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Young Programmer, Stop Advocating Free Software!
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.
So here is the text of the letter.
----
Dear Aiden,
I think you remember the conversation we had recently at this software conference in Dublin. You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless, because it is closed-source, people need to pay for it and that companies charging for software are evil anyways - especially Microsoft. Unfortunately I don't have your email, but I am sure this will reach you.
First, I would like to thank you for the interesting conversation that developed and to make sure that none of what was said just fades away, I'll tell you here once again what I am thinking about what you do, what you think and - most importantly about your future.
When I was 21 - like you now - I was also at university and was pursing a computer science master degree. Back then, I was very enthusiastic about programming and creating stuff that mattered. And thought that I was the best programmer the field has ever seen and everyone else was mostly worthless. And I did indeed write some programs that mattered and made a difference. The program I spent some 3 years writing in Turbo Pascal from when I was 18 was for my father's business. Because the business he's in requires a lot of bureaucracy, he and my mother spent about 2-3 daily hours on average doing all of this stuff by hand. When I was done with my program and he started using it, that time went from 3 hours to about 15 minutes a day. That was software that absolutely improved the quality of life for the entire family! And his friends and colleagues loved it, too. I didn't sell many licenses at that time (I think I had 3 customers), but each one was worth 1500 German Marks and that was a huge heap of money for me. I mean - I was living at my parent's house, getting a monthly allowance of 120 German Marks and worked as a cable grip for a couple of TV stations every once in a while - maybe 2-3 times a month. And if I ever had 400 Marks per month I could really consider myself massively rich at the time and for my age, because I had very minimal additional expenses. So 4500 Marks on top of that? Fantastic. Where did the money go? I can't really remember where it all went, but I guess "lot of partying" or "Girls, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll" would be a reasonably good explanation. Hey, I was 21 and that's what one is supposed to do at that age, right?
That was in 1990 - let's fast forward to 2004 and you. All software that you and your father could possibly be interested in has already been written. That's probably not true, but it's hard to think of something, right? Ok, the software may not run on your favorite operation system and may cost money, but what you can immediately think of is likely there. So where do you put all your energy? Into this absolutely amazing open-source project you co-coordinate. I mean, really, the stuff that you and your buddies are doing there is truly impressive. There are a couple of things I'd probably do differently in terms of design and architecture, but it works well and that's mostly what matters. And you do make an impact as well. I know that hundreds of people and dozens of companies use your stuff. That's great.
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.
If someone installs your work from disc 3 of some Linux distro, they couldn't care less who you are. The whole fame thing you are telling me only works amongst geeks. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you'd really like to talk to doesn't care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks and neither does she even remotely fathom why you'd be famous for that stuff in the first place. I mean - get real here.
So once you get your degree from school, what's the plan?
Right now,
How much is that worth? Nothing?
why is worth always measured in money?
but then again, who want's to work as hard as icculus?
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
What's software worth? It's worth a great deal. Worth so much that it seems a terrible shame to imprison it behind a dollar sign...
If you want to get paid for doing what you love, and you love coding, then pushing open source as if your life depended on it is going to, sooner or later, cost you your job.
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.
--
Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
I think that releasing your software under a OSI compatible licence increases the worth of your work by making it able to be used by others. It doesn't mean that when you give away your software that it is worth nothing. It means that that you want your software improved upon by the commmunity not a select few.
My UID is prime is yours?
... than just free software. After all, there are a number of products which are in a way free but you have to pay for them
(winex, mozilla, openoffice,...). they not only present a viable business solution, but also show that open source can
be profitable and fits well into the america corporational paradigm.
read this: Indirect Sale-Value Models and Give Away the Recipe, Open a Restaurant. Eirc Raymond tells you how to make money from OS/Free software.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Nobody can beat the market economy, as the supply of programming skills go up, the price will inevitably go down until some is written for free. Unless you're big monopoly (De Beers comes to mind) you really can't totally influence supply and demand. My advice to any programmer would be to "code what you feel" and people will pay you for customizations and new designs later.
Something like an painter, generally you're painting for free until your talent is discovered, and then you rake in the big bucks...
...in bed
There are MANY ways to earn a living with free software.
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.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
cool, this will be useful in case the other comment gets /.ed :)
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Do the IBM business model:
Write the software for free and then earn a lifetime's wages in supporting it.
Problem solved.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Personally, I just don't get "Free Software" myself. Sitting here, having to code for hours on end, while sometimes pleasurable is not something I want to do without receiving some sort of "payment" for my work.
How am I supposed to earn an income if all I do is sit around writing free software? Have these "OSS" programmers been taken hold by the theories of Marxism?
The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you'd really like to talk to doesn't care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks and neither does she even remotely fathom why you'd be famous for that stuff in the first place.
<Asok>It only hurts because it's true.</Asok>
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
A guy who has already built his reputation and established his "above wage earning" credentials in the industry wants all those that have yet to acquire that valuable resource to stop trying, or at least to start earning wages and preserve the satus quo that has served him so well so far.
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.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I'm on the fence with this issue. I see the side about earning a paycheck. I understand the rewards that go along with altruism. I understand the need for standards and most importantly open standards. But, we all need to make a paycheck. Plain and simple. Say for a moment free software does continue to be successful, even enormously successful over the next few years, what does the future look like to those thinking of entering the field at that time?
Free software is bad? or is it just jealousy?
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1
I cant wait for the microsoft version of that
Microsoft Free 20XX
Its free but you have to pay for it.
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.
This seems like some sort of outtake from a tech version of "The Screwtape Letters".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Please name a couple of restaurants that were opened AFTER giving away recipes. You're living in a dream world.
This guy has certainly lost the plot. 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. 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? I think "Aidan" was actually talking about OSS rather than free per se software anyway. Just my 2 pence Tim
tim
...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."
Applying this logic to the letter itself, offered for free (the horror!), an interesting conclusion is reached regarding its value.
I couldn't agree more wholehearted. Indeed, when I was 20, I thought that all software had to be free. Now that I'm (past) 30, I sometimes wonder where all the paychecks get paid from.
I need to clarify what my letter just said:
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
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
My contribution is worth nothing compared to the vast resource open source gives me.
