing to an end, open source simply makes too much sense in that area. MS will probably be out of the operating system business in ten years (or at least severely weakened in the OS business). However I don't think MS will do belly up. Frankly their office package is quite nice, and were they to focus on that rather than wasting billions on their OS it'd be even better. Balance is the key here, as it is in so many areas.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:3, Insightful)
For fun? For interest? To prove to yourself that you can? For the feeling that you've contributed something useful to the world?
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, for me... now that I just hit 40, it is about the free speach.
Dollar for dollar, I'd go with the Open Source solution. For those that don't understand what I just said...
I'd pay just as much for my Open Source software, more even, than I would for my Mac OSX or Windows software... which I also have and paid for.
The most valueable part of my computing experience, by far, is the Open Source parts.
Practicality (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw a post from some seventeen year old bragging about how he'd been working on open source stuff for a while, and isn't that just fine. But sorry, at seventeen you know so little that you don't even realize how little you know.
Sure, we can all point to Linus and ESR and say "Hey, they've made it big, therefore the business model to which we aspire must be valid!"... It may be valid, but it's hardly useful to refer to anecdotal evidence in support of that point.
So I reiterate - the only people I will personally listen to in this thread are people who can personally attest to living in the REAL world, and living REAL lives, entirely on Open Source dollars.
Closed-source point of view (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I write closed-source apps for Windows users. Of the 11 software programs on my web site, 10 are freeware. The other one supports my endeavours.
I use Linux a lot, and I can see that the kernel, the kde/gnome desktops and many other applications are ideally suited to having lots of hands and eyes working on them. However, I have no intention of open-sourcing my apps. Why?
1) I have a shared code folder, the source files are used in all my apps. Change one piece of code, it changes all the apps when they are recompiled. If someone modified or rewrote a piece of code, it has to perform in exactly the same way or all the programs have to be rewritten to deal with it.
2) If I did open-source one of my apps, including this shared code, and contributors submitted changes or patches, any changes to my shared code would end up in my one and only commercial app (since it shares the code.) It's one thing contributing to freeware, and quite another to contribute to an app which is being sold.
3) My commercial app is well regarded. I have no intention of sharing the internals with competing software. I can just imagine my email load if I also had to explain why functions were written 'like that', what the variable on line 386 does, etc.
4) I code part-time, and already have a full-time job. It's all I can do to provide (free) support and keep improving my software. I don't have time to manage a project with many contributors, to check contributions, check in code changes, etc.
5) I've always designed and written my own software, I know the code backwards and I am very good at keeping bugs out. Pasting in slabs of someone else's code would be like paying a mechanic to replace the engine in my car - unless I took the thing apart and examined every piece, how would I know it wasn't cobbled together from a wrecker's yard? (I'm not trying to say that contributions are inferior, or that I'm some kind of master programmer. What I'm saying is that without studying the code I won't know if it's worth adding into the program. And it's quicker for me to write the code from scratch than to read and check a contribution line by line, then add it to the program.)
In the past 3 years, only two people have asked me for source code, and both wanted to incorporate my code into their commercial software. In both cases the effort for me to cut out the pieces they wanted would have exceeded any financial reward.
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
As for making money from your education, while I am the first to point out that one should not base one's education solely on one's vocational interest (e.g. take lots and lots of elective courses outside of your focus, feed your mind while you can), if, like me, you spent tens of thousands of your own (not your fellow citizen's via the confiscation of the government) dollars/euros/whatever on that education, it is reasonable that you find some way to actually provide for yourself with the fruits of your education. 'Would you like fries with that?' isn't something a bright and educated person should be saying in the course of their job.
Larry
Re:Linus (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies that require someone to do something specifically for them may look to see what any prospective candidates have done before; if they can see your OSS on your web page when you submit your CV this is easy (assuming they have someone able to interpret this properly).
OSS is good for where a lot of people decide "hey, this is a good idea". The "boring" corporate tasks don't have the interest value, so you need to balance it out with something else of value, i.e. money.
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) You sign on more install, setup, advisory, and support contracts than you can handle so you start your own business and hire on other people who love open source. Jobs are created for some of those fresh graduates and life becomes even better for more people because the wonder of software becomes cheaper for everyone.
2) Recognized for your talent to not only code, but to actually design, develop, implement, and support a large project several corporations offer lucrative positions within their organizations.
3) Your open source code becomes a small part in a larger solution that makes the use of software to run businesses around the world even more ubiquitous than it is now because it is relatively inexpensive and as a result you have played a part in creating jobs for computer science graduates around the world, including yourself to support all the new implementations.
4)
5)
6)
or...another possibility may be to turn into a greedy smug coder who thought he was going to conquer the world and subjugate the masses with his closed source and restrictive licensing but in the end became just another cube dweller in a multi-national corporation that already has dibs on the subjugation license for the masses.
or not.
I believe that open source software has the greatest potential to create jobs for more computer science graduates over time than closed source simply because the reduced cost of acquiring the software will make it possible for more businesses to take advantage of the innumerable benefits of using software.
I can tell from experience in looking at how small businesses in the US are using software, there is massive potential to work easier for these people and make their businesses run more efficiently and effectively through the use of software.
And from what I've seen the there are two things stopping small business from taking advantage of these software benefits; the cost of closed source software licensing is effectively out of reach for most small businesses (and I'm not talking about Windows 98 and Quick Books, think MS-SQL, Oracle, etc.); and the lack of marketing and wide spread inexpensive support for open source software.
There is great potential in open source software to create a boom in the software industry, the most popular example of what I believe will happen is the story of the Ford Model T, a car for the masses.
burnin
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Troll article (Score:3, Insightful)
I left university a few years ago. Whereas during university, I advocated Free Software for ideological reasons, I now also advocate Open Source Software for practical reasons. Why? Because I've used so much bad software, much of it closed source, that I almost never even consider closed source solutions.
As a hacker, I hate rewriting code and worse than that, I hate banging my head against a brick wall. Clemens is essentially suggesting that you deliberately do your job in a bad or substandard manner. That is, in my opinion, completely unprofessional.
The quip that you can't make money from writing open source software is also false. True, you can no longer command high wages straight out of university, but that's more due to the tech crash than anything else. I have a car and if I want, will definitely be able to afford house/family when I reach 30.
Clemens is the one being irrational (though I'm under 30). I get paid to write useful things for my employer. They couldn't care less whether it is open or closed source. I care though, because open source allows me to leverage the combined intelligence of the whole world. It allows me to copy code from other people saving me and my employer valuable time. It saves me from reinventing the wheel at the cost of making my code open source as well. The trade off is that I don't get to choose what work I do, that's what my employer pays me for. There are boring bits and it essentially pays the bills.
I'd recommend every university student to regularly find ways to saving time and effort by copying code where appropriate (and properly reference of course). Once you realise the amount of time you save, you'd realise that open source isn't simply a matter of giving, it is also a way of taking.
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
IOW a reward-based society does not work when the rules are poorly conceived and poorly implemented. Which is where we are now.
How we get away from here god alone knows, but if enough right-thinking people keep doing the right things (like writing and advocating Free Software) then at least it keeps the question fresh in people's minds. That is the minimum we can expect.
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
Before everyone gets all uppity: I think that when it comes to basic underlying architecture, there is no better way to ensure quality and performance, than to get lots of eyes on the the source code. In that respect, open source environments, where there are a large number of volunteers willing to scrutinize implementation details, will guarantee that lurking issues get addressed in due course.
But 'open' doesn't necessarily imply 'free'. As Clemens says, your skills are valuable, and while you're at a stage where coding is 'fun', being able to say 'all the Linux users are using my kernel mod' doesn't pay the rent.
Another Mode of Thought (Score:2, Insightful)
My company (high-tech consultancy) uses only free tools (Linux, etc.).
Does that mean we provide free consultation? Of course not! Our service is provided on an hourly as is any other job.
Your tools may be free but your expertise and knowledge are quite valuable.
Re:So in other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is this whole thing taking us?
The average programmer used to be able to command a decent salary and respect. The self-starter could design shareware, either as an end in itself or as a means to build something larger (id, Epic). Many people have gone to school to learn a very specific skillset with the intention that with that paper and continuing self-study they'd have a career.
Then enter individuals like Stallman who believe and openly advocate that we forsake these careers -- that closed source is evil and that we can make a living on selling manuals, offering services, or barring that, bussing tables at a local restaurant. This is a very convenient position for someone to take who can make a career out of public speaking and fundraising, or for those who are and always plan to be computer techs or support desk operators, but it effectively tells everybody who has invested in and plan on a career in software design to shove it.
Perhaps my view is outdated, but anybody involved in programming must take a look at where this is taking us. Outsourcing is already working us over, and businesses are quite happy with the Free Software/Open Source option because it means the great majority of us don't have to be paid or can be paid to hack on a feature here and there. If this is all four to eight years of education is going to buy you, you might as well major in English.
A good mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, not all software that *this guy* writes has to be free. I definitely disagree with the article writer's assumption that "fame" won't get you a job - in CS, employers want porfolios, and working on Open Source is a great way to get that experience before someone will pay you.
Second, even if one *has* a job, working for a free project is (in effect, or in the case of FSF, actually) charity work. I guess computer scientists are the only ones to donate their skills to a good cause? Because Doctors Without Borders doesn't do anything like that. And lawyers never do pro bono work right?
As you say, I'm having a hard time seeing who loses - I've never heard of someone who does good work for a free project and can't parlay that into a job, and the output is (with the exception of anything GUI) top-notch.
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that she didn't help lots of people, or just preaching christianity, without actually helping. (many christians & free software/oss people should take note: help not just preach!). The grandparent seemed to imply that she did it for no reason other than the goodness of her heart, but the reason was the same as the free software people: make the world a better place according to their ideology, and if you call that goodness of people's hearts, then all the better.
Just as people who code for money aren't mostly in it for money, but to actually make their lives better.
I happen to believe that my contributions (small though they mostly are) will help people, because I like doing it, and several of the things I wrote anyway to help with administering a network, so why NOT help anyone else who needs a similar tool and let other people help me?
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm 19, and I'm lucky enough to (currently) be working part time for a well known free software company.
I'm still at university, in fact, I'm in my first year. While I've never had a letter like this, my parents have of course raised the same issues. This is what I told them. Hopefully it will be of use to other young people in my situation.
The fact is, that making money by selling software is hard. Damn hard. Even if you just work every day for a paycheque and go home at 5pm after you added a new feature to Photoshop, you're in the minority. Most programmers (I've seen statistics that say 80% but I have no idea how accurate that is) don't write software to sell, they write software to solve peoples problems.
Let's review why writing software and selling it is hard, from the perspective of the guy who had the idea and is trying to capitalize on it rather than the 9-5 hired hand.
