Open Source Developers Mostly Pros, Not Weenies 198
SpinyNorman writes: "Survey shows open source developers mostly veteran pros, not slashdot weenies. Slashdot weenie Hemos should have submitted this himself already seeing as he was involved in it as LinuxWorld!
Open source a needed outlet for programming pros." Like any survey, it's bound to miss some avenues of exploration, but this is the best look at a large group of open source developers I've seen yet. The survey itself (a joint project of the Boston Consulting Group and Slashdot-parent OSDN) lives at www.osdn.com/bcg, or you can jump straight to it in either PDF or html.
Good stuff (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good stuff (Score:2)
Re:Good stuff (Score:2)
What about worrying about the rent/mortgage or where the next meal is coming from?
Re:Good stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus I'm a little suspicious of some of these answers. Most polling groups have discovered that people tend to a) give answers that make them look good, and b) give answers that they think the poll-takers want to hear. "I do it for the intellectual challenge" sounds a lot better than "I do it because I have self-esteem problems and really need to see my name in the credits of a program".
Rigged! (Score:3, Funny)
Uh... (Score:2, Funny)
That's why they call them geeks.
Re:Uh... (Score:1)
(the dictionary does not agree with me. It says a weenie is a nerd.)
Check your links, Timmy (Score:1, Informative)
As of 4:20PM EST, your PDF link and OSDN link are invalid.
It's not that hard (I have my own Slash-like site and my links aren't broken)
No offense, Mr. Monkey
Re:Check your links, Timmy (Score:1)
Since when is posting lame IM conversations and boasting of kharma
Interesting, but not THAT interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my US$2e-02. OK,
- B
Re:Interesting, but not THAT interesting (Score:2)
Why? Because "pro" here means "IT professional". In addition to actual software engineers, the term includes sysadmins, tech support guys, webmasters, DBAs, script hackers, recent CS graduates, etc., and none of these latter types would actually be qualified to touch most closed-source product code. Although these guys have the heart, they don't necessarily have the chops to turn out engineered solutions.
So, in the end, all this survey says to me is that people who work on open source projects typically work in the IT field. It doesn't say anything at all about the viability or quality of open source software projects as a result. If anything, it suggests that the quality of most open source code would be lower as a result.
Very timely study (Score:1)
I'm currently in a 'computers & society' course this semester and we regularly debate important timely events.
Last week we debated free software, and I was amazed at how people in my class thought that "code written by 14 year olds in their garage couldn't match up with code written by professionals at Microsoft".
I quickly informed them as to the truth -- most open source zealots are damn good coders, and yes, many of them even have jobs and a house/apartment! Now, thanks to this article, I have proof.
Re:Very timely study (Score:5, Insightful)
most open source zealots are damn good coders, and yes, many of them even have jobs and a house/apartment!
Everything was great until I came across this: Most open source zealots haven't written a line of code in their life. Most open source authors are pragmatic and appreciate the benefits in particular areas, and their approach is anything but zealotry. There is a vast chasm of difference between the attitudes of a Slashdot Warrior advocating the true way of enlightenment, and the people who are behind the usable open source.
Re:Very timely study (Score:4, Interesting)
Real programmers shut up and let their work speak for them.
Re:Very timely study (Score:1, Funny)
RMS once wrote Emacs. Now he's an expert on all things. And he won't shut up.
Dear Abby,
My club has an "unofficial" leader who has been an outspoken proponent of our values from time immemorial. Lately, though, his behavior has attitude has become much more strident and he has been very abusive verbally, even towards some of our long-time club members. Abby, can you give us some help?
-- Handcuffed, but Free
zealots (Score:2)
Here's the correct link (Score:4, Informative)
-Jon
Re:Very timely study (Score:1, Insightful)
writing good code starts with knowing how to design, 14 years old can't match design skills
of Microsoft Pros
So this is where that spam came from. (Score:5, Funny)
Is it significant that 34% of SourceForge developers responded but only 2.4% of Linux Kernel list subscribers? Does this survey prove anything more than "SourceForge developers are more likely to be successfully trolled than Linux Kernel list subscribers?"
Re:So this is where that spam came from. (Score:4, Insightful)
They did some good trolling.. they refered to the project by name, said that the project was related to the survey they were doing, etc etc.
As far as the 34% of SF developers versus 2.4% of the LK list... that's easy. Not everyone who reads the Linux Kernel mailing list is a developer.. but nearly everyone who runs a sourceforge project is.
In short, no, its'not. (Score:2)
People sign up to linux-kernel because they want to be cool.
Broken Links (Score:4, Informative)
I'll never grow old (Score:1)
Dear Hemo, Time moves forward and never stops. Some 10 - 11 years ago, I am sure those 22-37 were in their basements.