Even for prolific contributers who have give millions of lines of code this probably holds true. Even for Linus Open Source code has returned the rest of an operating system, status, and one hell of a CV - arguably more than he has contributed.
Even if my contribution of a few simple lines were enough to contribute to the downfall of the software market, then I consider the fact that I have to work in something other than programming (which I do) to be not a price but an indication that things are working well - the overall (knowlage) wealth of mankind is increasing so not so much heavy labour in software is required and energy can be focused elsewhere. That's what progress is all about.
Beep beep.
Have you ever tried to pay the bills with love?
How do you say "self-rightous git" in German?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
helping those who can help you.
Not only is the best way to learn is to teach, so when I give a piece of code out , not only do I learn what others want, what they like, but how they would of done it. I become more efficient and more effective. In the long run, I get a bigger paycheck by having better skills.
Bonus: trading code, having others improve on your code, for free.
Runnin' On Empty
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.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
While the beginnings of the GNU project were altruistic (and BSD was government/university-funded), increasingly people find it useful to build on existing work in free software rather than re-implement everything from scratch. The GNU philosophy is that the more you can armtwist them into doing this with arcane licensing, the better. The BSD philosophy is that they'll return important changes to you anyway because it's easier to let you maintain it, while if they have valid reasons to keep it closed and commercial, why not? Both viewpoints seem to have worked fine so far and I don't see that changing.
It's a well-known fact that only a very select few make good money off book deals. The rest work 80 hours a week for half a year to beef up their professional resume. It's hard work.
Corporations regularly exploit the knowledge of employees and then cast them aside under at-will employment laws.
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.
Linus has a very nice car, and house 8)
Opensource let's ppl learn and cooperate easier. Is cooperation & free knowledge spreading a bad thing?
Is that free as in beer? Or as in speech? Or as in Willy? or as in Peltier? Or as in thinker? Or as in....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I tried to read the article (it's not slashdotted you karma whores!) but i quit after the first few paragrapghs. Some dipshit telling "when I was your age..." stories to someone he didn't care about to ask his email. This rambling is not fit for public consumption. ... well whatever.
Some people really get off on telling other people how the world works. They might even think that everybody that listens is their deciple. Now goth hither and
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
There seems to be a lot of confusion between the concept of open source and free software. The fact that the source is visible to anyone does not imply that it can be used freely.
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).
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
When you work as a programmer, you get paid by the hour, you don't get royalties. So you're better off if the software you're making and getting paid for by the hour is open source. If the company folds (as even closed source companies do) you're an expert on the stuff you wrote yourself, and you can hack it somewhere else. If your employer can't make an open source business model work, fair enough, but if you're looking for one, you might as well go with one that doesn't need that "limited time" monopoly advantage going for it to make a buck, relying instead on things like expertise, service, craftmanship, trustworthiness etc.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
One thing is passion, another thing is the job you have.
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.
What if a given person already has a job?
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.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
My answer is that the OSS movement is (mostly) commoditizing the "essential services" layer - much like the roads, sewers, and electrical grid that the broad economy needs to function. Only a *very* small percentage of IT industry jobs are building these things in propriatory products.
The vast number of IT jobs is in customization, adaptation, etc. of software to solve business specific problems.
In my case (R&D), the existance of OSS capabilities means that my corporate masters can spend vastly more on my labor to develop new solutions because they have saved (literally) millions of dollars on things like operating systems, compilers, databases, etc that I previously had to purchase.
Surprise, I disagree.
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.
But, to me, it's like chiding someone for working in the Peace Corps. Sure, you're not going to get rich or much recognition for it, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile thing to do.
Ahh, the smell of a karma whore in the morning makes me smile........
Dear Aiden,
Oh mein Gott, you're going to put my closed-source company out of business! PLEASE STOP!
Clemens
Open Source software is a great idea: it allows for mission critical stuff to be closely examined and transparent. However it makes no illusion that this software is freely created and distributed. People need to dedicate time, which no matter how you want to frame it, translates to money spent, even if they aren't directly being paid.
Yeah, right, thanks :-) I kept the article window open when I noticed the site was pretty slow already. Copy-pasted the text once the story went live. Thought to do a bit of a service. Got modded down "redundant" within a few seconds.
:-)
I actually landed the second comment, which is *fast*. It's just that somebody else posted the same article text a few milliseconds earlier. I mean, what is the chance of the first two posts being actually useful.
Ah, being redundant with the second comment
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
I'm a capitalist, I believe in making money from what I do. No question about it. The programming I do does not go for free. In fact, over the years I've been rather well compensated, especially in the good times.
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.
David Whatley
Guess who's making real money off your work.
Let's all stop working for money and see what happens.....
Consequences?
Yesterday I read that the owners of Google are billionaires and made it into Forbes magazine.
Google runs Linux.
Linus Torvalds is not a billionaire but his
project is making people wealthy.
I don't think he cares.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Money has no intrinsic value other than that of the paper and ink it's made of. It does represent work and goods though. Do you think a coder can barter a certain amount of programming time for a tank of gas? The market helps drive trade, people specialize in fields and they sell those goods to those that most need them for money. You can then use that money to get things you couldn't otherwise barter for. Money is just an abstraction.
I believe your signature should be, "I use GNU/Linux ... " or maybe it should be, "I use GNU...".
I can imagine developing closed-source software to make ends meet and then using some free time to work on interesting free software projects. There's no reason it has to be an either-or situation.
Of course, if you're like most people, by the time you come home from work, you don't want to spend more time doing what you did all day at work just for fun. However, I take it free software developers are not most people.
I can also see, if you have own your own software development business, the luxury of releasing your software as GPL-compatible free software after a certain amount of time. That way, you wouldn't be spending all your free time doing the same thing you do at work. More commercial software companies should do this, truthfully: Microsoft is not getting any value out of MS-DOS 6.22 anymore, so they have few good reasons not to release the MS-DOS source code under a GPL-like license.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
I'd like to make an analogy (despite it being the weakest form of argument) to the concepts of power and energy from phsyics (although the same is true for many physical processes). As I'm sure everyone here knows: Energy in itself is not a lot of use; it only becomes useful when something is done with it, in the case of energy that can only be the changing of the energy from one form to another. i.e the flow of energy is the important thing (power being used to measure that)...