Firstly, it's not just a matter of writing a program and sitting back while the cash rolls in. You are expected, at minimum, to release new versions every so often, have professional packaging, probably you will be required to support it and deal with the random problems people come to you with. This is not a short term commitment. Your software may be around and have users for years. In other words, selling software requires a considerable investment of effort and time.
Market conditions in software are not favourable. Software competes on a global market - this isn't a grocery store you're running. If the guy on the other side of the planet has a better product for a better price, you are in direct competition with them. It's not even a case of better product better price often - you think you can write a better word processor than Word? Go for it. Just don't expect to sell more than a few copies even if it is better. Life isn't fair, and the "unfree market" especially so.
No. Why would I want to work day after day on the same product, being a cog in the machine? I want to try for a better way.
What I'm currently valued for is not what I've written, you see, but what I can write. When people hire me (and I've worked for quite a few well known companies by now), they are hiring my knowledge and expertise which I sell to them typically at an hourly or monthly rate.
They purchase my skills because I can solve their problems. Ultimately this is what it's all about. One way programmers can solve peoples problems is by writing a product, setting up retail channels and then hoping that enough people have the same problem that they can strike it rich, but this is a high risk endevour and I'm not naturally somebody who likes high risk. I'd rather go to them directly (or in the case of one of the last jobs I did, went to a consortium of people), and solve their problem directly then move onto a different problem.
This is how I intend to earn my living, and so far it's working out pretty nicely.
Claiming that software has to be proprietary, that it has to be bought and sold as if it were a physical thing is a gross distortion of both economics and common sense. People tend to look at software as a machine, as a black box, and so it's natural to draw an analogy to a physical thing (hence copy protection) but really it's little more than a series of instructions for how to solve a problem.
If you asked me, "How do I make a pasta bake?" would I write down a recipe for a pasta bake then sell it to you on the condition that you didn't give anybody else a copy? Would I try and sell that as a physical product? Of course not. Just phrasing it in english and writing it down doesn't make it a product. It's simply an encapsulation of knowledge.
A better idea, if people ask you that often, is to teach people cooking, or alternatively become a chef, ie people pay you to excercise your skills (cooking) to solve their problem (hunger) and if you happen to invent new recipes and share them with fellow chefs at the same time then so what? Nobody loses.
Re:Amen... but there are benefits to be involve... (Score:1, Insightful)
For example...
If I am currently out of job - get involved in open source projects, and keeps my skills sharpen.
If I have an idea, but no big player want to take a look at me - open source it, and let the _real_ users decide.
If I do well in a open source project that have taken critical mass, people will notice and knock on my door.
If I lead a open source project, I am talking about project management over virtual medium. How will this show on CV? Pretty, isn't it?
Run my realname over google, and a whole list of contrib come out. Impressive itn't it?
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that's the kind of girl he married and is still bitter about it...
Re:PS to letter (Score:5, Insightful)
In my world, writing new software has monetary cost. If you want me to write something for you, you'll have to pay me.
Once it's written though, it can be used to do whatever it does, but it doesn't have monetary cost to make copies of it, that's a trivial operation and something I have nothing to do with.
Does that mean fewer programmers are needed? Probably. Does that mean no programmers are needed? Not at all.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates is not fanatical about all software being 'non-free'. Proprietary yes. Microsoft produces plenty of software that runs on Windows and OSX that's (surprise, surprise) actually free. As a company, it needs to make money, which is why it creates a base that has to be paid for (the OS), gives in plenty of free software to make it actually useful to the average user, and then also sells other tools that you have to pay for. If all software was free, there would be no software industry - there would be no programmers who could get paid enough at their jobs to have the time to create free tools for others. I love open source and Linux and use free software extensively at the University, but it's idiocy to be fanatical about open source as the only solution. (Reminds me of the evangelists who want to know if you have been 'saved' - no faith is true but the one they peddle).
In a normal world, we would have free and proprietary software side by side. It would be much better for both, if they accept that the other side is just as important as themselves.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
* You probability of getting a job is much better with a nice project on your resume. Before you start working, on open source project could open a lot of doors.
* Some people do things to advance the society, medicine sans frontiers or red cross workers for example. Major contributions to open software is also helping since it opens the playing field for poor countries.
Re:Amen. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This guy has nothing new to say. (Score:2, Insightful)
If the goal is not to duplicate efforts, wouldn't it be easier to enhance an existing piece of software instead of building a parallel implementation? For example, GNOME would be much better off if all the KDE developers stopped working on KDE and started enhancing GNOME. Or, vice-versa, KDE would be better off if GNOME developers worked on improving KDE.
I think the "duplication of efforts" argument is a red herring at best.
Interesting piece (Score:3, Insightful)
Those things said: I suepct there is a medium that needs to be reached between Aiden and Clemens's points-of-view. Clemens seems very quick to write off Aiden's views as childish or over-idealistic isntead of working to nuture them into something more productive.
How many times have all of us had the "practical" side of things thrown at us when we present ideas to our parents, mentors, elders? On the converse, how many times have we flung overly-idealistic, change-the-world quips back at them? I'm sure 90% of us can easily identify with that, regardless of our backgrounds.
Aiden is presented as being a stereotypical 21 - I agree. However, Clemens presents himself as a stereotypical 35, and that is where the arguement falls flat. Clemens is preaching to Aiden, and the young programmers in general, about the pacticality of life ("you need a car, apartment, want a family, etc.") instead of looking for a way to nuture Aiden's instincts and mentor him...
Thus, Clemens is doing nothing to harness the potential Aiden and his kindred souls offer to IT. He just laughs it off and ignores the concerns.
My suggestion to young programmers: strive to find the middle-ground. Ignore the pompous attitude Clemens gives off and look at the important ideas he mentions. And don't become Clemens when you're 35.
My suggestion to older programmers: work with the young ones. Mentor them, work with them and let them learn from you just as you can learn from them. The end result could be something none of us have ever thought of before.
Prove you can do it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If free=valueless, how about the letter itself? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't misunderstand the issue (Score:2, Insightful)
OSS is a quick way to become famous? Who has become famous? Look at all the floundering, half finished projects on sourceforge. OSS has maybe 5 names hardcore geeks would know and probably only 1 (Linus) that the rest of the world might know.
intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
So you'd better have lots of money instead, because then she'll be really, genuinely interested in you, right?
Seriously, I've talked about what I do wrt Free Software / Open Source with intelligent people without being a zealot, and (gasp) this has actually led to some really interesting conversations.
Also, it shows women that you see value in things beside money, which IMHO is a good thing. But, of course, that entirely depends on the type of person you're attracted to... :-)
Are we turning into the Ferengi? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's odd is when you look at Linux, it's taking the IT industry by storm. And look at all the new jobs being created. Whole new industries popping up all over in implementation, support, in new distributions, embedded applications. It's not just a software product, it's an economy unto itself.
I don't know how anyone makes the argument there's no money in FOSS. Whole industries exist because of free software.
net result (Score:5, Insightful)
Even in a world where there was no open source software, there would be precious few closed source solutions, with a handful of programmers maintaining them. Closed source doesn't magically guarantee that every programmer will have a job. Nor does the existance of an open source alternative put all the programmers out of a job.
Already, most programming jobs in America are something OTHER than creating an office suite or an operating system. Programmers do innovate new solutions, usually right on the payroll of the single company that needs that solution. Thats the world of programming in America, and those programmers will have jobs reguardless of the prominence of open source software.
The author's fundmental premise is sound: you need money to earn a living. However, the next premise: if you work on open source, there will be no money, is seriously questionable.
--AC
Re:PS to letter (Score:3, Insightful)
really? What do you think the outsourcing firms do? Administration, maintainence, upgradation and development (in that order).
Fermat's Last Theorem (Score:5, Insightful)
Young Mr. Wiles. The mathematical theorem you proved is the immediate result and the manifestation of what you learned and what you know. How much is the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem worth? Nothing? Think again.
Instead of publishing the result, I think you should keep it to yourself, charge all of the mathematicians who want to see it lots of money, and make them sign a non-disclosure agreement to promise not to use the result in their own work. Posterity will not be served, but you will be.
Re:Are we turning into the Ferengi? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how every generation thinks it's discovering eternal truths for the first time.
I look forward to seeing you in 20 years (Score:4, Insightful)
At least TWENTY years ago, clueless people were saying that "in a few years, programmers will be out of a job, because all the programs will be written." What a load of tripe. Who could've forseen the Gimp, Apache, Tomcat, etc. 20 years ago? What makes you think that you have any idea you know what great new things some people will invent in the next twenty years?
Software is Science not Product (Score:2, Insightful)
Software is knowledge--it is not a product. It should be developed as we develop much of our knowledge: by people whose primary goal is to create, and who then share that with others in the field to build on.
I wish there weren't so many people desperately trying to squeeze every cent of out everything they touch. We should be glad that you can actually also make money by selling support services for people using software you are expert with (and who is more of an expert that the people developing it?). Science isn't developed by people fretting about the business models for their papers. They don't publish because it rakes in the cash (in fact, it often costs to publish--imagine having to pay just to distribute your code to those who want it!).
I understand where people like this letter writer are coming from, and I've heard similar "Free software is short-sighted: I want to get paid" sentiments from people I hold in high esteem. I believe this is the correct answer for their concern. Right now we struggle with a transitional phase (undoing the damage done by people like Gates--the kind of people who would wall off a forest just to charge entrance fees), but the available code only grows larger (thanks to Disney, today's GPL'd code will stay GPL'd past our lifetimes). Eventually the sheer weight of freed code will overwhelm those who haven't realized (or refuse) this, and the right choice will be the only viable choice.
The coolest thing about software is that once it's built, it can instantly do what you told it to do for anyone, anywhere, with no additional investment. No other field is so deeply self-automating. It's an exciting prospect, once we are again free to focus on progress.
(For those who ask who will do the tedious bits and make things pretty/easy: most fields use graduate students, interns, and such support staff for work that doesn't require expert attention (and can't be automated), and there are already fields devoted to user interfacing and such--putting a great interface on some obtuse tool could be a nice thesis project.)
consequences? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you dominate a market, like Microsoft does with office suites, Adobe does with Photoshop or Macromedia does with Flash, you earn tons of cash. But if you don't, you can't earn much if anything at all. Effectively upstart software companies don't have any chance of succeeding in the retail market except when a new market opens. The only exception is games where new companies do seem to have a chance - mainly because compatibility between games isn't needed, so you can write a good game and be successful, but you can't write a good office suite and be successful - you would have to reverse-engineer data formats as well.
However, the bulk of programmers don't work for Microsoft or Adobe. I know quite some programmers personally and none are working for MS or Adobe. All I know work either for small companies which program specialized systems for other companies or work in-house to also do such systems.
So what does open-source replace? It replaces Microsoft, Adobe, etc. but can not and will not replace the "in-house" software programmer who creates customized programs for internal use (or for a single customer).