Re:I'll never grow old (Score:1)
Chris
Not surprising, really... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, really, it doesn't take much poking and prodding around the Internet to find dozens of programmer resource sites, most of which have tons and tons or free code. Programmers, for the most part, feel a sort of comradery (sp?) with each other and as such aren't very hesitant to share their code with other programmers. There have been many occassions where I've gotten a third-party product developer to open up the code base, despite licensing or legal issues, so I could help him/her customize the product to suite my employer's or client's needs.
Also, I believe there comes a time when a professional developer is either experienced or learned enough to understand the "how" of just about any piece of programming, even if they don't have the experise to jump in and do it. For example, I understand how 3d engines work, despite my never having coded one from the ground up (so to speak). I think opening up the code base of your neat-o project is a little easier to take when you realize that other competent developers are going to basically understand how you accomplished what you've done.
As for "weenies" not showing off their code...perhaps they don't have code of their own to show?
Boston?? Consultants?? (Score:1)
Re:Boston?? Consultants?? (Score:1)
Re:Boston?? Consultants?? (Score:1)
I wonder if people have counted the man hours... (Score:3, Interesting)
and figured out how big a company is needed to reproduce that.
Would make a good "tag-line"
Yes, someone has. (Score:3, Informative)
Inherent in the process? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about anybody else, but I have only ~8 months of programming
experience, and I feel that I'm relatively proficient. (I know there
are always people better than me, and things to learn - this isn't a flame/troll).
But my point is, I learned most of this stuff myself, and I can't help but
wonder if part of the reason I grasped some of these concepts faster is that
I was able to actually examine Open Source code multiple times to learn how
things were done. So in that way, I was learning from professional programmers,
which in turn, could possibly (most likely) generate more professional
programmers, which due to their background of learning from OSS will probably
also contribute to the OSS community, and some other new programmer will start
the same way.
(Self-fulfilling prophecy?)
Re:Inherent in the process? (Score:1)
My 2 cents.
Chris
Re:Inherent in the process? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite - you are learning from the code of professional programmers, not the programmers themselves. The big difference doesn't show up in your code but in your documentation, design and process skills. Initial coding is only a very minor part of the battle of creating great software, the rest is in the design and maintenance and looking at code will teach you very little about documentation requirements.
You can certainly pick up some aspects of design from code directly, but don't fool yourself into thinking you are competent at design if you have only learnt from code - it really is an artform. Probably the biggest failing of open source software is in it's documentation (ie: there is extremely little and documentation is almost always behind). I am definitely not one to support producing copious amounts of wasted paper but I am well aware of how much difference a solid design, fully planned before any code is written, can benefit productivity in the long run.
So by all means participate in open source development and learn from the code, you will learn vast amounts about code that way but don't stop there. Go out and get a degree in software engineering (or something else that focusses on design and maintenance since you already know how to code well), read as many books and white papers on software design as you can or better yet, do both (and whatever else you can find).
I know there are always people better than me, and things to learn
That's the spirit! There is some really cool stuff coming out in white papers these days both relating to code and design - keep an eye out for Genetic Software Engineering from the Software Quality Institute [gu.edu.au] they're doing some really cool stuff.
Maybe if we all go out and study up on design and management (yes, yes, but it's important even in opensource) the next survey will show that open source developers are brilliant at code, design and make the best managers.... Or maybe that's pushing it.....
this is because the /. doesn't do anything (Score:4, Interesting)
There are so many users who are *lost* when the network is down... it's like they don't know what to do with a computer. The past generation knew how to tinker because it was the entertainment... now the spirit's being lossed. It's a good thing the old-timers [linux.org] are so tenacious.
Re:this is because the /. doesn't do anything (Score:1)
Re:this is because the /. doesn't do anything (Score:1)
Lemme guess, the old generation didn't play with grammar books?
Re:this is because the /. doesn't do anything (Score:1)
Games and all are fun, but programming is something i'd really love to do, and i would love to contribute to the OSS community as soon as i can, and I know I'm not the only one in my age group to feel that way.
Oh, and there's a big difference between knowning how to debug a home network (which i can do) and code something well (which i cannot do).
So its true, Hemos is the man (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, I never would have guessed. So Hemos, do you have a vision of where I'll be in a year? I really would love to know.
There are lies, damned lies... (Score:4, Flamebait)
Don't feel like calling into question the verity of the methodology employed in a survey of open source developers by a open source company; it's obviously as trustworthy as a survey of databases as performed/sponsored by Oracle.
I'm not even sure what a sweeping generalization like this proves other than some of us really like to program.
Re:There are lies, damned lies... (Score:2)
Sloppy biased PR markitecture methodologies? No way!
Of course, Surveys by sister companies to Slashdot, both owned by VA [msn.com] couldn't possibly be pushing bull or criticizing "The Competition" [slashdot.org] for much less sloppy statistics.
Re:There are lies, damned lies... (Score:3, Funny)
Anyway, it's not obvious to me that Hemos and OSDN have a vested interest in disproving the myth that the source-code demanding, Microsoft-loathing, won't pat for anything Slashdot audience is the core of free software development and not a bunch of Windows/IE-running posers.