;-)): the owning of the books is not what gives a lawyer their value, it is their ability to use those books. The owning of source code will be unimportant, every company will find it useful to maintain an programmer's department in the same way that they find it useful to maintain an IT department.
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
Carpe Daemon
So, the guys at Redhat, Ximian, etc... don't make money? You can make money off of open source software, you just don't make it off of the code itself.
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.
Real life programming jobs stink. They're usually not that interesting, but just flat business apps without depth, but with time constraints, byzantine politics, incompetent project managers and bizarrely generic business requirements.
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.
Those are mostly the three things people want when they cant have it. I guess ethics _are_ strange, and what else is there in life then money, fame and girls?
(:
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.
I think it is apparent that the writer has little familiarity with the free/open software environment. I would not be surprised to find that many of his views were formed by reading headlines or by the arguments of the unnamed youngster.
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)
This is the same issue that many scientists face, and I would guess many other fields. If you measure worth in money than there is less that can be said for giving your work away for free. While there are companies releasing their source for free while posting profits there are many more open source projects making no money and closed source companies making lots of money. If the two are mutually exclusive which matters more to you?
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.
If you want money, fame, and to be good at something, just concentrate on doing what you love. The rest will come by themselves.
They sucker in a bunch of Open Source guys and make billions off them.
No one in OSS has ever made a living making free software. Those guys at Apache, Samba, and the ISC must be "giving handjobs for cash"* to sustain their miserable little lives. And I am sure that Linus is just squeking by on foodstamps and cat food. * obligatory South Park quote, so don't do drugs mmm-kay
The buck doesn't stop there. I have friends who earn substantially less than I do, and I'm able to help them along quite significantly with free software.
Past that, people in moderately poor regions all over the world are starting to enjoying the benefits of free (beer) and free (open) software.
If I ditch the free (beer and open) stuff, I can't even afford to keep doing what I enjoy now, let alone friends and poor folks.
Hell with that!
Code written for resale is only the tip of the programming iceberg. It used to be said that 85% of all the code in the world was written in-house at banks and insurance companies. This is probably no longer the case (and a good thing; who in their right mind wants to wear a tie and grind out huge volumes of COBOL?) but most estimates put the proportion of all code written in-house at companies other than software vendors at over 75%.
This "vertical" code includes most of the stuff of MIS, the financial- and database-software customizations every medium and large company needs. It includes technical-specialist stuff like device drivers (nobody tries to make money selling device drivers!). It includes all kinds of embedded code for our increasingly microchip-driven machines - from machine tools and jet airliners to cars to microwave ovens and toasters.
Most vertical code is integrated with its environment in ways that make reusing or copying it very difficult. (This is true whether the "environment" is a business office's set of procedures or the fuel-injection system of a combine harvester.) Thus, as the environment changes, there is a lot of work continually needed to keep the software in step.
This is called "maintenance", and any software engineer or systems analyst will tell you that it makes up the vast majority of what programmers get paid to do. And it will still need to be done, even when most software is open-source.
Between originating, customizing and maintaining vertical code (and related tasks like system administration and troubleshooting), the use value of software would still support the millions of good jobs in that 75% even if all "horizontal" or standalone software were free.
Open source certainly does not necessarily mean the software development industry as a whole will shed paying jobs; with programming talent as scarce relative to demand as it has been, it probably just means more commercial projects will be able to find bodies to do them.
In return for writing free software you get the free software everyone else is writing. Considering how much free software there is, that's a pretty hefty return.
Admittedly, from a very selfish point of view you'd get that even if you didn't contribute. So in that sense, yes, you get nothing. But frankly, if you think like that, nothing is exactly what you deserve. :-)
not only does this guy not understand how to monetize free (as in speech) software, but his arguments are terrible. how the hell did this get slashdotted? does bill gates have the reins today?
smd4985
People own property, cars, books, etc., and the ego thinks that they "own" something. But then when people die none of that can be taken with them. So, do they really own anything? Apparently not. But in the IP world software can be assigned a value, like everything else in the world of ego. So, those who produce software under the impression that they own it can't own it forever, when they die nothing of that can be theirs.
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.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
Information Rules:
How to sell your information:
First lesson: do not protect your information to the maximun. Protect it to maximize its value:
Lessons show by thouse who give free samples, or free books on internet that people by in paper...
The main problema that if they not program by free their work wony be paid almost all the time or it will be paid poorly.
By working in free software their abilities are more important because their software is more widely used. They have reached a bigger market. And i is very important in programming were the cost of another copy of the code is almost free.
Sell 20 copies at 5 $ and it won't solve your live
Make a piece of program used by 100.000 users and you can live with maintainence.
And of course it is more ethicall
The "value" argument is only the surface.
The recording industry steals almost all "value" of the music their artist's produce. Pushing free software is the same outcry from programmers hoping the software industry can climb out of the RIAA mess.
You want to argue a kid into not giving for free, but you are really helping the programmers into a thankless/payless job where their signers gain all the income.
We are already in such a world. Programmers are not paid near their worth from their employers. The corporations own all the code. But unlike the musicians, there is no percentage after the creation unless the programmer runs the business too. (taking on all with the rediculous patent laws that abound)
the letter is missing the point. free software is free as freedom, not as a free beer. therefore no point in arguing that it worths something, of course it does.
;)
and also, what is software? it is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. free software is accepting the truth in this statement. that is why the problem is free software is closely related to the freedom of speech.
therefore programmers should be paid for their know-how either in the form of paying for their support or for their actual work and so on...
i warmly welcome any guess from whom i quoted all along
Aure entuluva!
"Cut it out; you're threatening my business model".
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.
The letter seems te be about the following choice: either have a nice job, getting paid well, and have all the girls look at you *or* work on open-source software. Isn't that a bit too much polarized? I'm a software developer / architect myself, have a decent salary, even a wife, and still like to work on open-source, just because I love writing code in my free time and share the results with the community. A lot of open-source projects help me in getting my job done (and getting me paid), so why not contribute back? So, there is no choice, enjoy the best of both worlds!