So, frankly, I don't think that open-source will change that much after all. The big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe will go (or more likely change into investment companies), that's for sure, but there will be plenty of paid programming work (open source and closed source).
Re:Amen... but there are benefits to be involve... (Score:3, Insightful)
No they won't. They find someone local, someone they already know, and they'll take your work and then that other someone will make money. Nobody will come knock on your door. You just aren't that famous, important, or good at what you do. You're giving away half of what you have to offer. They'll find someone who will be cheaper to do the other half.
No it's not that pretty. You have no deadlines. Your feature set is arbitrary. You have no crunch time. If one of your developers goes prima dona on you, you just ignore it and go with someone else. Completely different than the real world.
No it's not impressive. Google indexes the web. Half of the web happens to be pages of the nature "I eat poo." The fact that someone is involved in amature, hobby development is only of marginal interest to someone who has to consider the real world of delivering a product by a given date.
Re:Eeeep. (Score:3, Insightful)
MS doesn't do ANYTHING for free (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull Shit.
Microsoft does not do anything that it doesn't think will produce revenue. All those "free" programs that you speek of are certainly paid for, you just don't see it on the reciept when you bought the OS. Perhaps a lesson in accounting would help here.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that as a good programmer, you should be able to do much better than simply "not go hungry".
What the Open Source movement often overlooks is that a vast continuum of software businesses exists that are not monopolies, but still do a very good - and respected - business licensing closed source software. These softwware products benefits customers and partners who have a choice of suppliers, while delivering extraordinary rewards for employees.
It sometimes seems that Open Source rhetoric assumes that all Closed Source == Microsoft, and therefore must be eliminated.
Be honest: Who would you really like to be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Linus Torvalds has 20 million dollars, at least. Red Hat gave him some of its stock, before it was valuable. Sure he gave away a lot of his work for free, but that only primed the pump, didn't it?
Be honest: Who would you really like to be? Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates? Would you like to be like Linus, a rich man who is loved and admired by hundreds of thousands of people? Or would you like to be like Mr. Gates, a "rich" man who cannot buy the things that really matter?
Would you like to be like Linus, a man who makes jokes that are widely repeated? Or would you like to be like Mr. Gates, a man whose voice is so scratchy that it is annoying to hear him say more than one sentence, and who is boring because he never seems to say anything unless there might be money in it?
If you have a few quirky habits, do you want to be like Alan Cox [lwn.net], or do you want to be like Steve Ballmer, who is widely called Monkey Boy [google.com]?
If you really believe that everything you do must be for money, you have two heroes!! You can be like Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer!
Suppose Linus decides he's bored with what he's doing and wants another job? Will he need to read Monster.com? Somehow the theory in the letter is not fitting some of the facts.
It is necessary to be a scientist 100% of the time. You know someone is NOT a scientist when that person ignores data. The letter puts forth a theory of the world that does not even begin to explain information that is immediately available.
Whoever wrote the letter did not bother to examine the implications of what facts he did accept. If every programmer in the world spent the next 5 years writing free software, what would be the state of computing at the end of that period? Would all necessary software have been completely written? Would there be no more work for programmers? No, at the end of the 5 years there would be a great clamor for new programs that became possible because of the new software infrastructure.
Love creates connections between the lover and the world. The connections create opportunities. We know love works, we just don't yet completely understand how.
I recognize that most people who write free software would not think of themselves as lovers, but that's what they are.
If you are a man who has written free software, and you meet an interesting woman, and you tell a little about yourself, and you talk about what you have done to benefit the world, don't forget to ask her what she has done to benefit the world. If the answer is nothing, she's a lot less interesting than you thought at the beginning. You have created a world for yourself in which you can ask for something better.
However, there is a kernel of truth about which the letter hints. While you are loving the world, don't forget to love yourself. There must be a balance.
I hope that fewer people will add to the disfunctionality of the world by making their view of life as narrow as that of the letter.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Practicality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong definition of "free". When Stallman talks of "free", it has NOTHING to do with price. It's "free" as in "free speech" rather than "free beer".
Not all software (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Experience.
Seriously. Who would hire a fresh-out-of-college person with no real world experience? At least when they contribute to open source they have some real world experience. If the software gets big, even better. If it is some small piddly OSS project, well, at least you tried. You have guy A who goes off, does what he has to do to pass college, and goes party. You have guy B, who now has a masters, plus 6, 8, or 10 years of real-world programming experience. Who will you hire? Seriously. Don't get a life, it won't get you work. =)
2) Hey, geeks know geeks. You apply for a job, you are the new "project manager" and have to keep several programmers working for you. You introduce yourself to you new team, say that you do this, you know this, and you've worked on this. Right there, you can get a good scoop of respect right there and get your work off to a great start.
3) You could get a job supporting or expanding on whatever project you've been working on. Not likely a full time job, but perhaps a few extra bucks every now and then, eh?
I think this guy is just scared that he soon will be outsourced. I think that because he has chosen to be a programmer, only one of the many things you can do with a CS degree, that he is very afraid that OSS programmers and OSS is taking away his work. Really, programming needs to be in two degrees, "basic" which is a 2 year degree, and advanced, which can be from 4 to 6 years. Programming is a commodity, it is a service industry. The more advanced things are program design(yes, I know, everyone complains about flowcharting it, UML, etc.. when they are in school, but when you gotta write that up and send it off to India, it matters, since it may be the only thing keeping you employed).
I think people get programming confused with an advanced profession because it is so flexible. It can be extremely advanced, from writing compilers, to JITs, etc... There is so much theory out there. But really, it is just doing the same stuff over and over again slightly differently. Yes, there are different languages. No, they are not difficult to learn new ones. Once you know the basics of programming it all falls in pretty quickly. How much you actually use of what new stuff you learned is pretty low on the scale too.
Whether you are writing enterprise apps(which has several methods, procedures, and theories on its own) or a quick one-off web app, it is basically the same stuff. I will say that enterprise apps require more discipline and knowledge than a quick one-off web app, but most of that can be learned in a month or two easily. Yes, univ's stretch it out by you only going to class two or three times a week for several months, and learning many other things while you are there. But if you focus, you can learn it all pretty quick.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:2, Insightful)
true she wouldn't approve of it for some of the purely altruistic reasons that are put forward here. but i don't think open source is necessarily anti capitalist.
one of the reasons i use linux and open source tools is i don't want to pay for microsoft products -- the os and the developer software. why do that when i can get a more powerful product for free? i use the open source community to learn new programming skills. i get access to other people's ideas and they get access to mine. then i go to a company and get paid to write their in house proprietary / highly specialized / customized / closed code. its like a free education.
i think thats one good capitalist reason to use linux. i think there are many others. ibm is making money off of it.
this letter is garbage (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite his first hand experience, the author of the letter doesn't understand the software business.
What Microsoft does and what independent programmers do are entirely unrelated.
Scan the help wanted ads. 98% of the job openings for programmers are NOT to work on shrink wrapped software products. If you're a programmer today, chances are you're writing custom software for a single (or few) buyers.
Open source means very little to the people who develop and the people who buy shrinkwrapped software.
But it means everything to everyone else in the industry, which is consequently the entire industry.
And there's plenty of money there.
Giving away your knowledge? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what this guy Clemens was saying, though... The OSS programmer does his work for free. If he is a part of a larger group, selling support, or using the free software to help sell hardware, then that's one thing, but in many circumstances people who develop free software do so independently of larger backing -- they do it out of the goodness of their heart, their desire to contribute. That doesn't pay the bills. Then, companies such as yours take his work, make it their own (as they have every right to do--he specifically grants them that right when he releases the software), and profit from it. He not only doesn't profit from his software, he enables others to profit from it.
Clemens' argument is specific to this kid's circumstance, where the kid may want to spend most of his working life writing free software as opposed to the other kind, and in the specific case(the program being developed independently with a group contributing their time for free) I think the argument is accurate.
We should stop DIY home repair too! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This guy must be right! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bach was paid, throughout his career, to maintain an orderly music
environment in whatever church, court etc. was paying his lunch at the
time. Since it was customary for all musicians to compose music of
their own, he often did so, but those were not the primary terms of
any contract he ever entered. (He was, in fact, rebuked for playing
accompaniments that were too audacious and complicated to actually
accompany someone's singing, or producing works that were altogether
too difficult for the intended performers.) He did write an almost
incredible number of weekly cantatas for several years running while
in Leipzig, but after too many lost battles with the philistines of
the city council, he more or less stopped doing them and relied mostly
on repeat performances or other composer's works. This was never a
cause for complaint about him, although there was a lot of other
complaint.
(Mozart was contractually employed to produce original music, but only
part-time, and in the end not at all, which is why he died in poverty.
Of course, today he would be a multi-millionaire just from the
royalties of the G Major Serenade. Beethoven was the first composer to
sustain himself by organizing his own public concerts, and even then
it was not only his own works that were played.)
I think the parallel to software is rather neat: Bach was paid to
perform music for church services (provide support), not for composing
it (develop software). If he did create this huge body of original
work it was because he liked doing it (and possibly because locating
and copying some other work would arguably have been just as much work
as penning a new one, at least to him). Oh, and nobody in their right
mind would have thought of forbidding him to perform the same work
somewhere else later (take software with you when you are fired). The
only thing he couldn't have done was to dedicate a piece to one
prince, then to another (re-license software that you have already
explicitly sold the rights to).
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused, how does making someone pay me for the time it took to write software "restricting the freedom" or "violating the rights" of your "fellow human beings".
If we extend your argument to lets say farming, a farmer that charges for the food he produces is violating the rights of anyone who doesn't want to pay him for his labour. It cost him time and money to produce that food and he likely has a family to support. Why shouldn't he be able to charge a resonable price for his product.
Now if you want to grow food in your backyard and give it away that's your choice but don't suggest that because he made a different choice that it violates people's rights.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates is not fanatical about all software being 'non-free'. Proprietary yes.
I think you are confused. "Non-free" is the very meaning of "proprietary".
Furthermore, Gates isn't fanatical about software being proprietary; Microsoft has released stuff under the GPL. You may be confused if you believe what Microsoft say in press releases, but you have to understand that this is not the truth. They say whatever will make them money - Microsoft is a business like any other in this respect.
Microsoft produces plenty of software that runs on Windows and OSX that's (surprise, surprise) actually free.
Oh, I see. You are talking about free as in beer. You are talking at cross-purposes to the rest of Slashdot then.
If all software was free, there would be no software industry
Of course there would. I'll give you an example.
I run a web development agency. A lot of our websites run on Apache/PHP. Sometimes PHP only does 99% of what we need it to. So we fix up PHP to do what we want, and send in a patch.
If we didn't send in the patch, we'd end up having to maintain our own special branch of PHP, which would be a waste of resources.