I'm not even sure what a sweeping generalization like this proves other than some of us really like to program.
What sweeping generalization? Did you even look at the results?
Re:There are lies, damned lies... (Score:1)
OSDN *does* have a vested interest in survey... (Score:2)
I'm not saying that OSDN slanted the methodology or results. I am saying its in their interest to do so, something worth keeping in mind. I'd agree that a survey is better than wild speculation, and a partner like BCG may help credibility of the results.
--LP
OSDN says: we're not weenies! (Score:1, Flamebait)
what exactly is a 'pro'? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:what exactly is a 'pro'? (Score:1)
professional (pr-fsh-nl)
1) A person following a profession, especially a learned profession.
2) One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation: hired a professional to decorate the house.
3) A skilled practitioner; an expert.
Personally, I expect most Open Source Developers would tend to choose number 3
Professional, in there on opinions (Score:4, Funny)
This is news why?
Re:Professional, in there on opinions (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't this obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Most work is either database, accounting, or doing web apps with some really broken methodology/tool.
The most fun I have had is working on non-work realated things just for the sake of writing some fun code.
Report may be true (Score:4, Interesting)
Most open source developers started in college or before. The maturity level in open source represents the *maturing* of open source. No one has replaced Linus, but there are newcomers like Marcello. Many other projects are still spearheaded by the same people that started them in their basements when they were teenagers. As far as I know, there hasn't been a massive UV radiation die-off, or kidnapping/cyborg replacement [slashdot.org] program of key developers
Re:Report may be true (Score:2)
Did slashdot get hacked? (Score:2)
Re:Did slashdot get hacked? (Score:1)
Re:Did slashdot get hacked? (Score:2)
I almost fell off my chair when I saw they took it without changing my commentary!
Not a very good study (Score:3, Insightful)
Hi we sent email to sourceforge members, and linux kernel mailing list members, and got a lots of numbers.
First, the response rate from Sourceforge was 34.2%, which is not representative of most of sourceforge. How many of those contacted were in active development? How many alpha projects are there on sourceforge that have had little development, and will continue with little development?
Second, there was only a 2.4% response by the lkml members. Would this 2.4% be the active members of the list, or mainly the people that don't participate?
Third, this only accounts for people on sourceforge projects or linux, which may not be representative of all open source projects. Yes it would be very difficult to survey more members, but how do we know that sourceforge members and linux hackers are not different than other projects?
Fourth, there listing of open source principles(slide 8) is only representative of a specific group of open source developers. The intellectual property ideas("Free speech, not free beer", and copyleft) don't apply to people not using the gpl. This may mis-represent the people who participated in the survey.
This survey is much more useful if, instead of claiming to represent all open source developers, it admitted to being primarily about linux/gpl developers. Or if more information was given about what projects(activity, license, and activity by developer) the participants of the sourceforge survey were involved in.
The survey is interesting if looked at in relation only to the sourceforge community, but is not able to be applied to all open source developers.
--xPhase
It figures (Score:2, Funny)
I'd bet that they have better grammar and spelling too.
Shadowbearer
a measly 2% (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd also be curious to know which *types* of open source projects seem to attract larger-than-usual numbers of women to the contributing ranks. From personal experience, I can say that Post-Nuke, an open source fork of PHP-Nuke, has a fairly high percentage of female participants/developers. But why? Maybe because it's modular and women can go off and work on a module on their own and then go back and submit it later, and thus feel less pressure to need to know all of the ins and outs of every little system. Or maybe it's because it's tempting to play around with modifying the themes/skins (not to get all stereotypical about women being attracted to the GUI end of things while guys do the coding of the guts of the program, but some stereotypes have a good basis in reality). Or maybe because it's a content management system, and women have long had a foothold with online personal publishing or personal communication systems (blogs, online diaries, IM'ing, plain ole personal home pages having long had a sizeable female early adopter contingent- geez, maybe we womenfolk will only pick up a technology if we can use it to *talk*?).
[sigh]
Re:a measly 2% (Score:2, Interesting)
Chris
http://women.kde.org/
Re:a measly 2% (Score:1)
Anyway, I think i just explained it very badly, but you should read the book and see what you think.
Thanks!
Re:a measly 2% (Score:1)
Could be (Score:2)
I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, but if most of the open source developers are ones who are working at programming full time in some tech oriented field. Maybe it is ok for the men in the field to spend all their spare time (and work time in some cases) hacking away on open source projects, but for women, it may be expected for them to be more of a social networker, so her time is limited and little left for open source work. The survey also points out the independent nature of the work, the whole striking out on one's own and doing something never done before (which is stereotypically a masculine trait).
It would be something to look into. I think taking a look at what women Open Source participants view on it, and compare that with men's view point (there is also no female open source Leader/ Speaker, or that I know of). Maybe a lot of CS women view the whole open source thing as a hobby or a guys only club or something.
