Slashdot Mirror

According to Lessons from South Korea: When Broadband Meets the Mass Market, South Korea has over 50% (8.5 million) of their population on broadband.

Countries like Korea and Japan are densely populated so rolling out broadband technology is going to be a lot easier than rolling out broadband technology out in Montana or North Dakota.

If both percentage and actual count aren't good measurements, what exactly is then?

% * n / density?

The fact is *most* open source projects are done by students or the unemployed.

Do you have research on this? The Boston Consulting Group's Hacker Survey (warning, PDF!) had some very different numbers. I'm curious to the real story either way.

• create the initial code base (cited as one of the top three ways by 48.6% of respondents)

• continue to contribute code throughout the duration of the project (34.3%)

• communicate the promise of the project (32.3%)

First a disclaimer: I've worked for the past three years at BCG. BCG's core business is not IT consulting (as IBM, for example) but business strategy. That means that our recommendations are usually not centered around any particular technology infrastructure, nor do we usually work with the IT department of our clients. Instead our recommendations focus on ways to increase the competitive advantage of our clients, some of the time that competitive advantage is reached through harnessing a new business model or a new way to organize around the work that needs to be done. Open Source is an active area of interest inside BCG mainly because it represents an innovative way to organize people to meet a goal. There has been an active mailing list discussing Open Source topics and how they apply to our clients needs for quite some time, also this is not the first collaboration of BCG with the movement, the results of a survey amongst sourceforge members conducted by BCG can be found here .

Actually a lot of people writing the software are employed to provide software based solutions. Open source development and free ( GPL/LGPL ) licensing provide a very productive way of encoraging participation in collaborative development. It can provide better solutions to the use of proprietary close source packages.

See Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

90% of programmers don't work on creating shrink wrap software but on customising solutions for clients.

From a personal perspective it is far more intellectually rewarding to the joint developer/user. You really can know exactly how the damm thing works and you can in most cases fix or adapt it to your own, your client or your employers needs. Do you wish to live and work in an enviroment where every damm box has the lable "No Serviceable Components Inside"?

As for free GPL/LGPL licensing; the reality of the current employment market is that jobs come and go - BUT, you can take the knowledge you have gain though developing and adapting free licensed software and approach other users of that software for either employment or as clients. You DONT have to "start from scratch" with each job.

If you are a programmer, in the long run, the open source free licensed software model makes it easier for you to remain employed. Unless, that is, your sole career plan consists of being employed by Microsoft.

Another question, how many of those programmers expect to use the open source they contibute at their current and future places of employment?

Actually a lot of people writing the software are employed to provide software based solutions. Open source development and free ( GPL/LGPL ) licensing provide a very productive way of encoraging participation in collaborative development. It can provide better solutions to the use of proprietary close source packages.

See Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

90% of programmers don't work on creating shrink wrap software but on customising solutions for clients.

From a personal perspective it is far more intellectually rewarding to the joint developer/user. You really can know exactly how the damm thing works and you can in most cases fix or adapt it to your own, your client or your employers needs. Do you wish to live and work in an enviroment where every damm box has the lable "No Serviceable Components Inside"?

As for free GPL/LGPL licensing; the reality of the current employment market is that jobs come and go - BUT, you can take the knowledge you have gain though developing and adapting free licensed software and approach other users of that software for either employment or as clients. You DONT have to "start from scratch" with each job.

If you are a programmer, in the long run, the open source free licensed software model makes it easier for you to remain employed. Unless, that is, your sole career plan consists of being employed by Microsoft.

Another question, how many of those programmers expect to use the open source they contibute at their current and future places of employment?