Did I mention that we don't work for free?
How about another example? IBM makes money from providing tailor-made solutions to people who really don't want to worry about building their networks and maintaining their systems themselves.
IBM needs to provide a combination of hardware, software, and expertise. To get the software, they can either pay another company a lot of money, develop an operating system themselves, or use an existing, Free operating system as a base.
It makes sense to use the third option, right? But that doesn't mean they have to contribute back. They could base it off FreeBSD and keep it closed-source. The only trouble is that if they want to keep up with FreeBSD (or whatever), they need to maintain their own special branch, same as us and PHP. It ends up being more trouble than it's worth. After all, why would IBM care about people copying their software - they aren't in the business of selling software, they are in the business of selling complete solutions.
Of course, IBM need a good pool of expertise in the market to hre their employees from. If they keep their operating system locked up, where is that expertise going to come from? All their employees will have to be trained in-house, and there won't be a thriving development community around it in the way that there is around FreeBSD/Linux/etc.
What you are saying is that if all software was Free, there wouldn't be much money to be made in licensing software. But there is still plenty of money to be made in developing software.
it's idiocy to be fanatical about open source as the only solution.
It's idocy to be fanatical about anything. But who's being fanatical? I see a letter aimed at trying to dissuade somebody from working on Free Software at all. That sounds like the person writing the letter is the fanatic.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
How does makeing software and then selling for money violate the rights of anyone? That seems to be what you're implying.
If charging for software is evil, then how is charging for support not evil. Or charging for doughnuts?Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not opposed to being paid for writing software and in fact I clearly stated that I am employed to write software.
What I do not do is to force people, using a corrupt system of "laws," "patents," etc., to refrain from sharing, modifying, or improving my software.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS = Language? (Score:2, Insightful)
Could you make the same argument for software?
Re:Agreed...Translation: HE MISSED THE BOAT (Score:2, Insightful)
IBM makes money off of hardware and support. They also make lots of money off their non-OSS solutions. They are also quite large. They do release a big of OSS but they support whole systems that you buy from them (combined hardware/software) and their hardware isn't OSS.
RedHat finally started making a little money recently. I haven't seen their numbers for the whole of last year.
O'Reilly seems to sell a lot of books (which are intellectual property and copyrighted and not open for free distribution) but they do have some online and you can download some.
I haven't seen where I can download the source to Yahoo/Google's search engines or other software that they wrote. Perhaps they are consumers of OSS and make money via advertisements, but they aren't producing any OSS that I've seen.
etc etc etc... You mentioned some large groups and the only two that I've seen are MySQL which isn't GPL (you have to pay for their software in many situations, just most don't pay) and RedHat, which as far as I know are struggling.
The only difference with OSS and closed source software is that you have the option of paying or not with OSS. IF you supported OSS, you'd pay for support instead of just leeching. Closed source software just requires you to pay for support up front. In the end, there is little, if any, difference other than the ability to leech from the system in the case of OSS.
What is software worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything you do should be worth something to you - even if the reward is satisfaction.
There's nothing wrong with programming for money, but there's equally nothing wrong with programming for the satisfaction of it. Just make sure that you don't sacrifice one for the other - it's a balance that you would be wise to keep in check.
Whoever said that time is money was only partially correct. Time is the most valuable asset - converting it to satisfaction or pride can easily be as valuable as money.
Money just tends to help keep you alive longer.
Salvation army (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like saying a professional caterer will loose his job if he cooks once a week at the Salvation army.
stupid.
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
And he is enabled to profit from anyone else's software who practices the same philosophy. Just like everyone else. It is a leveled playing field that puts everyone at the level of Gates and Ellison, with access to the source code of hugely powerful application.
I don't see the issue here. You just have to keep working. Clemens' wants to be Bill Gates and charge people $199 for a $0.10 piece of plastic. He doesn't have a problem with that. It seems fair and rational to him.
Others think that kind of irrational exhuberance is good for no one and think $199 is a decent take-home for a good days' work.
There's a whole lot of room to move around here that isn't a 1 or a 0. A Gates or a Stallman. There's lots of different software too. And differnt rules and notions can apply.
But don't think you'll be able to charge anyone but fools for a basic operating system, or browser, or email program, or media player, or ripper, or DVD player, or calculator, etc. etc. etc.
Aah, but if you provide the service that brings these tools to their fingertips, then maybe you can get an honest days pay out of the deal. Or perhaps a wee bit more.
Why is this insightful? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess when your doctor tells you that you have cancer and suggest ways in which other people have dealt with it, you will summarily discard his advice on the grounds that he does not have the disease himself and therefore has nothing to offer.
Attack people's arguments, not their background. This is merely ad hominem and is invalid.
K
This is FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Still I derive extrodinary benefit from the GPL software. I have an extremely well-debugged toolkit that I can easily modify. I have also achieved a good deal of fame for this, just a search for my name will reveal that 90% of the citations are for FLTK or other toolkits, while my for-hire work for Digital Domain is hardly noticed at all. I fully expect FLTK to be very important if I need to change jobs. Every single person we have interviewed for a job here who has heard of me has heard of me because they used FLTK.
In his followup letter this guy has the incredible lack of logic to say that programmers should not be selfish and then complain that he cannot use GPL code in his software. This is typical of somebody who just does not get it, or is purposely lying to get his own agenda across. The GPL is extremely selfish. I use it because it is the only way my code can be used and still belong to me. Anybody who does not understand this has not written open source code. Any anybody who complains both about the GPL and also complains about "poor programmers not getting paid" is a raving lunatic who should not be listened too.
I am also disgusted by his "pick up girls in the bar" line. Really, do you think one of the programmers at Microsoft working on Word has any better luck picking up girls in the bar? Do you think the typical salary paid to a software engineer makes the slightest difference in this? If you do, you are pretty seriously deluded. It's the managers and money-makers who are able to do this, and in fact open source is one way to screw with them. And if you happen to be good-looking and have a nice personality then you might get the girls and they really do not care one bit whether you open-source your code or not.
This is ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
There should always be an alternative to the mainstream because the mainstream is only cooked up for the average knuckle dragging person. For people who don't fit into those nice little pigeon holes, there always should be something else. The author of this letter apparently doesn't understand that need. He is only being self serving which is probably the worst thing you CAN be in your short time on Earth.
Of course the idiotic masses are being swayed over to this way of thinking because there are fewer and fewer alternatives. Their minds are being poisoned by the incessant mental pollution that is the mainstream. And once they are sucked in, it's hard for them to get out because they are no longer equipped to fight submission. Sorry, but this guy needs a reality check and he needs to stop putting his nees first. Why are we even here if not to help each other?
My, what a narrow view this man has! (Score:4, Insightful)
What a load of crap-for-crap. I'd like to point out that I'm going to turn 32 this month, I have a house, a car, and don't have any problem getting dates. I don't have a family only because I don't want kids. I earn a good salary coding software for a company I'm part owner of. Yet I still believe wholeheartedly in open source and free software and hope to soon be making significant contributions to it myself.
Everyone does something with their free time - why piss in this kid's Wheaties because he chooses to spend some of it doing good work for the benefit of others rather than sitting in front of the TV or drinking down at the local bar? I don't know exactly what this kid said to Mr. Jacknuts here, but even if he did come across as a starry-eyed idealist, so what? I find it hard to condemn someone for believing that the world can be a better place and working toward that end. It's abundantly clear to me that the twin goals of supporting oneself in a capitalist society and creating free software are far from mutually exclusive. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?
Yes, Captain Obvious, we all have to find ways of supporting ourselves financially. But we geeks as a whole are a pretty clever bunch, and I'm sure that's why we so often find ways to support ourselves without compromising our ideals. If you can't see the inherent good in open source software and the people who dedicate the resources to create it, I truly feel sorry for you.
Re:PS to letter (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of a business is to profit. Selling scarce resources allows one to profit from the sale.
Selling free software is akin to setting up optional tollbooths on bridges. "Open Source" companies like RedHat or Suse discovered that nobody will stop at the optional tollbooth. They make money by selling a scarce resource called "professional services" or "support". So they profit.
Why is it wrong for an author or creator of software to profit from the fruits of his labor?
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Has Gates ever actually come out and said that he thinks all software 'should' be proprietary? Maybe he's criticized free and open-source software on apparently pragmatic grounds, but that's not the same thing as pushing proprietary software as a moral imperative. So there is a qualitative difference between Gates and Stallman; They aren't the mirror images you seem to think.
Re:Be honest: Who would you really like to be? (Score:1, Insightful)
A little economics lesson for you. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's done. Stick a fork in it. No one else needs to reinvent the wheel unless they're adding some serious value.
They're not displacing people of a paycheck. They're getting rid of overdone, overpriced software from the market.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, if you "wrote an open-source implementation of the core software in your company," I'd be SOL. But that's unlikely, because the software we sell [intelligent-imaging.com] is very specialized, requiring a great deal of technical knowledge to create, sell, and maintain. (And, for that matter, use.) It's a hell of a lot easier to find OSS developers for a DBMS, OS, general-purpose programming language, or Web server than for image processing and management software specific to microscopic images. This, IMO, is the future of proprietary software: niche-market apps which require specialized knowledge to produce will continue to command a premium, while general-purpose apps such as OS's and DBMS's will increasingly tend to be free.
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Making people pay for the software you make or close-sourcing your project has little if anything to do with violating their rights. If they think your program doesn't suit them they are still free not to buy it, and eventually go for an open source one. Your own source code is not part of your client's rights unless they pay for it, or you decide to give it for free.
Each programmer should be free to make his own choice: after all, that's what FREEDOM and RIGHTS are about. Making the wrong choice will eventually punish you, but as long as your business model works (in full respect of your clients) I can't see the problem.
Diego Rey
Re:net result (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of "asshole" works for free?
A stupid one.
Writing free software doesn't help people improve their lives. It helps big corporations turn a profit. How does having free software help any one live a happier life? There is very little that some one needs a computer for outside of working. So, in effect, what you are doing is working for free so that other people can use your software to make some money for themselves.
Good for you. You are making a difference! You are a hero!
By the way, I use free software, so thanks for your hard work. I appreciate it, because it lets me play with cool toys for free. It doesn't make my life any better though, just cheaper.
Re:Practicality (Score:3, Insightful)
Apply this reasoning to any other industry (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, maybe it's because you got paid for the work you did.
The same principle can apply to software. Bill your work. You deserve to be paid for your time -- every second that you spend working on someone else's problems instead of your own. The question is: how many times do you deserve to be paid for the same hour?
Suppose you hire a $200/hr lawyer to research a problem for you, and it turns out that someone else asked him the same exact question last week. He spent 12 hours researching it, and he billed his customer $2400 for his time. Now you've come along and asked him the same question, and he remembers the answer. What is the fair amount for him to bill you? $2400 for another 12 hours of research that he does not really spend? Or just $200 for the hour it takes him to explain the answer to you?