I feel that if the open source movement is really going to gain strength, it has to increase in diversity (it is very accepting, but there may be some walls it is creating unknowingly, limiting the varity of participants). I believe most people have realized that having alternative view points on a problem usually leads to a better solution in the long run, so this is something that needs to be considered as the movement goes forward (and I don't see it as being as Ask Slashdot, either).
Re:a measly 2% (Score:2)
First of all, there's simple biology. Guys and gals are different, as we all started noticing in grade school. Guys tend more towards sciences; girls more towards the humanities. Certainly, there are a number who do just the opposite. But think of the twin stereotypes of the high-school social outcast: the poetry club and the computer club. Which is going to be predominantly male? Which predominantly female? It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.
It's tough for girls to break into the geek clique, because we guys, having been deprived of female company, have a certain degree of trouble viewing the female members as other than date material. Think back to when you were in high school and college: the few girls who were into computers and technology were probably constantly being pestered and/or fawned over. Some gals can put up with that; some even enjoy the attention. But for others it makes them quite uncomfortable. So a group which is predominantly male becomes even more so, as females are driven away by testosterone poisoning.
Lastly, I figure that women are not nearly as idealistic as men. Think about it: we guys are not exactly down-to-earth. We philosophise; we blather on about the big picture; we act very silly indeed. Women are, I believe, rather more practical. And--let's face it--Free Software is not exactly the most practical course to follow. It appeals to the idealistic adolescent male mindset, the sort which dreams of dying for some girl, of fighting the good fight, of generally being a bloody nuisance &c. Heck, it's why I'm writing ! [sf.net]
Re:a measly 2% (Score:2)
For some, perhaps. For the practical folks, it just makes economic sense to pool resources instead of throwing them at a big company and hoping something good comes back.
Re:a measly 2% (Score:3, Interesting)
But that's work, and work actually pays money. A lot of guys who work on FS don't really have anything better to do. Any woman _always_ has something better to do
Guys are much more desperate than women socially, that just goes without saying.
Without being sexist (although I can already feel my karma dying), I have yet to meet a woman who I would consider a hardcore hacker. It's not so much about skill, but about just shear determination. I just haven't seen any woman who feels passionate about programming. I've met good female programmers, but most of them can just tolerate it.
It's really the same in most math-based sciences. There aren't many female mathematicians or physists, while there are multitudes of female biologists and chemists.
I seem to remember a study done on spatial relation ability between men and women and the results showing that on average, while women tended to have much better memories than men, men had superior spatial relation ability and hence, had a greater natural ability with math and other abstract sciences.
It also seems logic to conclude that with finer senses and better memories, women would excel at sciences that dealt more with observation as biology and chemistry tend to.
I know I've made a ton of generalizations, but I think there is a degree of truth in the difference in intellegence between the sexes. I don't believe that one is more intellegent overall than the other, but that they both are more intellegent in certain fields of study.
Of course, this is just my very humble opinion and there are of course always exceptions. One thing I've always liked about the FS community is that I have yet to encounter _any_ form of discrimination. It's really the only community in the world that is truely non-bias as far as religion, race, and any other factor is concerned. The only thing that matters is ability.
After all that ranting though, here is probably the real reason: Why in the world would _any_ girl want to associate with a bunch of programming geeks??
Re:a measly 2% (Score:5, Funny)
It's been my luck to know a couple. However, one of the funniest things I remember was a rather patronising social experiment, done in a psychology course for the Open University [open.ac.uk]. I caught this programme on television - I wasn't part of the course. It's all quite a few years ago now as well - maybe 90/91? Don't know for sure.
The experiment gave an internet connection, via modem, to three women - one in her early twenties and a member of the women's darts team, one a working professional single mother in her mid-forties, and the final one looked like everybody's favourite grandmother.
The woman in her twenties discovered internet chat rooms (yes, plenty were there then. Anyone remember Cheeseplant's House?). The woman in her forties spent time with her child doing educational things. Next came the grandmother.
Of course, everyone expected her to have used the machine as a tea-cosy or something, so it came as rather a shock to find she had been participating in various freeware projects, running technical simulators and tweaking her connection parameters to get better throughput. You could feel the researcher slipping into shock...
Completely without knowing, the team had accidently picked one of the original Colossus [pro.gov.uk] team members, and she was putting her sudden luck to good use...
Cheers,
Ian
Not to nit pick (Score:2)
The way our society starts pushing upon children gender roles (pink, fluffy things are for girls, blue, GI joes are for guys), makes it hard to actually test aptitude and relate it to a specific sex. (Gender != sex). How old are the people in the study. It is like saying that people from X country are not good at math, and it must be genetic, because everyone from X country does horrible on standardized test scores. Of course, if one looks into the social aspects of X country, maybe math isn't emphasized, or used at anything higher than basic addition / subtraction.
One can say that the brain is like a group of muscles. In western society, guys are given more exercise of the parts of their mind related to spatial ability, and girls given more exercise of the memory storage and recollection parts of their mind. How can one sex is better at math or science, when it isn't even the sex of the person that is being tested, it is the role that our society has put upon someone based on their sex. So, in our society, the someone who is male is socialized in such a way that they have different use of their brain than someone who is female.