I'm all for open source, but giving it away for free costs programers jobs.
Starting out with programming OSS is like starting as an apprentice or intern. Merriam-Webstar says: "one who is learning by practical experience under skilled workers a trade, art, or calling" and that sounds like almost all budding kernel hackers and OSS gurus I've ever heard about. The apprentice system has been around for thousands of years and it works very well. It has nothing to do with labeling ones education as worthless and everything to do with learning skills useful in the real-world.
Money for nothing, pix for free
To misquote:
It doesn't "lower peoples standards for what to expect from software", it raises it.
From now on, software had better be good. Sobering fact, isn't it?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
the main point of the letter is "why would you try and make a living as a mechanic when people are so clueless they will go on paying you to reinvent the wheel over and over and over ?"
though it mostly reminds me of old whores complaining about the sluts who give it for free.
Dev elpizw tipota, dev phoboumai tipota eimai lephteros http://euclidian.org
Article itself is flamebait!
"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"
No, what I want to know is how will any of these pay my bills and feed me?
I need to sell my software to eat, If I give my software away, how does this help ME, I know how it helps EVERYONE, but I dont think everyone is going to buy my food while I write code for them.
TruePunk | Games
My first computer was a ZX spectrum. And although it was mostly used for games, my clearest memories of it are from a book of games. They consisted of the code, which you copied in, saved and ran. At first it was direct copying, then modifying, then creating your own stuff from scratch. I got my degree after I left school. I did a ton of programming in it. But really, when compared to the programming I did by myself (and sometimes with friends) as a kid, I was taught a lot less.
;)
Fiddling with your own computer and coding with your own computer, was, and I'm sure always will be the best way to learn. Except nowadays, we can get involved in open source projects. The ability to continue learning outside of the workplace is HUGE. Get involved in an open source project, get coding, because your code is going to be seen by a hell of a lot more people than when you're coding in some small business environment. And while you're doing this, you're helping create great software that is provided free to the world. So you're not making any money, I bet you're learning more than was spent on your education (unless you are lucky enough to live in a country where your education is payed for, and even then you can look at it as saving your country money).
The end result, good software that may be used for free instead of being bought. Does this really effect your ability to earn money? I doubt it, how many of us are directly involved in the programming of MS Office? Is being involved in open office taking money away from you? Unlikely. Since I have been coding for money, I have yet to code a single app that is not very directed at a very specific business requirement. If I learn something from an open source project, it only increases my knowledge and thus my worth.
Maybe its just my cynical view on life. But I swear this author was comparing writing in open source software to not getting laid. Constant references to women and children. tsk tsk.
East Coast Brewers
I've got a house, a car, a job, and a family--and I prefer Open Source. I've contributed to various projects, I run OSS on my desktop and at work, and if I came up with some program on my own time I'd be more likely to GPL it than make it shareware or try to sell licenses.
But I charge people money for writing code that they want me to write. That's how I get paid--that's where my monthly paychecks come from. 99% of that code is in-house code that nobody will ever see again. But if they do manage to sell it again to other people, more power to them--I don't think it's immoral. But like the parent said, releasing my code for free doesn't mean not getting paid for writing it.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
The answer was already answered, as he said most of software is already written, ok but with propietary software you cannot fit to your owns needs, and that lead us to this other question:
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.
seems like his whole point is that "Where do you want to be when you are 30?. Would you like to be married to some good looking girl, drive a car, own a home in some fancy neighborhood".
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.
Rapid Nirvana
The people who contribute to those free OSS projects don't do that because they think it'd be neat if such and such software would exist for someone to use, in most cases (I can't say for sure "in all cases", blame me for being a scientist) they work in a project because that particular piece of software is something they want to use themselves.
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.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
I feel that not all software should be free, but that free software does have value and purpose.
Also, by releacing software for free distribution, you aren't saying ti has no value, and you can actually increase its value by allowing others to share in you ideas and work.
Value isn't about money only. Money has simply been one way that people have used to measure Value, sometimes incorrectly as shown by some people like M$.
I hoped to read a new argument in the debate, but this guy is making the same tired arguments we've all heard ever since Free software started. My response: as long as people want to do something new with computers, they'll have to hire programmers to write that new application. Free and open-source software helps us avoid duplicating efforts, and it makes us all more productive.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
I know a lot of people who create software. Out of all of them, I think I am the only one who works on software that is sold on a cost-per copy basis.
Most programmers write software used internally for highly specialised purposes, or a custom application targetted at a single customer. Most of these organisations make great use of free software, and many contribute their changes back to the community. Other people produce drivers - which are given away for free with hardware - and third party defence systems with a single customer willing to pay a lot of money.
Added to this, most people are not willing to pay enough for software to make it worth marketing. His example of the software he wrote is an exception. Very rarely does software have a perceived value of several hundred dollars. Even if it does, it is often cheaper and easie to write it yourself. If people are going to do that, then you might as well give them a headstart.
Right now I'm making software and not making much money at all with it. But soon I'm going back to school in something totally unrelated to computer science and when I get out I won't work building software at all. On my spare time I'll probably be writing software and helping others who wrote software for free with the money I'll be making. Why you ask? Because I prefer giving 20$ to get a linux distribution I don't need to care about licensing or how many computers I have it installed on.
who would of thought that giving away something you spent hundreds of hours on was a bad idea?
Clemens is very condescending towards Aiden. That should be a tip-off as to what's going on. He can't see beyond his own goals (recognition, money, girls) to other virtues of open-source: virtually zero-cost distribution and the ability for anyone to modify the software easily and share the results. He then goes on to ask how the software can be of any use without money changing hands; Clemens, it's people who drive trucks, manage factories, write software, not money.
"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.
Compare this to the University of Chicago, whose CS department offers a course in Free Software Practicum, the goal of which is to develop free software or work on existing free software and have your changes added to the code tree. It's the work of Prof. O'Donnell.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
This guy has certainly lost the plot.