Payoff of collaborative development (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say 10 people get together in the "real world" and build a lawnmower. One knows how to design the engine, another can weld, another can coordinate the color scheme, etc. When they're done they have a single lawnmower. If they all share equally, they break even; each can use the mower (1/10) of the time, each having provided (1/10) of the labor.
With software, those 10 people can also contribute (1/10) of the labor, each in their respective areas. However, when the project is done/stable, each person gets their *own* fully functional copy. This is the payoff of open-source development. I'm not donating 100 lines of code to the "geek community;" I'm *paying* 100 lines of code towards a fully functional software product. In return I get thousands or millions of lines of compiled, tested code.
I don't have to contribute, but if I do I get to have a say in the design. And if I don't like something, I can change it. I would usually much rather struggle with C and work with other people to hammer out a piece of software than buy it commercially, because _it's worth more_. I can trust it. I can audit it. I can rip it apart and put it back together again. I can customize it for my needs, share it with my friends, or print it out and paper my room with it.
In other words, in general Free software is better then free. Some things, like games, can get away with being closed. But I'm not using closed, unaudited, unchangable, unverifiable software for anything that's actually important.
Re:PS to letter (Score:2, Insightful)
And explain to me why this is a good thing again, from the perspective of a young programmer?
I know engineers aren't known for being particularly adept that the business world, but this is ridiculous.
Gates isn't "rich" where it counts? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is THAT supposed to mean? Last I checked, Bill Gates lives a safe, secure life in a dream home, is happily married with 3 kids, donates enormous amounts of cash to educational facilities (in case you were going to try and suggest that his conscience isn't clear), can afford to give everyone he cares about the life they've always dreamed of, has time to pursue anything he's interested in
Re:Free Software Costs Jobs Not Money (Score:3, Insightful)
So is this guy saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
I pray our society has not come to the point where the only reason a person does a thing is for the money. That is a very undesirable situation for everyone, as it reduces the drive to help other people out.
I hope this is not a prevalent viewpoint, as it is quite disturbing. I do not want to live in a society where we are all little happy drones doing the bidding of the overmind for our little paystubs.
Re:PS to letter (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was a community organizer, we called this "singing for your supper."
Directly advocating for positions that you are paid to advocate for reduces your objective credibility to nil. Next, please!
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Cost and value are different things (Score:3, Insightful)
He seems to have confused cost and value. Free software has no cost, but still has value.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only the second and later pieces of plastic cost $0.10 to make. The first one can cost tens or even hundreds of millions. Who'd buy that?
It's fantastically disingenous to consider only the marginal cost of media to a piece of software's price tag, and to ignore the economic reality that developing a piece of software the scale of what MS delivers requires a huge up-front R&D investement.
Re:Free is Free (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the games market is going anywhere anytime soon. Nor do I think that it's as likely to be outsourced (at least the creative processes anyway) as the people who it would likely be outsourced to (Indians) don't understand American culture and what's funny to them isn't to us (note: Before I'm labeled racist, this goes both ways -- you don't see many American gaming companies writing software for India).
When you get past the fanatics on both sides (GNU -- All software must be free -- profit and copyright are evil -- resistance is futile, you will be assimilated; Microsoft/SCO: All software must cost money and be closed source -- free software is evil and a threat to national security -- security through obscurity is the best method -- we aren't anti-competitive we just innovate better -- resistance is futile, you will be assimilated) you will see that there is room for both to co-exist. My whole take on Linux/OSS is that people have a basic right to have a decent operating system and office suite (i.e: productivity software) without paying thousands of dollars for them. On the same token I don't think anyone would argue that you have the right to free gaming and I don't see the gaming market going anywhere anytime soon. After all we all love our Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Quake, UO, etc etc etc. Hell for many of us it's the only reason why we retain a Windows partition.
The big fallacy... (Score:3, Insightful)
I "moved out of my parents' basement" because I got a job developing closed-source software. That doesn't prevent me from developing open-source software as well.
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe it was lost in the translation: but its not up to one individual what he promotes as an idea: its the market that says that the software industry is about cheap products.
Hopefully there will be a shift away from this towards something like the wine industry: a couple of big players that push out okay but not so good stuff, and smaller bit players that put out higher quality stuff but at a much higher price.
However I agree this demands a change in attitude about what one is getting. Also its a little hard to differentiate your "super great calendar app" from the hundreds out there already -- does it offer more value? Whereas I can easily tell you the difference between a $20 bottle of red wine versus a $5 one.
Re:Amen. (Score:1, Insightful)
6. using the software to deliver content
There's absolutely no value in keeping the source code to a game closed, for example (expensive middleware licenses excepted, perhaps). All of the value is in the art content (graphics, writing, audio...)
Re:PS to letter (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Effective April 2004 RedHat has dropped their Linux desktop as an unviable product (their support revenue in no way covered their expenses.)
That is an amazing list of high quality companies, but to suggest that the OSS/free software available from Apple, IBM, Novell, or RedHat are driving business units that are making massive profits is simply insane. All of those companies are bankrolling OSS/free software from their existing mountains of cash with the hopes that by offering it at a loss they can put some hurt on the Microsoft juggernaut, and I would wager that each of them is hemmoraging cash from the business unit in the process.
The long term view is that eventually by reclaiming the desktop they will be able to provide services, support, and administrative tools that will be profitable, but in the past 3 years and for the immediate future RedHat is spelling it out loud and clear : OSS on the desktop is not a profit driven business venture.
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Joey is a lair (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Please consider these links, then:
Regarding GNUTella [gnu.org]
Selling Free Software [gnu.org]
The Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk]
Hopefully these links will provide you some food for thought about the 'party line' on how "liber" books and pieces of artwork could work out economically, tavarich. Except that few people bother to think such things through these days, do they?
...and this would be my reply: (Score:3, Insightful)
With all things in life there must be balance. I understand why you were compelled to offer the insights you've gained in the past decade or so to an idealistic young programmer. He certainly needs a dose of reality, after all it certainly isn't evil to charge for programming and closed software can definitely have value. After all, we all have to earn our keep somehow.
However in your case it seems the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. You worked hard for your education and to further your career. For some reason (perhaps your own current state of affairs or the state of the industry in general) you have become jaded. Free Software is "a lie", "exploitation", "idoicy" and "bigotry"? The more you go on the more incendiary your statements become, and you decend to the same level as those who label all closed software companies "evil".
Free software (as in freedom of source code access, not absence of monetary value) is none of those things. It is important to the whole industry. Its purveyors generally do not deceive, exploit or wish to put university-educated software professionals out of work. Without Free Software, technology would not progress as fast, end products would be of lower quality and the somputer industry as a whole would not be as mature as it is today.
How can giving away valuable code add value to the industry? It has the effect of commoditising the industry--it does to software what reverse-engineering the IBM PC and busting open its specifications did to hardware in the PC industry. At the start of the "PC revolution" a handful of companies dominated the industry (IBM, Apple, Commodore, Atari). Interoperability was low and in hindsight it is apparent that the operating tactics of these players hindered progress. If IBM and others continued to make closed-architecture, proprietary systems the PC industry would still be a cottage industry.
Today, the software industry is on the cusp of a similar change. We have one dominant player and a collection of smaller ones which closely guard their source and in some cases do what they can to block interoperability, innovative ideas and advancement in general. What logical reason is there for three incompatible standards for instant messaging for example? Will children starve if Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL clients talked to one another? Is it really such a calamity that Star Office an open Microsoft Word documents?
Free Software fits this bill nicely. Yes all software has value, but is the operating system really worth half the cost of the hardware it is running on? Should a full-featured office suite double the cost of a system? Sometimes it seems like buying a car, only to be forced to pay $5000.00 for a tank of fuel. Generic software like OSes on PCs, word processors, music and video players, web browsers, drawing programs, programming languages/tools and so on are general purpose, commodity workhorses. Their monetary value is LOW, and as time goes on their costs will dissolve away into the cost of a machine. They are (or should be) componenets like memory modules and power supplies. If the free software community is not allowed to address that demand, it will be addressed by hundres of millions of east Indians for pennies a day by closed source developers (how is that for exploitation?).
Open source allows commoditasation to happen effectively, where projects start up, diverge and recombine to eventually become best-of-breed. That point in time is today. The Free Software world now has a viable selection of commodity tools to choose from and it's time for software engineers to add real value to the industry. A mature software industry will be SERVICE based and CUSTOMER oriented, not TECHNOLOGY based and PRODUCT oriented. Highly educated professionals will be engineering the next generation of microprocessor, developing new protocols, doing highly-customised work to meet specific needs (making Wal-Mart's supply chain work, making GMs assembly plants build
Re:worth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its simple: if your life relies on software development to pay your bills, giving software away will not bring you money. Ximian, RedHat and even IBM employ a pitiful # of developers who work on OSS projects. IBM does it simply to have leverage in the Linux kernel. Ximian and RedHat are barely companies to begin with.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget, if you plan to just write software, and sell it... You will be providing support out of your own pocket, or sell support contracts (see #x on the list). I have never seen something that was write once, sit back and watch the profits roll in, retire to Mexico.
Re:MS doesn't do ANYTHING for free (Score:3, Insightful)
True. But then - IBM's contributions to whatever open source project they work on are available to everyone. Microsoft included.
And Microsoft does sell open source (GPL'd even) software. If you dig enough (MS has burried this information), you'll find that their Services For Unix product in chock full of GNU applications. And, of course, this and several outer pieces are based on BSD code.
The point is - if you're going to make a big deal about Microsoft's actions, you better be sure your argument is on solid moral ground. Perhapse neither Microsoft nor IBM's motivations are entirely alturistic. However, IBM is clearly providing the better service. And the more friendly form of "free".
Reducto ad absurdum (Score:3, Insightful)
Mathematicians have always required patronage. It is difficult to predict where and from whom the next important result will come from. Business people would call such a proposition a bad bet. Yet without patronage (funding) people like Turing, Von Neuman, and Donald Knuth might not have given us their great works, and you wouldn't have a computer. Beggers they are not.
I tried to show the absurdity of the restriction of the free flow of ideas to all progress in arts, science, and engineering. It is a viewpoint diametrically opposed viewpoint to the author's who encourages us to hide ideas, as expressed in code, out of fear for our livelyhood. He presents a false choice. I do regret the analogy however. To compare today's meatball programming techniques to the beauty and elegance of Wiles work is a great insult to Wiles.
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
But he doesn't want to profit from anyone else's software -- he wants to write software. The only problem is that he isn't making money by writing software, which is all he wants to do. He doesn't want to get a job, he doesn't want to support somebody else's creations. He wants to create.
But don't think you'll be able to charge anyone but fools for a basic operating system, or browser, or email program, or media player, or ripper, or DVD player, or calculator, etc. etc. etc.