Deciding that it is just biological, and that women are naturally more capable at some things, and men aren't, etc. and leaving the issue at that, just continues the cycle. Because all it does is strengthen the notion that there is a biological difference, when there isn't (because of the idea of the biological difference, people don't realize that is there actions that are actually creating the discrepancy that they see linked to a biological base).
With ya there... (Score:3, Interesting)
I love content management, but I don't particularly like programming. I'm not sure why. I know why I like content management -- scripting allows me to be creative. I love HTML, graphics, and PHP, and I particularly love putting all of those together to form a website. I came from a background of desktop publishing and journalism, and layout has always been my strength.
I like programming in scripting languages like PHP or sh, but I don't like Perl and I don't like hardcore languages like Java and C++. It seems to me that these languages get in my way more than anything else. When I want to write out a SQL result set, I want to just put in a table and drop in some special tags that let me echo out what I found. I don't like JSP's "heavy" syntax. It seems ugly to me. PHP is very elegant and simple, and that is what really appeals to me.
I think that women would have more success in the industry if this industry were more elegant. In general, I believe that women tend to design simple things that perform their function while looking fantastic, while men tend to not care how nice something looks and want function purely over form. This often comes down to men not understanding why, for instance, a lot of women (and a lot of non-geek men!) cringe when faced with a command line. Having come from a writer/artist background, it is important for me to be able to feel comfortable around my computers. I'm not a big fan of "pure power"; I want things that perform well and look nice while doing it.
I hate to say that most geek guys tend to criticize me for these types of feelings. I've been around critical men for long enough that the criticism tends to roll off. However, a lot of guys still don't understand that though I know what a motherboard is, I don't want 47 of them on my living room floor! I don't want my house to look like Star Wars, and I don't want it to look like a museum -- I just want to be comfortable living in it.
I think the programmer contingent will continue to be mostly men because it is not yet elegant. The Linux community will continue to be mostly men because Linux is not yet elegant. But women will thrive in usability groups and design houses where they can make things better and easier to use.
(The above is my opinion, and I don't speak for all the women out there.)
--SlashChick
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the pros who do the actual work. It's the weenies who sit around and bash Microsoft while pontificating and arguing the subtleties of the GPL vs. whatever or Linux vs. BSD on Slashdot all day.
An important point (Score:3, Interesting)
It is extremely unlikely that Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, etc. could *ever* be developed in a corporate environment. Matter of fact, far simpler projects are seldom completed without a huge effort on the part of the engineers to overcome unnecessary and counterproductive management obstacles.
There's some valuable information here. Of course, it will likely be missed because everyone has to get to the meeting.
Good resource (Score:3, Interesting)
You may want to share it with others outside the Slashdot/Open Source community.
pros vs weenies (Score:1)
How many 'open source' projects have decent comments? Not a lot.
Re:pros vs weenies (Score:1)
In my experience, not a lot.
No surprise (Score:1)
In proprietary code, one change from marketing/management and hours of effort are blackholed.
With Free software, if you produce quality work, it'll stay in the project until superceded by better code, not because some corporate Lord and Master is constipated.
Most interesting number (Score:4, Interesting)
I found the most interesting numbers to be on Page 37 [osdn.com]. There, 19% of respondents admitted that they were stealing time from their employers to write open-source software. Would anyone like to bet on what fraction of the 46% who answered "do not participate at work" were telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? What fraction of the "part of core job" respondents were in the "not known by supervisor" category at some point in their careers?
There are a lot of people who work on open-source software in their spare time. There are quite a few who get paid to do it. Bless them all. However, these numbers seem to indicate that at least 19% and probably much more than a third are regularly working on open-source projects while they're being paid to do something else. Maybe it's time to question whether the equation "open source == moral high ground" has any validity.
Re:Most interesting number (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, a good manager recongizes that this is ok. It's good for moral. If the biggest compliant of an FS programmer is that he spends some time at the office hacking away at a bug or scribbling some code on a notepad while the other goobers are talking about what they saw on Survivor, then that's a damn good thing because atleast the FS programmer is becoming a better programmer and will likely become even more productive.
Besides, since most FS programmers have a bit of experience (according to the article), it is likely to assume that they have enough experience to know how much they can get away with doing at work without work suffering.
Think of it this way, if your a manager would you rather see your C++ programmers spending an hour talking about the Super Bowl or spending an hour figuring out a non-work related bug in a C++ program that is FS and could therefore be used by the company in some way in the future?
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
You're assuming that the FS programmer is doing their FS work instead of playing chess online or talking about the Patriots winning the Super Bowl. Is that a reasonable assumption? I'm not saying it's wrong, but I don't think we should accept uncritically the notion that FS programmers don't indulge in pure goof-off time like (or often with) their non-FS colleagues, in addition to the work time they use for their FS projects. Given the intense familiarity that many FS folks seem to have with every political current and gadget and video game and anime flick and window manager theme and filesharing program, such an assumption seems suspect at best. FS programmers do have non-FS interests, and there's no reason to suppose they don't indulge them at work like everyone else does.