... just as they get to leverage your skills in their endeavors. Worse, to use their products you have to agree to restrictions on your already limited rights to use or distribute the proprietary product you're trying to build your project on, which in turn limits your opportunities further.
... trying to convince the next generation to go back to his way of thinking. It is a losing battle. Culture changes, economies change, and paradigms shift. The author of this open letter has missed the boat, and is trying to call it back.
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
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
We need to get back to the bartering system in The Oregon Trail. I'll trade you 3 changes of clothes for a wagon wheel. Oh, and never ford the river, if you need to, caulk your wagon up and float it down. The ferry costs too much and takes too long to get there.
Why not just do what makes you happy? If you really enjoy writing source code, then write it. If you feel like giving it away, give it away. If you think you can make a profit off of it, then do it.
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.
Sorry, but in my case, it's true. I work for a small-ish "GIS company" that makes a name for itself by not being a traditional GIS company, but a knowledge company. We serve our customers by providing software that they need... but as I'm reminded all the time from the higher-ups, the value of the company is not really in the software, but in the employees. If all of the programmers suddenly disappeared, it would be practically impossible to replace them.
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.
One of the nice things about "free" software is that it promotes competition. Does everything have to be free or open source? No, but anything that helps increase the number of options is good. Another advantage is that if one person stops supporting open source, then someone else can take over, not leaving you high and dry.
Is for their code to be used. If its in some app that people pay for and then gets shelved, your code is now effectly dead. If its open source and you lose interest in it, someone can take your good bits so your code can live on in other peoples programs. Its possible for payware to continue, I improve and support a program I wrote for a company 10 years ago which is great, however its their program not mine, and if the business changes they may not need it anymore, which will kill my "lifes work" over night. Anything I do opensource wise however cannot be killed except by my own hand. So its not is my code worth money, do you want less control and some money, or complete control and no money...!
James
Geeks usually have say in the hiring of other geeks. If you can't program worth a shit, and someone asks my expert opinion on
how well you may fit in technically, you are sunk.
I guess eclipse is a big lie too.. since ONLY open source developers use it, or perl, or apache, since it's ONLY opensource peo
ple. Get real. If you do somethign important enough, you can get paid for maintenance and customization. Isn't that how dell
anda few car companies are doing things now? The world isn't about delivering A product, but delivering one YOUR way. It's
a world driven by IS and IT now, not about producing widgets.
Once, I wrote 2d ticker, that supports adding and deleting information on the fly. Nothing many MANY other geeks couldn't do,
but I did it none-the-less. This was in a lull at work, and I wanted to do something interesting. So I wrote it, had it revie
wed and people made suggestions. Did I MAKE anything from it? Yeah, experience. When someone asks me, "Did you know swing an
d the java2d api?" I can now say, "Yeah, I've done some stuff. Nothing commercial, but here's an example of my work. Tell me
what you think of it.
Life isn't about yes's and no's. There's reasons to do OSS... like fulfilling needs other than money. Learning, personal need, experience and just filling in that time when you think doing an ERP project at the office is lame and you wanna get your synapses going.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Consider operatiung systemns; clearly there is a role for Linux, and Linux has the largest free support base in the history of opensource. However there are probably over 100 different customized distros, each modified specifically for some reason, many of which are no longer free (i.e.: RedHat). Additionally there are many other operating systems, in various stages of development, by smaller groups around the globe. Of these, some are free and some are not. And the same holds true for application software.
Then there is the other concern, free or not, there have to be people who can actually implement these solutions in the real world, and make them work for a business. Regardless of the sorce of the software, and whether or not it is free, companies need (and will pay for) individuals with the skills to turn their software and hardware investments into a functional solution that meets the needs of the business. And no matter how flexible the solution is, there will also continue to be requirements for customizing the software; from installation, management and performance tuning to adding features, interfaces, et al. Businesses pay in cold hard cash for these skills.
So, if the boy wants to earn his stripes in the opensource movement, that is at least as viable as any other skill to list on a resume. It doesn't necessairly brand him as an idealist! What it does demonstrate is that he is concerned enough about the quality of a specific piece of software to invest his time and energy even if there is no direct profit.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Be careful other professions you're next.
This is just silly Service jobs don't need a big secret. Just provide a good valuable service, and you've got a good chance of success.
If that was not the case prostitutes would have been out of business years ago, everyone knows their skills.
If a Doctor tells you what he is prescribing, and how to be healthy he won't be able to compete with cheap competition.
Lawyers, stop telling everyone how to fight the laws, you'll be undercut by cheap followers.
Teachers, by telling others what you know, you'll be out of a job.
Politicians, once you write a law, anyone can use it without paying you.
Athletes, don't let anyone see you play, by analysing your technique and plays, you can't handle the competitors.
Charging license fees for object code is not the only way to make money from software.
Proprietary software prefer a "call by value" scheme, while F/OSS use the "call by name".
No, it makes it possible for YOU to raise The Bar (TM) because you can build on the works of others.
I think it is wrong to discourage the youngsters (I am not anymore) to write free software. They have probably used Mac OS X or Linux or Mozilla on Windows or Open Office or any number of other free, open source software projects. The point of open source is to contribute back to the community that you are part of and that you have used software and learned from. If you choose to distribute software as open source, it doesn't mean you still can't make money off of it -- open source and money are not mutually exclusive.
In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!
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.
I learnt programming writing code for my parents' business. After 5 years, it was a massive project which impacted every area of the business - from PCXTs in the shops with 1200 baud modems sending in orders, barcode scanning terminals in the factory, etc, etc. I didn't earn anything from it other than my wages for my 'official' position.
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.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I thought the site came in pretty quick. If not, read Clemens' reaction to all the opposition.
---
Free stuff vs. free stuff
Of course my letter to Aiden is prompting some opposition. It may be worth noting that a very large proportion of the code that I write ends up being public and there's more stuff brewing as we speak. There is little need to educate me about giving. I am an educator. Sharing insight and therefore sharing manifestations of that insight in form of source code is my mission and part of my business. But this is not the business my clients are in and neither is it the business of most of the thousands of developers I am honored to speak for at conferences each year. Their business is about being paid for writing software. If they weren't paid, I wouldn't be paid. My job description is to figure out fundamental stuff and use my natural "understand very complex things thoroughly and rapidly" skill that I was luckily blessed with, so that I can explain those things to them and they can focus on solving customer problems. My free stuff helps my customers and is also playing a marketing role for me an my company. Our free stuff is a calculated investment. We can and do attach a number to it. dasBlog is a freebie for others but represents a significant investment that's worth several tens of thousands of Euros. It's not free, at all.
