OSI Announces Open Source Awards 162
JohnGrahamCumming writes "There's a story running on ZDNet about how OSI is going to be giving Open Source Awards with cash prizes of up to $10,000. The idea is to create the "Nobel Prizes" of Open Source. Announcement was made yesterday as OSCON with some big names backing the awards (e.g. Sun, OSAF and (interestingly) a major venture capital firm USVP)."
Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips! (Score:1, Interesting)
But really, if one was to write such a super OSS program, wouldn't he be hired by a big corporation and paid at least ten times that amount?
This could be what we need to be ready for desktop (Score:0, Interesting)
On the other hand, the kde guys could replace that cheezy keramik with a real style as defualt (.net and alloy are good candidates)
Is it split? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE (Score:2, Interesting)
You say that OSS guys get into it, then companies go bankrupt when some vendors pick up the OSS version. That's not the case though - when there's a proprietary and OSS version of something, then there's options and competition - one doesn't preclude the other. IE, Apache is recognized and kicks much ass, but you don't see websphere or IIS etc going away.
You also say people work on it for free, only the core devs get paid, and the others just contribute for recognition and get nothing. Not so though, there's a very high likelihood that if the product becomes popular and used by businesses, then anyone with good familiarity with it have an excellent chance at employment working on it, adding those little features businesses need but the core project doesn't, as well as the support details.
Last I checked, putting OSS in a hardware brochure doesn't equate to more sales - rather, the quality, performance, functions of the hardware are what generate sales, not because of a bullet point that mentions OSS in the product documentation. Infact these days, that bullet point will get you sued by some asshole company claiming IP issues most likely.
As many studies have shown, while OSS has a different pricing structure, it still costs quite a bit to support/use it. Instead of blowing all that cash on prepackaged proprietary software and licenses, most of the same money gets spent on dev/admin/support of the competing OSS option. That means that instead of MS getting another 100k in their bank account, a couple of dev/admin/support people get a Job!
Companies that need specific solutions require development staff, whether it's working on a proprietary product or working to extend/specialize an OSS package that does something similar. It's more likely you can find someone who's already familiar with the OSS when you need to hire more people as well, rather than having to train someone completely from scratch to get up to speed on an internal propietary project.
AS for job satisfaction, I've been in both cases, working on proprietary software and working making OSS work for companies. Working on OSS is way better and more satisfying in my opinion, and the end pay is pretty much equivalent.
I still say OSS = more and better jobs for developers with an OSS clue. I think there's plenty of room in software for both OSS and non-OSS systems.
Trust the committee to be impartial? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wonder how that would affect projects that rival those people's projects to get awards? Say, Hans Reiser (reiserfs), or anything related to Perl?