I appreciate the fact that downtime at work is a fact of life for programmers. I have nearly 600 posts right here to demonstrate that appreciation, plus plenty of other time "wasted" in other ways. Maybe those FS programmers truly are "making something out of nothing" and their FS activities represent zero cost to their employers. Maybe doing FS at work is actually good, because it helps develop skills. I'd just rather know than assume.
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
OK, so programmer A has 30% downtime (from the employer's perspective) and spends all of it goofing off. Programmer B has 40% downtime, which could also be spent goofing off, but FS work cuts into the goof-off time so that it's only 20%. Less time goofing off, sure, but still a net loss for the employer. To the employer, working on non-work-related FS at work is exactly the same as goofing off. I still find it hard to believe that work time spent on FS is always balanced by an exactly equal or greater reduction in goofing off.
The dark side of learning how to manage time is learning what you can get away with, but being able to get away with something isn't the same as it being right. In one sense, as long as a programmer is meeting deadlines and the employer feels they're getting good value for their money, everything's OK. That's not the same as saying that it involves zero cost to the employer. Besides the "lost time" there are issues of resource consumption, reductions in stability from running unapproved development version of software, risks of intellectual-property contamination, etc. These costs might not appear as separate line items on a budget, but they do contribute (negatively) to the bottom line. The expense of developing that "free" software is all too often borne by people who don't even know they're paying for it.
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
That's not what I meant to say, and I'll try to clarify. You seemed to seemed to be stating a syllogism of the following form:
I was not trying to prove that either the premises or the conclusions are false. What I was trying to show was that one does not necessarily follow from the other by describing a counterexample in which the premises were true but the conclusion was still false - which does not preclude other examples where all three are true, or where the conclusion is true even without the premises being true. Does that make things clearer?
I don't actually believe that free-software programmers are less productive or have more downtime than other programmers in general or on average. However, I do believe - and the survey seems to back this up - that a substantial percentage of free-software programmers do "steal time" from their employers by working on free software at work, without permission, to an extent or in a way that is actually detrimental to their employers' legitimate interests. This segment of the free-software community is IMO too large to be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, and their actions cannot be justified by reference to other free-software programmers at other companies who have a better grip on ethics. People who feel that they're the targets of hyper-moral rants from people like RMS, ESR, or Bruce Perens deeply resent those same people's failure to address (or even acknowledge) this huge blot on free software's moral scorecard, and rightly so. Free-software advocacy will always be tainted with hypocrisy until its leaders take a firm stance regarding time theft.
Sorry. Got a little carried away there. I hope you see my point, though.
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
Look at page 37 again. 46% said that they don't participate in free software at work. Another 34% said they did so with permission, mostly as part of their core job. That's the easy answer for people who want to waffle on the issue. The 19% who specifically said that they participated in free software at work without permission are the ones that interest me. Considering that most people communicate with their bosses, and most bosses are either sympathetic or indifferent to free software, these 19% are probably not the people you're thinking of. They're not the people counting on the "X% downtime is normal and it doesn't matter how you spend it" theory; they're deliberately hiding their free-software activity. And 19% is just the number that admitted it.
If (at least) one in five free-software programmers is willing not just to bend but actually to break rules and agreements like that, I think it's worth making a fuss over. Their behavior reflects on all free-software programmers and advocates, including the (maybe) 81% who are doing nothing wrong. The "good guys" owe it to themselves to create some distance between the altruism and idealism of free software vs. the selfishness and dishonesty of the time-stealers.
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
I suspect that a lot of tech jobs are sufficiently vague in their scope that working on OSS could fall under the definition of "work".
For example, suppose a sysadmin needs to implement a method to check disk space on a bunch of systems remotely. No problem, most SNMP agents report this kind of thing. So he/she grabs UCD SNMP off the web.
In the course of implementing the system monitor he/she runs into a problem with part of UCD SNMP. (Say for example that the API isn't returning what it should.) The time spent investigating and fixing that API had to happen anyway in order for the goal he/she is being paid for (getting the system monitor working) to be reached, so why shouldn't he/she do it on company time?
The company gets what they want (the system monitor). The employee gets his/her job done (same monitor) and the OSS folks (UCD SNMP) get a patch for a bug in their API.
Best of all, this only has to happen once. Anywhere. Now everyone (potentially) has a working API.
However, if someone is being paid to write a game engine and they're really coding on their new OSS web chat board software, that's another issue. (And it's not an OSS issue so much as a management oversight/motivation issue.)
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
OK, fair enough. Question: does it really make a difference that the employer gets to use free software created "on the sly" like this? Is it the writing, or the giving away, that's prohibited by the employee agreement? If some third party came and took the code, they'd be in big trouble. Why is it different because someone on the inside - who was not authorized to do so - gave it away?