This is an interesting idea. Whether you're right or not, I had to stop and think about it.
There are two costs of any product: the up-front cost (in this case, R&D), and the per-unit cost (distribution medium). So if someone is willing to front the cost for R&D by doing it themselves for free, and since The Internet provides a basically free per-unit cost, there's no reason that things can't be free. This isn't a revalation.
Don't kill me for saying this, but I want to put it out to answer your point: people who create software for free are fools, because they give away something that they could instead sell. Perhaps people who pay for a service that they could get for free are fools as well, but the developers, to some extent, are fools for making it free in the first place.
Certainly we're not all fools, we all have reasons for making the decisions we do, but you see that it goes both ways.
Offtopic hypothetical: you're at an accident on a street. traffic is backed up a bit, and the left lane is blocked off. Everyone gets into the right lane in an orderly fashion, except for one guy who drives up past everybody in the left lane all the way up to the cones, then merges in front of you at the last second. Is he the fool, or are you?
but if you provide the service that brings these tools to their fingertips, then maybe you can get an honest days pay out of the deal
Until someone figures out how to provide that service for free. Then you, like others, are out of a job.
People can choose to develop software for free or they can choose to charge for their software.
Throwing out all that grey area where you get a company to sponsor you, charge for support, or whatever...
Here's my question:
If they choose to create free software, then the value of their labors is... $0? Why would they create something that doesn't have monetary value? I'm not saying there's no reason to, and I'm not saying there's no value to the software (there obviously is), but I'd like to hear the rationale.
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
So it's not at all a level playing field and once again, those with money make the money. Those without don't.
Some would argue that is a level playing field. It's tough to see how arguing that people without money make money and people with money don't make money, makes any sense.
It is about the little guy contributing and the little guy then gets the access of the big guy. The access is the multiplier. There will always be poor and rich, most able to leverage their position. But here the idea is that everyone should have the lever, the degree to which one can use it is immaterial in that context.
I'll take the money I make while writing proprietary code for a closed-source software company. It's much better than none.
I've got no problems with that, having done the same thing. And then I use that money to support the things I belive in, hoping somewhere along the way to create a sustainable reaction, but you can do what you want, that's the beauty of it.
Re:nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Overall the numbers of OSS developers with regard to consumers is analogous to two stewardesses on a transAtlantic 747-400. Serving drinks to 600 people. Twice. Those two can argue about whether bottled water is better because it is free and everybody knows what is in it, or Pepsi is better because of all the R&D that goes into it, or Jack Daniels is better because it is America's favorite and Pepsi is an evil corporation
IBM, Novell, Apple, and to a lesser extend RedHat - what these companies are offering is not OSS for the emotional well being of the customers, nor OSS so the customer can have the source, nor even a PR boost with the OSS crowd. IBM, Novell, to a lesser extent Apple and to a much lesser extent RH are offering a complete end to end business solution that a company can implement, satisfy 100% of their business needs, run the software they need to run in order to run a business. A chunk of that is the desktop and Linux on the desktop with OpenOffice is something they can directly make changes to (ie, have source to) in order to be a best fit solution for a large company's needs. In is only part of the solution, however, with big back ends supplied by IBM or Novell doing back end processing of business stuff (this is where they make the big bucks, IBM in particular.)
In addition to shaving $500 a seat (bulk subscription costs of MS operating system and office suite) in order to move those funds into the development and implementation of a customer's back office, if I had to guess they are going with Linux as the desktop component (Novell, IBM) because they will then have control front to back of the entire business environment in order to better make a complete solution work. And that is what they are betting corporate America (etc..) will pay big money for down the road.
Two sides of the same coin (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody looks at is as "free speech" but Stallman and his core followers. It's "free beer" to everyone else, believe me.
You're just flipping the coin around and looking at it from a different side. It's pointless to do so because you're just describing one aspect of the same thing--software being put on the net for free. Tell everyone it's "free speech" all you want, but most people won't care. It's zero-price software being put on the net with an open source license, that's it. The "free speech" angle is a mental concept, while the "free beer" angle is a verifiable fact.
Re:net result (Score:5, Insightful)
So the only people using free software are big corporations? Ever heard of non-profit organizations? You know, the ones that exist to help people and communities? The less they have to spend on their IT and technology, the more money they have to spend on helping people. Helping people live a happier life.
Re:...and Clemens' reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny. It shows Clemens doesn't understand either. Both are political, both are practical, and both are almost orthogonal to monetary interests. In fact I'd say the "Free" most F/OSS guys discuss is what most would consider the "political" side of it, not the other way round.
Ask RMS whether he's writing Free software or Open Source...
Re:A good mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely.
Most code isn't free, and doesn't need to be. The article author makes it obvious by his own experience -- scratching an itch in the forms required by his father's business and turning 3 hours of paperwork into 15 minutes.
Quoth the author:
True. But what software will you produce?
The world doesn't need another MP3 player, word processor, P2P app, or DVD ripper. The world has those.
The world also doesn't need an application to integrate and tabulate daily trading volume, net margin requirement, and compliance reports from Bank of Fooblitzky's trading desk. The world has no use for that.
But Bank of Fooblitzky sure as hell does. And if your Free Software portfolio says that you're more likely to be able to write it than the n00b out of college with a degree and no portfolio, guess who gets hired by Bank of Fooblitzky.
Right. The guy who can code.
99% of the code on this planet is never seen outside the offices of the corporation for which it's written. Because it's useless to anyone but the company that needed it. That's a feature, not a bug.
Because it means you're useful to someone, even if the rest of the world has no use for what you code. Your employer needs your expertise, and that's what you're getting paid for.
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Those companies have OSS for purely commercial reasons. This is a case of complementary economics. When two products are complements of eachother you want your complement product to be cheap so that a consumer can spend more money on your product (example: gas - cars). For IBM, a complementary product is the OS. If the OS is free their customers can spend more money buying servers. As easy as that.
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea, RedHat's whole purpose is to bleed Microsoft of money. That's one of the most paranoid things I've ever heard. RedHat is in a business, and Linux servers are selling while desktops just aren't well enough. It's smart business to focus on servers when that's the main market of Linux now.
> The long term view is that eventually by reclaiming the desktop they will be able to provide services, support, and administrative tools that will be profitable, but in the past 3 years and for the immediate future RedHat is spelling it out loud and clear : OSS on the desktop is not a profit driven business venture.
And of course everyone in the OS business is interested in taking monopoly control over desktops. Bleeding cash is not only not necessary for RedHat (since their development tweaking of Linux is cheaper than creating projects, so their total cost of production is cheaper than Microsoft), it'd be stupid considering RedHat doesn't have $40+ billion in the bank to wait out Microsoft. However, if they see a desktop market available, they'll take it. After all, there's 10x to 100x as many desktop users as server users.
Some Incoherent Ranting (Score:3, Insightful)
It has a similar flavor to copyright (or the way copyright should be, not this ridiculous farce it is now.) You create a creative work. You choose the method of distribution - ie, free or not. Obviously, not-free is the more popular choice, since you need something to live on. In any event, after you have made some profit off of your work over a goodly amount of time (which should be no more than 20-30 years max, imho. But that's me) then the work becomes a public treasure. And you've got motivation to create other creative works and can't rest on the laurels of soemthing you did 40 years ago.
I'm sorry that this rant has rambled on. I'm tired, stressed, and sweaty from karate drill. My point really is just that avarice will be the downfall of society. Capitalism isn't moral nor ethical by nature. We have to impose those limits ourselves.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night.
Set a man afire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. Terry Pratchett
Has a point (Score:2, Insightful)
Free Software might end up helping Microsoft. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should information / software be free? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, someone's going to come up with... service it, charge for maintenance, support, etc. BULLSH*T! We make software that the whole point is that it's easy to administer, that my customers aren't going to need a legion of "support" IT folks, and their associated costs, and that customization is easy out of the box without spending a fortune. Again, where's my incentive to have my people giving away our source code? I pay my coders and designers a lot of money and respect to ensure that we can have the best product out there. That money doesn't come from some hippy commune called GPL. It's comes from paying customers who buy high-quality and low-support needing software from us.
From a buyer side of things, personally, I think the "write code, give it away for free, charge for support" business model is practically extortion. Our design strategy is to try and make software as easy to use, easy to administer and easy to setup as possible so that our clients don't have to spend extra time and money on training or more IT staff. Am I hearing right, that essentially the best business model for free software is to come up with applications that are confusing to use and require IT hand-holding to run and manage? If that's the case, I believe there's a lot of bad coders out there who don't really spend the time to make excellent applications.
Just because the app runs and does it's job doesn't mean it's finished and ready to go. Finish it, polish it up, make it good looking and easy to use, with clear documentation. That's the hardest part of writing software, and frankly, I won't purchase ( or use, or sell ) software that doesn't have that last crucial 10% done (which pretty much cuts out about 90% of the free stuff I've seen and played with). I'll pay for the 10%, because it enables myself and my staff to operate more efficiently, effectively and ultimately for less costs, and makes the actual cost of the software irrelevant.
Free software may work for large businesses in the server room, but frankly, for the small business person trying to make a living, the last thing I'm doing is giving away our blood sweat and tears!
Re:Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)
And he should be fanatical. While MS makes some good products (Excel is pretty nice) they also make some real crap. The only thing keeping them mega rich is tying. They don't sell office in pieces, if you want one part you buy them all. If you run their OS you can be assured that nobody else will be able to compete with them. From DR-DOS to Lotus, and on to the modern day, they've always used their position as makers of the OS to make sure that the platform favours them, sometimes to the point of breaking the competition's software completely.
If he loses control of the OS he loses half of his power. If someone adopts an open source groupware client, word processor, or spreadsheet, there's a lot less motive for them to buy a whole package which duplicates half of this functionality.
Bill's entire empire is built on control, not consumer choice. Nobody is more afraid of consumer freedom.
As for the market we'd have if free software took off, more than half of my programming jobs have been doing custom software for a company. Nothing exceptional, just custom database forms and such. (Hundreds of such forms, and views for each type of employee, but still just front ends for existing software.) People are still going to want customized software and they'll pay people to write it. Even if it was released nobody else would want it because their procedures wouldn't be the same. This market will always exist - no matter how easy coding gets there'll always be another level you'll want to get a pro to do.
Re:Why should information / software be free? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been trying to say the same things in my earlier posts in this thread, and I would definitely like to hear why most OS proponents seem to insist that Open Source is MORALLY right, that wanting to charge for your work is reprehensible because you want "MONEY".
For those who've read "Atlas Shrugged", the comments of the OS-brigade should be eerily familiar.
Maybe you have some "utopian" worldview in which people will again be bartering goods for services, but NO, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
So you might as well stop trying to reinvent the hippie wheel and understand that just because people want money for their effort, it doesn't mean that they do not respect knowledge.