We support a project that brings us some indirect value. However, we do not in any way force any code republishing requirements upon the folks who'd like to reuse our code (we have a strict "no GPL" policy; our code is BSD licensed). We don't depend on a community of volunteers to turn dasBlog into a dominant blogging tool that we can benefit from by commerically supporting it. We believe that if we wanted to benefit from the software directly, we would have to rearchitect and rebuild it (or at least restrict ourselves to newtelligence contributions) and then sell it as a fully supported commercial product. My personal sense of respect and fairness tells me that I will not and should not exploit the others guys that have contributed to the free version of dasBlog. It's their hobby and their work is their work. I think a company like Red Hat, which is a public company (which did yield a significant "going public benefit" to their founders) and is profiting from the work of countless unpaid volunteers and enthusiasts, is a very clever, but deeply unethical entity.
I do believe in giving and I do believe that there is value for the community at large in sharing insight through source code. But we don't share the view that software is free or should be free. Someone pays for it. We have an investment in software that is free for others to use, MySQL has, HP has, IBM has, Sun has and - believe it or not - even Microsoft has. We do that as part of a well thought out and well understood business strategy.
I understand open source. I do open source. I do so because I am aware of what it can and can not do for a company. I think I have a pretty good understanding on what's going on in this business. If it becomes the norm that the people providing outsourcing, system administration, hardware, and consulting make orders of magnitudes more money than the creative force, the software engineers and architects who are envisioning and building the foundation for this industry, something is stinking. And it stinks a lot already.
Also, if you say that I am confusing "free software" and "open source". I am not. "Open" is the political argumentation line, "free" is the economic argumentation line of the same thing. If this sort of confusion exists for mostly everyone and one of the most often repeated line in OSS arguments is "you don't understand the difference", then that's caused by the simple fact that these terms are simply two angles of looking at the same story. The OSS "eco-system" only functions because both is true.
Matthew, selfish is not the one who wants to get a tangible reward for his work. Selfish is the one who denies that reward.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Out of interest, how much of Eric Raymond make out of OS/Free software?
I mean, if he's having to supplement his income with speaking engagements and book sales, what chance has someone rather less well known have?
There are still paychecks if software is free. Just to give one example. Let's say you're a company that makes electronic gadgets and gizmos. These things need software to run on them. But since the gadget you're making is the first of its kind, since your company is engineering it right this minute, there is no software for it. Someone has to write the code that makes this thing work. Everything from wristwatches to formula 1 cars needs software. And you can search the net all you want, you wont find code for the formula machine you just built.
This is where linux comes in. The company that makes the gizmos hires one or more coders who knows embedded linux. This guy takes linux and other various open source tools and uses them together to create the software that makes the gadget work. The company saves money because they don't have to pay for expensive development tools or windows CE or anything like that. The coder gets a paycheck.
That's just one example. Can you think of more?
Pretty much what it all comes down to is this. Coders are only going to get paid for writing NEW code. What free software does is make it so coders don't have to keep re-writing the same things over and over again. Once somebody bothers to write algorithm X there's no reason to hire someone to write that same algorithm again. Just download the code. It' something completely different if you're going to get someone to come up with a new algorithm. Coders will only make money if they are writing new code, stuff that doesn't exist already.
Can you think of other examples?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I've always looked at it that releasing your software under a free license is a way to "pay" the community for your use of linux, your distributionm gcc, xfree, etc.
You can download and use those programs for no money, and the way you one day pay it back is to submit the code you're able to do.
I'd use the phrase "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs", but that brings up scary images so I won't.
whether or not to trust the insights of someone who's followed this decision path is left as an exercise for the /.'er.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
formerly gooed name.
lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... the kode has been showed. get with the (newclear power) program
tell 'em robbIE?
Did you even read it?
That's right, only 10% (or less) of programmers write software which will be sold off the shelf to the consumers.
If you don't believe then look at e.g. Nokia. How many of their software you can find in the shop? Still they employ thousands of programmers. Ever seen open source software for controlling GSM telephone exchange?
Software exists everywhere, in cell phones, dvd players, tv's, modern cars, etc.. Somebody also needs to write commercial drivers for video cards, chipsets and so on.
There are hobbyists/artists that will see coding for free as an expression of their belief and an efficient way to kill time. There are those that will see this as a business that can generate profit/wages. Being someone looking to found a niche and independent IT company and develop through amassing talented programmers (whose criteria I use will only be interest, skills and character), I have no problem with both kinds. (It will be all fine as long as people have some programmer's logic and don't mix them up, otherwise lawsuits will be the only output)
Your time is worth money. You should not waste it on helping others, unless they will pay you. After all, what's in it for you?
Don't join the Peace Corps. Don't help your friends move their furniture. Let those bums pay someone else to do it. Don't share knowledge or teach anyone, especially kids. In fact, children are expensive so don't have any unless you can work out some kind of profit angle. Don't help your spouse or your community. Don't make your bed or wash the dishes unless you get paid for it. If you see a problem like a fire or an accident, don't stop to help. That would just waste your valuable time.
Unless you can get paid for it, don't waste time on sports, even if you enjoy it. You could be spending the time making money or perhaps suing someone instead. Also, don't give any of your money to charities. They are freeloaders.
So please don't volunteer because you will make the rest of us look like shallow, money-grubbing toads.
How about this solution:
This would most likely only work in conjunction with the EFF proposal to charge a minimum fee for P2P usage akin to the fees that radio stations pay to broadcast their content.
Well, if --and granted it's a big IF-- this system was in place then people who made meaningful code contributions to an open source project would gets P2P credits not only allowing them to skip the monthly fee, but to get priority downloads.