Re:Most interesting number (Score:2)
I don't have any hard numbers - I'd love to find some - but my experience has been quite different. At every job I've worked at for the last several years, such IP assignment has been a standard part of the contract for all developers. You do raise a good point, though, that non-developers might not be subject to the same terms. On the third hand, the survey seemed to show that your hypothetical code-writing admin is a rarity.
It's all done by OLD MEN who only use C (Score:1)
What about user/developers? (Score:3, Insightful)
On page 7 [osdn.com], the authors make a distinction between three groups: "leadership", "virtual teams", and "user developers". Their selection methods seem to be skewed toward identifying many of the first group, somewhat less of the second, and relatively few of the third. I wonder - I really wonder - how their findings wrt motivation, experience level, or licit/illicit use of work time might be different if they'd managed to capture a more balanced cross-section of the three categories. Heck, it would help even to have an estimate in hand of the relative numbers of people in each category. At the very least, BCG should have asked in the survey which category the respondent felt best represented their own role in their open-source project(s).
Biased Poll!!!1 (Score:1)
"it's bound to miss some avenues of exploration".. (Score:2, Funny)
"Survey shows open source developers mostly veteran pros, not slashdot weenies. Like any survey, it's bound to miss some avenues of exploration"
Maybe next time they'll get the answer to the other question troubling historians of the browser wars of the 90's...are Netscape engineers weenies ?
Self-selected group (Score:1)
What about the other two-thirds? What was the deliniating factor between those who did respond and those who didn't?
I'm betting those who didn't reply were the weenies who didn't want to admit (even to themselves) -- via the survey -- that they were, indeed, a weenie.
The only way to know for sure is to track down the randomly selected group and get 100% percent response.
That's my gut feeling about the SF response rate.
Have no clue about why the Linux list got such a miniscule response rate. I doubt any kernel hackers are weenies.
Unless -- and I'm wildly guessing -- most of list subscribers are really weenies who feel non-weenie-ish by being on the kernel list? How many people on that list contribute code? And how many are lurkers?
Employee Agreement Violations (Score:2, Interesting)
If an employer were to discover that their employees worked on these projects on company time, using company equipment, could they have a legal right to close parts of an open project?
Re:Employee Agreement Violations (Score:2)
Based on the one semester of business law I've taken, I'm guessing that if the employee appeared to be acting as an agent of the employer in releasing the code, then the code would belong to the employer but couldn't be withdrawn any more than code which the employer voluntarily released under an open license. (The employee could in such a case easily be guilty of abusing an agency relationship [forget the proper name for that], but that's besides the point for the moment). Alternately, if the employee gave the appearance of acting on his/her own in writing and releasing the code, the code could be argued to be owned by the employee (who would be guilty of stealing company time and resources in its creation). However, what actually happens in court would probably depend on what state this actually happens in, on a great deal of case law I haven't looked up, on whether the employee is a contractor or full-time (and the visible level of control of the employee by the employer), &c.
Note, however, that not all open source work on company time even without the knowledge of a superior is not necessarily a violation of contract. I've frequently had to debug or enhance some piece of software being used by my employer which happens to be open source over the course of my job; releasing these fixes back to the maintainer is in the company's best interests (as that way we don't have to redo the fix next time we move to a newer upstream version), and I'm sufficiently empowered as not to need to check with a supervisor to do such things. Further, I make a point of avoiding signing employee handbooks and such except when absolutely unavoidable. (My primary employer is an open source company and contributes fixes and enhancements upstream as a matter of policy... but what I'm discussing here applies to the others as well, so that point's nonessential).
I'm not arguing that this situation is typical, but rather that a large portion of the OSS work done at work without knowledge of ones' employer is not necessarily contrary to the company's interests or a violation of contract.
IANAL -- and even if I were, taking legal advice (which this isn't) off
Generations (Score:2)
Somehow, these people need reached and inspired in the way that their predecessors were. Inspired about the technology itself: as a toy as well as a tool. Open Source is a great opportunity because it largely sets business aside.
I was in the survey .... (Score:2)
FWIW, the only sourceforge-based project I participate in is SDCC [sourceforge.net] (a C compiler for 8-bit microcontrollers), and my contributions to that project have been fairly minor. Most of my free software work in on my website.
Though not mentioned in the Register story, their purpose behind the survey was obviously to find ways to "harness" the open-source spirit within businesses, or something like that. Silly as it sounded, I filled the thing out anyway.
Biased results???? (Score:2)
Also given the current programming methodology, where the tools are
difficult to use by the typical user..... Oh, wait a minute...
Programming is the act of automating complexity that is made up of simpler
things. It is done in order to make repeatable things easy for the user to
do, again and again.
Programming can automate any field, inclusing human balance and movement
(segway) but for some strange reason automating th efield of programming
is not something yet to have reached even basic automations for the
typical user.
YEP. the research is greatly biased and based on software development
methodology that does not include many people.
There was a time when hackers were young and hobbists, that's a fact!