Bandying the failures or shortcomings of a few major companies doesn't give Open Sourcers (if I may) the right to generalize sentiments over the rest of the "closed-source" world.
Free software is FREEDOM not about price (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:net result (Score:1, Insightful)
Playing w/ cool toys is life. Your life is better because you can and do play with cool toys.
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Joey is a lair (Score:1, Insightful)
So why does a pair of Nike sneakers cost significantly more than $3? The materials and labor can't be more than that.
The marginal cost of software is zero.
So are you saying that the software development business is fruitless and should be tasked to those willing to work for free?
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
What I do not do is to force people, using a corrupt system of "laws," "patents," etc., to refrain from sharing, modifying, or improving my software.
That's fine. That's your choice. I'm just saying that there is nothing wrong with someone making a different choice. You think that just because someone disagrees with you then they are "corrupt".
Since the current set of law, patents, etc. allow you to grant others the right to share, modify or improve your software does that make them corrupt? You just don't like it because some people disagree with your attitude. Well, believe it or not, not everyone thinks the same.
Re:net result (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you don't understand what a non-profit is.
It means that the company itself doesn't have any money in its coffers. Its aim is to maintain a balanced cash flow; they spend everything they bring in as profit.
This does not mean that the executives and employees give their work for free; you can be CEO of a nonprofit and have a $1,000,000 salary. Quite happily, in fact.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Is programming talent scarce? It seems to me that it's not. Not even hardly; leaving code monkeys out of it, good programmers are 99 cents a pound.
Now, people with good original ideas are indeed scarce - and they can make money out of them regardless (even, I should note, if they're lousy programmers). But good programmers aren't scarce, and if that's all you bring to the table, "not going hungry" - i.e. just getting by like everyone else - is pretty much all you should expect to get.
Apologies to those programmers who have dreams of fabulous riches. I'm sure you'll find a way to make it work, someday.
Re:Making good money with F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
My question the programmer addressed in this letter is, why on earth would you work for a for-profit organization without requiring compensation? Companies choosing to open up protocols or source code makes sense in certain scenarios. This is however very different then a programmer giving up their own personal time, which in my opinion just deteriorates our pofessional value as a whole.
Values (Score:4, Insightful)
The quote assumes value equals only money. That opinion is valid, but is not the only opinion that's valid. Many of my favorite personal accomplishments were done for free, and some even cost me significant cash.
Living on another planet (Score:5, Insightful)
But we Free Software developers are not starving unwashed bums giving away our livelihood. In my own case, I write proprietary software for pay during the day, and Free Software for fun and itch-scratching on weekends. Others write non-product software during the day, and Free Software on weekends. For others programming is pure hobby, as they do none of it while at work. The rare individual might actually get paid to write the Free Software itself.
But in no cases are we taking our metaphorical paychecks and tearing them up!
Why must we try to squeeze every penny out of every action? Maybe I should charge my neighbor a fee when he borrows my lawn mower. Maybe I should charge my kid when I repair his broken bicycle seat. Heck, maybe I should charge my wife for washing the dishes!
I write Free Software as a hobby. I also brew beer as a hobby. Is this guy going to be bitching that homebrew hobbyists need to get a life and open up a commercial brewhouse and stop wasting their time puttering about in the garage on weekends? "Oh man! You could have sold that beer, but you gave it away for free to your neighbor! Are you stupid?"
Young Programmer, Fair Deuce (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not a fair analogy since owning an apartment building costs you money whereas writing software costs you time. (though the later is infinitisimally (can't spell) more important)
If this article were a slashdot comment I'd mod it flamebait. It's obvious he hasn't researched nor does he know the slightest thing about free software. Does:
It's a dream created and made popular by people who have a keen interest in having cheap software so that they can drive down their own cost and profit more or by people who can easily demand it, because they make their money out of speaking at conferences or write books about how nice it is to have free software.
apply to rms, esr, linus? I don't think so, yet these are the people who "created" the "dream".
It's exploitation by companies who are not at all interested in creating stuff. They want to use your stuff for free. That's why they trick you into doing it.
Where are there examples of companies tricking people into starting projects? Yes, companies do benefit and make money off free software but most of the time these projects also benefit from fixes and patches. Even if these companies don't contribute back to a project then at least the world has gained a quality piece of software, which is accessible to people who couldn't otherwise afford it.
If you expect to gain (financially) from writing software then obviously writing free software isn't the way to go but why should people who do be slammed for it? It's their choice to make. Would he slam people who give up their free time to help the needy? I'd sure hope not. Obviously "Aiden" isn't going to work for free for the rest of his live but is there anything wrong with having a hobby?
I'm not involved in any free software projects but I've written software which I made available for free and for money and I got more kicks out of people who used my software mailing me or asking for features than I ever got from a pay cheque.
I apologise for the incoherent nature of this comment. It was written in a hurry.
Worth (Score:2, Insightful)
Is all my time, skill, and training worth nothing? Absolutely not.
The real question should be: How much is it worth to me to make the world a better place for everyone by writing software under an Open Source license?
"...more than money."
Re:Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they choose to create free software, then the value of their labors is... $0? Why would they create something that doesn't have monetary value? I'm not saying there's no reason to, and I'm not saying there's no value to the software (there obviously is), but I'd like to hear the rationale.
Speaking for myself as a software-writer-person, if I create hobby software, it's either because I want to learn something that writing that software will teach me, or I want to use something that does not yet exist (or is not suitable to my needs). Often, both of these are considerations for my hobby programming. (This of course does not cover software I write as an agent of an employer; I'm generally not allowed to make licensing-sorts of choices about that software.)
Given those premises, once I've written a piece of software, I see no problem with sharing it freely with others. If that makes me foolish, then so be it, but there are lots of reasons I have for making that decision.
In the end, I write software that I want to use, and I don't worry about who else has it or uses it. I'm happy, other people are happy, and I don't have to waste my time counting pennies and trying to outsmart and track down people "stealing" my software. I can't speak for anybody else, but I certainly don't feel much like a fool.
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please send some of them my way. We're hiring and it seems like we have to go through a lot of hamburger to find the good stuff.
On the other, perhaps we're talking about different things. I'm not looking for people who can crank code. I'm looking for people who can figure out what code to crank what code not to.
Value add is in solving someone's problem, not KLOCs
Overly cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A good mix (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoever gets chosen may, if they are smart, then decide to go look for subcontractors or employees who can actually code. But probably not. More likely, they'll be looking for employees who can do what they're told, which no amount of open source credentials will prove.
If you're trying to get hired as a kernel developer, then yes, you have to show a portfolio of previous kernel work, which you can only achieve by writing free software. But statistically, as a subset of the total population of working programmers, the number of kernel developers is there aren't any.
-Graham
Why coding? (Score:2, Insightful)
The desire to leave a mark and make a difference is commendable. If Aiden can't make a living from it, the skills he's learned from a successful project are rare and very marketable in many areas. There sure are worse ways to spend your time.
Read me young programmer. (Score:5, Insightful)
The software I wrote back then was world leading and whilst it was never sold big time, it certainly was legendary in the uni I ended up working in.
Now I'm 36. I work Project Leading and architecting software projects. I have a nice office that overlooks a very pretty city (although it is raining at the moment). I have travelled the back blocks of the world off the proceeds of writing software and had some pretty amazing experiences. Software paid well enough to enable me to take 2 years off without effectively working at all to do this.
I'v saved all the money I've earned in the last 5 years in software so I can now buy a really great house largely mortgage free because that is what is important to me now, and I can also now chill a little and start something very satisfying of my own to earn some money. What is important to you changes over life. What was important to me has changed so much. Its pretty hard for a young programmer to believe but it is true.
Don't throw all your efforts into free stuff. You are effectively making money for those evil corporations you hate. They ARE effectively making money off you.
Whilst is is unPC to earn money, money buys you time and a quality of time you spend. Don't waste the opportunity to increase the quality of the time you have.
If I could mod the original letter up to +10 I would. That is a vey sane piece of writing.
Re:I am a Young Programmer & Open-Source Advoc (Score:2, Insightful)
Actual consumers of Free Software (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not exactly true. I consume free software, mainly because it's often more dependable and better designed than commercial software. Back in school, I used it for that reason and the fact that it was free, in the lower-case, zero-cost sense. An 18-year-old on work-study pay really doesn't have a whole lotta money for software licenses, and running a web server on Windows 98 just wasn't cutting it. When you write Free software, you really do help out your less fortunate geek brethren.
As for why you write free software, most of the people I know who do it, do so because it's more fun than the code they write at work. Nobody ever said that you should turn down a well-paying job to work on Free software. If you can pull it off and maintain an acceptable standard of living, great, but most of us need a "real" job just to pay the bandwidth bills. Writing Free software is a pastime, and in the long run is probably a whole lot healthier than, say, watching TV in the evenings or mixing up another batch of bathtub crank.
Re:net result (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source/GPL/etc is a different paradigm, and many people just can't grasp the concept. They don't seem to realize that Open Souce lets them build upon software to customize it to their needs, instead of reinventing the wheel each time. For every peice of code they release to the public, they get it back a hundred fold.
In the open source world, you don't work to sell the code, you code to sell the work. It's an open and free (as in freedom) system, where you can work together with people outside your organization to get the software to do what you need it to do.
With OSS, the money still exists but it's aquired differently. Gone will be the days where you could write a small utility and make millions. I think this is what hangs a lot of people up.
And let us not forget, proprietaty software can hurt everyone, and does every day. Not only does it become a major issue when the developer simply decides to drop the product you depend on, but also when it has the ability to lock everyone in and everyone's at their mercy. (Microsoft.)
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
You leave out choice. I, for instance, could make much more money than I do currently, but I like my job. I'd rather enjoy work and make enough than hate work and make a mint.
Why? Is programming talent scarce?
Yes. In my experience programming talent is scarce, very scarce.
Re:Free software is FREEDOM not about price (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. But the author's point is that libris and gratis are not orthogonal, where software is concerned.
Re:Why should information / software be free? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should I be required to make my source code available? Somebody could rip me off. I know the GPL has provisions to protect people that have released their IP under the GPL, but what guarantees do I have?
As everybody knows, copyright protection is not guaranteed in all parts of the world. If I worked on a project and the source code was available, what is to prevent Mr.X somewhere from literally lifting ideas or code from my work. Why should I then have to spend thousands of dollars in litigation?
If you want to release YOUR software under the GPL. Why do you think that ALL software should?
If you buy my software and have a security issue, talk to me about it. Those kinds of issues can be sorted out better by clients talking to the companies.
Re:net result (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Read me young programmer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A good mix (Score:4, Insightful)
>
> If you spend those same 5 years writing code for a company and you have performance reviews and promotions and raises your resume will look a LOT better.