Indeed, the system wouldn't have to be limited to programming per se. These days the borderline between programming and entertainment can get rather blurry when you consider situations like game developers or CG renders. So, entertainers of all sorts could join in too. Anybody who produced digital content. As long as you contributed talent, you wouldn't have to pay to share in others' talent --a virtual commonwealth.
It's fair to point out that this system wouldn't put bread on the table and a roof over your head, but it would be more than what many open source developers get today.
What does the average slashdotter feel the copyright value is of the work that SCO bought from Novel?
What does the average slashdotter feel companies like AT&T spent to develope system V and how many programmers were involved? How many sleepless nights were spent burning the midnight oil?
Consider this please. The System V copyrights are worth NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL.
No programmer can dare even LOOK at that code because they lay themselves wide open to a copyright infringment claim. No vendor other than SCO would even want to touch it today. As for SCO - they are going to crash and burn for many reasons, including the fact that they have pissed off so many of their customers that no one will touch them ever again.
This is perhaps one of the main reasons the OpenSoftware concept is so powerful... it creates a resource that people can actually use, a resource that can build and be refined and one where anyone in the world can benefit from it.
The closed source model on the other hand creates a product that is legally so radioactive that any sane programmer will stay miles away from it.
-------------
Suppose a young programmer starts working for a company. For 10 years he/she does some particularly brilliant work and eventually the company goes into hard times and fires said programmer.
What of the code? The programmer cannot use it. The company normally cannot sell it and usually doesn't really consider the code to have any value at all.
So our hypothetical programmer will find that 10 years down the track, they are faced with starting over from scratch because they cannot dare even TOUCH the work they themselves wrote.
Next, if we look at typical non-disclosure agreements we see the same programmer is literally barred from discussing the algorithms he thought up. Yet - usually these alorithms are realitivly obvious to practitioners in the trade.
Those old non-disclosure agreements can come back to haunt you and can in fact make you unemployable.
Well, these points might be considered extreme. Yet, consider the lastest story up in www.groklaw.com where the derivation of the signal.h file is discussed. Had Linus even seen the file from AT&T unix he may well have been tainted for life.
--------------
Well - the above example deals with work on proprietary code developed under a NDA. Flip the page. Suppose the code base is GPL.
Then our programming hero has access to everything he has done before. His skills are valuable because he knows the code base. There is no NDA because it makes no sense to try to impose an NDA on something that by its very nature MUST be open to all.
His employer benefitted as well. Without OpenSource software our programming hero would have to spend a high percentage of his time re-inventing the wheel and creating yet another incarnation of functions the company has to maintain.
So the bottom line here is that if anyone feels they are going to be working for the same benevolent employer for their whole career, then be my guest and sign the NDA and write closed source code for them.
On the other hand, if people feel this idea is a pipe dream, then please realise that if you develop under the GPL that you can never lose your work, your employer benefits and that old draconian NDA doesn't need to exist.
-----------
I shall close this comment off as follows.
The first round of computer manufactures that died were called the BUNCH. Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honeywell. The second round of computer manufactures that died were the mini-computer manufactures which include Perkin Elmer, Prime, Texas Instruments, HP3000 series, VAX, Data General. This is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.
In the pure software arena we see the same process occuring: look at the "smart" word processor, 123, the Brief editor, Word Perfect, Sybase, IDMS, TOTAL... this list is so long I could not begin to do it justice.
Virtually every line of code written for those old systems has now been pissed up against the wall and is totally valueless.
If the work those ancient programmers did were under the GPL, then that code would be alive and vibrant today.
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.
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.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Greetings, eh?
Caveat: I'm not a programmer, and the little that I did in university has convinced me that other people are better off writing software, as mine sucks. And for that, I have the utmost respect for anyone who can program.
Is there a reason that you can't do both? Can you not do as many other people have surely done and get a job working for The Man, but then also code your OSS project at home for free? Is there a reason why this might not work? Better yet, are there *several* reasons why this might no work?
I realize that some contracts put forth by employers contain clauses that retain rights to all the work that you do connected with the company, but as long as you work on your own project at home and not use company resources, it seems to me that you should be allowed to license *that* code however you want. If you can't (for whatever bizarre reason), then you should be able to negotiate those rights prior to signing the contract.
The only reason I can think for a company to restrict your rights in this fashion would be that they are worried about you taking what you have learned, turning it into your own product, quitting the business, and selling yours for oodles of cash. But if your project is not similar to theirs (for example, you code an audio-manipulation program at home, and embedded heart-monitor apps at work), you shouldn't be restricted by a non-compete clause.
To me, it seems like the letter's arguments are black and white. You can code Open, or you can code Closed. You can't do both. The world is not made up of only black and white situations, though.
But hey - if the situation is different, please fill me in.
Brendan "Beej" Dery "Only in Canada, eh?"
RTFM. IBM is a hardware business. Hardware HAS to have software. For this reason, you don't pay for software to run your cell phone, you don't pay for the operating system to run your PDA, you don't pay for the software that runs your calculator, your car,etc...
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.
How many people make their living *entirely* from writing free software? It's probably in the low double or triple digits. How many programmers (and college people intending to become them) are there? Millions, at least. How do you get into that position? Write an incredibly cool program, which can take years, and make it the best in its category in the world, which takes huge amounts of work and luck. That's not a feasible life strategy; if you told that to your advisor or career counselor you'd be laughed out of the office.
It has to be pointed out that this paragraph is a TOTAL lie. RMS created the Free Software movement because he 1) believes closed source is like a welded shut car hood - you have the right to tinker with what you buy, and 2) he desired an OS and tools that allow a person to create without the creation being stolen by a greedy corporate entity, and 3) it is of great personal benefit to share what you create for the return right of using other people's improvements to your own, or the right to use their creations - to be a sharing member of a community.
At least this is how I understand RMS's motivations, but I don't actually know the guy. But this quoted paragraph is total BS - most corporations are in fact NOT advocating free software at all.
>>People will get it as they get older.
Anyone who is not a Liberal in their youth has no heart.
Anyone who is not a Conservative as they get older has no brain.
> if that girl suddenly starts liking me because
> of my "big-load-o-cash"(tm), I probably wont like
> her anymore.