The only thing that has changed is they have grown up.
Will the next poll in 20 years be oriented and favorable to gray hair and
retirement funding?
Maybe it's time to change the software development methodology so as to
include user...... No, It is Time to do this. No Maybe About It!
It's different for girls (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, my job keeps me busy only a few days in the month, so the rest of the time, I'm doing software development with the community.
One needs to make a living and do what they like the most. Luckily, I can do both.
PPA, the girl next door.
Re:Slashdot's dream girl (Score:2)
butt-ugly, I don't think so. On the contrary, I am from Asian lineage with an adorable face and a cute butt. I fit more the second description in your comment.
That said, if I had the choice, and the money, I would be a philanthrop. I am not materialist except for my windup toy collection and would gladly skip the money part in my sex activities if I could afford it. Regarding Open Source software, I just like programming and find it simple when I can look anywhere I want.
Porn is not prostitution but If prostitution was legal, STD would be under much more control than it is now. The same goes with hard drugs.
Who said that Eve was the first whore in history btw?
PPA, the girl next door.
Quality of most code is still crap though (Score:2)
I use Linux (for my Firewall) and Win2K (for Desktop gaming) I am very happy with the *functionality* of free code.
What I love about programs that provide source:
- Tons of free programs! (Everything from OSes, Compilers, Editors, Office Apps, and even Games)
- The source is available. As a programer, if I find a trivial bug I can fix it, or submit a patch. It empowers the USERS (something closed source programs will never be able to provide by definition.)
Where public source falls down, and what I hate about it:
- Most of it is so poorly written, with bad naming conventions, lack of internal documentation (no comments!?) that it is a complete and utter TURN-OFF to even bother hacking it.
I know, don't knock a gift horse. I admire the *functionality* (Linux and *BSD make great servers!) of open source programs. They work beautifully! (once you put the time investment reading ALL the docs
It's taken me a LONG time to learn how to write clean code. I'll give some examples and rules of thumb that I have found extremely handy.
(I use C++ but these rules-of-thumbs can be used in any language.)
The first few tips will seem Hungarian notation -ish, but it's not as anal rentative as true Hungarian notation.
1. Prefix pointers with 'p' (This is pretty standard, everyone is familiar with it)
2. Prefix all globals with 'g'
3. Prefix all member variables with '_' (underscope)
4. Prefix all references with 'r'.
5. Constants are in uppercase. (I also avoid #defines so that the compiler can make use of type checking)
i.e.
#define BUFFER_WIDTH 80
const int BUFFER_WIDTH = 80;
5. Make abundant use of whitespace!! Align things up vertically in the code.
So MANY programmers don't have a clue about how even adding a TINY amount of whitespace makes a world of difference for readability. Would you read a book or a math formula without any whitespace!!?? If not, then why should you expect code to be any different??
i.e.
if(a+b) {
Foo( arg1, arg2 );
if (a + b)
char     *pBuffer;
const int BUFFER_WIDTH = 80;
const int BUFFER_HEIGHT = 25;
See how types are aligned in 1st column, variable names in 2nd column, and the value in the 3rd column.
(ARGH,
6. Putting functions in alphabetical order (so anyone using a 'dumb editor' can quickly find them.
7. For function definitions, putting *one* space between the function name and parenthesis. This lets you do a search to locate the function definition.
i.e.
>
void Foo (
{
}
Whenever the function is called, there is NO space between the function name and parenthesis.
i.e.
Foo( arg1, arg2 );
8. Use descriptive variable names! Using the classic 'i' as an iterator name is DUMB. It doesn't tell the reader WHAT you're iterating over. X & Y are "OK" if you're iterating over a 2D matrix since they have become a defacto standard.
If you can't think of a good descriptive variable name, chances are you don't completely understand the subject / formula. Coming up with good names is HARD, but don't use that as an excuse to get away with sloppy naming.
9. Use a line delimiter to seperate functions, ALONG with a comment describing what the function does.
i.e.
// Returns the size of a 8-bpp bitmap in bytes.
// param theWidth Width in pixels
// param theHeight Height in pixels
//
int CalcSize( const int theWidth, const int theHeight )
{
}
(Note: There shouldn't be any spaces in the = seperator but
Ok, I've done enough "ranting"
Feel free to email me if you want to discuss coding styles that you find helpfull. I'm especially interested in learning why someone finds a rule-of-thumb usefull.
Cheers
--
Lameness filter SUCKS for posting code snippets!
Re:Quality of most code is still crap though (Score:2)
Readability wins.
UPS, more txt to the message :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, it was a older guy who got me interested in linux by showing me what it was about(via. a perlscript that used system() to rip encode mp3s).
I instantly saw the coolness in commandline programs, and then he showed me about how easy it was to dump a midi sysex to a mididevice (aka. the wicked coolness of
So, my point.. i think the reason that more older guys are involved in linux, is many of them are very used/comftible with *nix system.
Re:UPS, more txt to the message :) (Score:1, Insightful)