False dichotomy.
Go to college, write F/OSS for four years.
Get an entry-level job, write F/OSS for a year or two on your own time.
Two years down the road - show your next employer a good track record on the job, as well as the ability to tackle projects on your own initiative.
Win-win.
Re:net result (Score:2, Insightful)
no no no. YOU just don't get it! Free Software is not about making better software. It's about encouraging freedom and building a better community.
Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets say that you and a couple of your friends develop (over a period of a year or so) an absolutely outstanding piece of software that fills a niche in business, going right up to enterprise level. You go out and put it under the GPL.
Step forward a couple of months. IBM realise how good your software is (as an example) and how useful it will be in the enterprise. They start bundling your software with their servers / desktops, provide support for it, customise it for their customers etc.
How do you make your money? You will never get to sell / support / install your software at enterprise level as a giant multi-national is doing it too - legally. They make the zillions through their hardware sales, support, customization etc, while you go around maybe installing it here and there in your local small businesses, barely scraping a living, knowing that you will never be able to compete with the 800 pound gorilla.
Not insightful, WRONG! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right that non-profits do pay their employees, and they often pay their employees a wage comparitive to what that employee would make at a for-profit company. What distinguishes a non-profit company from a for-profit one is that the people in control of the non-profit (The Board or Members, depending), do not have a FINANCIAL STAKE in the performance of the non-profit. Revenues for a non-profit company mut be spent on that company's non-profit purpose; revenues for a for-profit company can be disbursed to owners just because.
Re:net result (Score:2, Insightful)
So you love using software written by stupid assholes!? This kind of baiting is disgusting.
While free software is not the answer to all the worlds problems, thinking that it doesn't help improve people's lives is just as naive as thinking volunteer fire-fighters don't help improve their communities.
People write free software for the same reason that college professors publish papers explaining some great new discovery. It's a form of proactive civil service.
I program extensively. Most of my experience I owe in great part to open source efforts like gcc, php, python, and countless tutorials and articles documenting great ideas. So when I release some of my work for free, I'm not throwing away countless hours of effort. I'm giving back to the community.
This is not and either/or situation (Score:1, Insightful)
People who program usually love programming. So they will enjoy (?) it as a career but even more so as a hobby. Now if the hobby brings satisfaction and brings good to the world its a great hobby.
And during the week they are also employed doing what they love. Why squabble over which is right when we can all do both or either!?
Re:Amen. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:3, Insightful)
Pitching national infrastructure as a selling point for staying here won't work. Building the necessary infrastructure in India or Bangladesh or Eastern Europe isn't all that expensive, when you think about how much cheaper the labor and the cost of living is. Instead, pitch the unique advantages to having American workers--that they're the ones connected to American consumers, that even if coding isn't done here, creativity and management should be. Get the drift?
Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)
Society has long idealized the free dissemination of information. It is "knowledge that sets us free." It is by learning that we become great, etc.
In history, those cultures we generally ascribe greatness to are those that most effectively made use of broad dissemination of information for free as a social imperative: the Greeks, ancient Islam, the rise of public schooling in the US. Those periods and cultures that have striven to manage or control the dissemination of information generally end up viewed as social catastrophes; from the dark ages, to fundamental Islamicism, to Ashcroft.
The US was founded by people well schooled in and respectful of (the then vogue interpretations of) classical history. From these roots we have free schools and universities, free libraries, even free speech. In all the principle is that the more educated the world is, the more improved its condition. "As he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me..." and by so doing the total light is increased.
The publishing industry polluted all that. Guttenberg was an asshole. Well, nobody ever called Guttenberg an asshole, perhaps because it wasn't his fault, but the fault of the for-profit publishing industry that followed.
The concept is that one could value-add to low value artifacts by mixing them with some intangible that immeasurably increased the value (pun on immeasurably). Ahh, but trouble lay ahead, once there were two publishers it turns out that ideas, like fire, are expansible over all space without lessening their density at any point, and the second could equally add value to their cheap pulp by touching it to the flames of the first.
In a free market, back and forth the price would fall until it was just the price of the raw material, and what kind of business is selling pulp to the public? Might as well be a tree farmer.
So we must eliminate the pesky free market and create some protectionism - get the constables with their guns to bully and if absolutely necessary kill anyone who breaks the rules and spreads that fire without first obtaining express written permission of the NFL and paying ASCAP.
In one extreme, infinite copyright, the concept fails completely and soon no idea, no concept no invention can be but stillborn, hopelessly mired in an intractable web of monopolies.
In the other extreme, no copyright, we get a perfectly workable society, as we did for thousands of years (and during which time the finest art and music known flourished) but in which inventors (including artists) have some trouble participating in a free market, but rather must be supported directly.
How does this relate to the question at hand? Well you can probably get paid to fan someone, but you can't own the wind (and bill everyone who's cooled by it... not unless you first form a PAC, hire Jack Valenti, and grease some congressmen with soft money, just wait we'll all soon be wearing RFID tagged anemometers on our heads and paying by the CFM).
There will always be a market for programmers (and artists and musicians) (as long as there is a market) to do work for hire. But the era of publishing for (vast) profit is over. Whether it's music or books, or movies, or software, mass distribution for profit is dead. It's corpse lays heavily on innovation and it's starting to stink.
It had a good run, 300 or so years, and society advanced thanks to it. But it's over now. It is time to start undoing the monopolies. Their value is past. All software must be free.
But not all programming must be unpaid.
"Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody..."
Re:Young Programmer, Fair Deuce (Score:1, Insightful)
That's (once again) not a fair analogy. If the tools needed to build an apartment complex were free then it would be since the only thing being donated would be time. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be paid for their time I'm saying that if people _*want*_ to donate their time to free software projects then why not?
Re:net result (Score:3, Insightful)
There _used_ to be, till someone came and said, "HEY! THAT'S MINE AND YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY!"
Not too much longer after that moment, trade was invented.
Re:net result (Score:2, Insightful)
I myself wholly believe that innovation is what is really important. But then why the insistence for the software to be free? Is there no innovation in software that someone needs to purchase?
When it comes down to it, there are plenty of examples both on the open-source and closed-source side of the fence where innovation clearly took a second seat. No matter which way we as a community cut it, it's time we all start being real serious about innovating. This certainly means that companies with billions and billions in liquid cash should stop sitting on top of cash cows and stagnating their software because it's about the revenue model and not how much one can aspire to innovate. It certainly also means organizations and companies adopting open-source as a weapon to compete against other companies, mostly based upon the low price point, need to realize that they lost on the innovation front and that innovation is ultimately going to save their organization and innovation is the right thing to pursue. Finally, I think all this certainly means that we would all like to stop seeing the same windows-clone-like desktop on many linux systems and see something different. What's up with the start button on all these linux desktops? True, MS has stagnated the OS technology in various ways, but I don't see linux blazing the trail on this front either.
Re:Young Programmer, Fair Deuce (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever hear of "Habitat for Humanity"?
...but you're making computers more useful (Score:3, Insightful)
But there is a second order effect: people enojoy pong. They want more sophisticated programs. You are opening the market for more that. Second order: gain.
Obviously pong is a weak case - a really strong case would be the web browsers. If you have to pay $50 for one, and they keep getting upgraded annually and you had to buy a new one to get new internet content each year the web would be about as useful as, say, ham radio.
Operating systems are also a good case. If it's too expensive it will limit the growth of the industry. (Now you are all going to cringe). MS windows is not really that expensive. This is partly because MS doesn't want to drive away potential customers for all their other software. They could charge more for the OS - people would buy it - but they not only loose one MS windows customer, but the MS office customer and perhaps some other random products (I don't know what all MS sells: video games perhaps? Finance software or is that in office?)
The first order loss is pretty obvious, but finite. The second order gain is amorphous, but long term. And I don't think I'm going to get alot of opposition here saying I think we are not close to ending what computers are capable of.
Saying that making free software will destroy the software market is obviously erronious, but so is not acknowledging that you are preventing some sales.
Should you advocate free software? Who the hell am I to tell you? You have to figure it out; it's your life.
I just wanted to point out the layers of effects in one post - I know that basically people have been going on and on about one or the other and pretending the other side doesn't exist.
As for the orders, its like Taylor expanding the cosine function: cos(x) = 1 - x^2/2! + x^4/4! -... its going to depend on what x is as to which term dominates, except there are tons of effective 'x''s in the problem.
Money (Score:3, Insightful)
It's particularly amusing to me to hear from earlier generations of programmers. If you were a programmer in the 70's, 80's, or even early 90's the market was very different than it is now. Tons of people have gotten into the industry. I would imagine "just avoid free software and you'll make bank" or "just contribute to free software and you'll make bank" were great pieces of advice years ago because both assumed you would be programming, and programming was a good job.
I write software but that's not what I'm really paid for, nor is it my defining skill so I can't really comment on the market or conditions directly but from what I hear it is pretty grim.
The last and most disturbing part is that tacitly so many of you are assuming you are going to have a great life if you make lots of money. The "putting food on the table" argument is not so valid in America because there are many, many other jobs you can take up - and from what I hear many
I don't think anyone here is saying stay unemployed and write free software like mad out of Mom's basement for your whole life and refuse all paying jobs if/when they come because your free software is so great.
As several have suggested, you can write free software as a hobby. This is typically joined with come complaints about programming jobs. Why not get a different job that you enjoy and still program in your free time?
I don't see myself at the end of my life looking back and thinking "if only I had made more money". For me, having better relationships with people is worth a lot of potential money. I just can't imagine working with nasty, greedy people (or becoming one myself) just for a beautiful office or view. I enjoy my lifestyle far too much as it is. Obviously the choice is yours; I'm just saying if programming jobs suck for you maybe taking the paycut will be worth it.
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Re:net result (Score:4, Insightful)
You might argue that we're benefitting from that, but really without OS we'd just have to do without, and the students would be the ones that get screwed.
Re:Read me young programmer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Call me conservative if you will, I'd have to say that I'd prefer to financially secure my future so that I can devote time to contribute to my community. I hope that the rise of open source does not lower the value of programmers (both open and closed source) as Clemens Vasters suggests, but what he says sounds quite plausible.
This is shit (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL! I can't think of anything less romantic.
This nonsense hardly merits a response. The writer is seriously delusional and projecting his own fears and inadequacies on to an ecosystem and value-system he doesn't understand. Perhaps he is jealous of the Tim O'Reillys of the world.What's spooky is the writer's random sprinkling of the word "family" throughout the text... he is making a subliminal emotional appeal instead of making his points with evidence.
The way it's written, it could have been planted as part of a coordinated FUD-Astroturf campaign to attack free/open source software on a "populist" level. A groklaw user [groklaw.net] has summarised the lies which comprise this "strategy":
I have added emphasis to the points which specifically refute the bullshit quoted at top.