Slashdot Mirror
5th Anniversary of Open Source
Augustus De Morgan writes "Five years ago today a brainstorming session in Palo Alto led to the adoption and promotion of the "open source" label. (You can find references to the label much earlier, however.) For some, it was a dark divergence from the free software movement; for others, the beginning of the adoption of key software principles into mainstream. Here's a growing set of resources and stories about the history of free and open source software, and a lament about the decline of altruism in the open source community."
Taking the welfare of others may be a problem when one can not secure their own.
I've heard some people suggest programming is not a real occupation ie. hobby programmers are all we need, and others have reportly suggested programmers should wait tables to make a living while continuing to code in their free time.
I've noticed that funded open source projects do best, while unfunded projects usually don't usually become a force in their market. This goes for open-source and proprietory software equally.
altruism and open source should not be seen as the same thing. Some projects are started because the programmer had an alruistic motives, but unless that/those developer(s) have some source of funding/resources, it becomes very difficult to spend the 3+ hours it takes sometimes to get a decent size project of the ground.
Ask yourself can you, are you, spending that about of time serving the needs of others outside your family in anyway? Without anything in return?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
A better analogy would be, do we DESIGN our own cloths, automobiles. And, as a matter of fact my mom has made lots of cloths. She used to run the sewing machines a lot. Now she knits. Man she knits up a storm. Every night I sleep under these incredibly warm afghans lovingly made while she watched TV. Most of those cloths and patterns were, however, purchased plans, kits, etc.
Anyway, It's not at all inconceivable that a group of Ford engineers, in their spare time, make a 'dream design' automobile THAT THEY SHARE WITH ANYONE WHO WANTS A COPY. Say they work by day to earn a living, but are unhappy with the 'cost reducing' and shipping lousy products because of a n agressive marketing deadline. So they get together at Billy's Bar and Brainstorm and dream up the ultimate street rod, draw up plans most any shade tree mechanic can follow and publish it in Hot Rod, sell plans for mostly cost of reproduction. Sure, why not.
DO I Make my own recipies? Sure, I like to experiment in the kitches. They are usually derivities of someone elses (someone better at it than me!). There's plenty of 'do it yourself' people around.
To me it's all a matter of being independant. The thing that scares me the most is becoming dependant on some greedy a$$hole, with no alternative but to pay what they demand or die. They do want to enslave you, and freedom is a constant struggle, because there has always been greedy, domineering, petty tirants, in business and government, just like there have always been obsequious sheep ready to follow them to the slaughterhouse.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Moore's law has allowed, for what may be one of the first times in history, the de-insdustrialization of a major economic product: Computer software. When I started 30+ years ago, computer access was for the dedicated geek (this I know... :-) ). A DEC PDP-8 cost 10 grand. Its 2.5 Mbyte RK05 was an additional 9 grand.
Today, just about anyone can afford a crappy little out-of-date 400+MHz, 256Mbyte, 20+gig system, which can make a single individual developer economically productive.
Coupled with The Internet, such people can virtually gather together to be economically more productive.
This has caught all sorts of people by surprise, and those who are accustomed to simply "managing" or "owning" the means of production have been caught flat-footed by this sea-change in the possession of economic productivity. (I think this is why the OSS/libre software movement is critically important for the developing world, and why I wish that I had enough savings to stop working for money today in order to make a real contribution...)
One of the points (in my opinion) that we must remember is that there are people and/or organizations what want to return to the days when the few could control the resources required for economic productivity of the many.
FYI, I am using agricultural societies (exemplified by feudalism, as observed in places like Europe) and industrial society as basis for this thinking.
I am not a communist, but I will refuse to ever allow someone else to take away my freedom to code, and additionally, to team up with others of like mind to satisfy our needs for information systems productivity.