I think that if you are reading slashdot, you probably can not afford to be so picky.
Sorry, that just made me laugh. I agree with you, though.
Wikileaks, no DNS
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.
Also, the only way to get women is to make money. Women are not impressed by what you are doing, but how much money you have to spend (to buy them drugs or whatever).
Look out for yourself but give something back. Did all the people who have taught you along the way, Mom, Dad, schools co-workers all just do it for the money?
Work and make money but give back a percent of your knowledge in the idea of human beings moving forward or making life better.
This can be an open source project that means something to you or teaching some kids after school.
Open source to me is that giving back. It is a check that balances corporate might and greed.
"'many great artworks and musical works were done for free.'"
Actually if you follow the flow of money? You'll find that even that wasn't "free". Just because the hand isn't directly pulling from your pocket, doesn't mean the money isn't coming from you. Were did the king get his money? Were did the philanthropist get his money? Were do governments get their money? Unless something is an outright gift from it's creater, it's not free, and even that's not free for it was paid with effort and time.
Anyone who says free software is worth nothing from a revenue perspective or for recovering costs of education is a fool. On the contrary, it's worth a lot more than proprietary software in this regard. One of those reasons is that you can make so much more money with it. Consider consulting: in addition to being cheaper than your competition, you can also reap larger profits. You can also provide more nimble and customized solutions. In addition to being cheaper, more profitable and flexible, you are increasing the pool of community resources and knowledge as well. That translates into further income for you. In othewords, with open source software, everyone is helping everyone else make money while they help themselves. It's only the uncreative, myopic folks out there who cannot understand business models that use open source software to turn a profit. Take the blinders off!
Join Tor today!
with open source community...
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?
It is proprietary software ventures that are shipping jobs out of my country.......not free(dom) software.
Who knows, maybe free(dom) software development will bring a few of those jobs back?
Out of work developers can form companies to augment/improve/support popular free(dom) software.
What they have in higher worker costs they will more then make up for in not having to pay huge wages to executives/ceos/stockholders.......so they could probably compete in price. That is, assuming the US IT companies ever plan to reduce their prices to reflect there cheap overseas labor.
At some point the software a company works on will not be able to be improved anymore or a competeing company will do it better. In that case the developers could move on to new projects....business as usual
Who knows, maybe these free(dom) software companies will improve so much free(dom) software that they might out compete the proprietary counterparts.
They might return the favor to American CEO's and put them out of a job :)
Steve
I've contributed two simple lines of source to an Open Source project. Just two. In return I get FreeBSD (or pick any linux distribution), KDE (GNOME if you prefer), a lot of good enough apps. Most important to me, if I don't like something I'm encouraged to fix it. Since I've contributed I can also place on my resume a little line that I've developed for this project, which is in my favor as I'm look for a paying jobs. Anyone can look those two lines up and evaluate my quality, while the lines I've written for others are locked away and you can't look at them.
Seems like a good deal to me. I give 3 days of effort, contribute 2 lines, and get this in return.
Actually the code itself took just a few minutes (5 for the first line, and 1 for the second), most of the rest of the time was finding and understanding the code. Half a day to test, and a couple more minutes to create/submit a patch.
I don't think giving away the recipe is the same as giving away source code.
Software runs exactly the same anywhere. Recipes require more skill from a proper chef to prepare it.
I've downloaded gcc and compiled it with ease before. I have the recipe for the basic souffle, but I still can't make it properly.
If I could download a recipe, click a button, and get a perfect souffle, then yeah recipes would be the same as code.
If I was writing software, and GPL'd it, Im not making it available 'free of charge'.
I get:
1. If anyone bases anything else on my code, they have to GPL it, and I get *that* for free.
2. Even though my writing code isnt a condition for this, I also get to use all the other software the other programmers have made for free. If I want, I can even modify it if I need, since the code is there.
3. I also know that I am helping the market move toward a world where people have choices, and that someday it will be common for the average end user to be aware of and make choices about what software platform they use, much as today they make choices about what brand of car or gasoline to buy, and where these different platforms will actually be 'compatible' with each other, becuase there will be open public documentation of the file formats and protocols they use to communicate, and where someday maybe one large monopoly wont be able to hold up an artificial barrier to entry into the market - its a sad state that the only thing that stands a chance of competing with this monopoly is software thats given away FREE of charge.
If there were 3 or 4 (or more) companies, making proprietary software for end users, sharing similar markets (including the OS market), and none had a majority share of the market, then theyd have to be compatible (eg, capable of exchanging files, and comunicating over networks, and they would have to either document those formats and protocols, and they would tend to be more stable - no one ompany could alter its use of the protocol so as to be incompatible with the others, and hence easier to reverse engineer, if not already documented), and I (personally) would have less objection to 'proprietary' software, because ANYone with the skills could make a compatible system/platform, and just becuase less than 1% of people used it, wouldnt mean that it couldnt interoperate. Think about it, probably fewer than 1% of car owners own Porchse's, but they still burn the same gas, drive on the same roads, and fit thru the same toll booths.
I wouldnt choose it myself, but thats the whole point - letting people have choice.
Three ways to make profit with Open Source:
1) I'm leading some Open Source projects and contributed to others. This engagement in the Open Source scene has got me some jobs in closed source business, 'cause I could advertise for myself and refer to my Open Source projects as references for my skills. There's also quite a good chance I wouldn't have my current job without these projects.
2) Another point is that if you write a software and want to sell it how do people know it even exists? I think releasing the software as Open Source under the GPL and selling commercial use licenses lets everybody profit from your work.
3) I plan to bundle optional closed source components with my free software in the future. If other developers want to use the functionality provided by these components in their own software, they have to obtain a license.
----------------
Linux is great, I love it, I use it at home but if that were to dominate the OS market don't you think a few developers in Redmond would be out of a job? How about postgresql or mysql? Sure, they'll probably be able to pick up something else but thats not the point. I'm sure there are some better examples of this but its as good as I can come up with on a Monday morning.
Personally I think most software should be free for personal use and corporations should be footing the bill but thats just my twisted point of view.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
I read your letter with great interest on the evils of free and open source software. After finishing it, I asked myself what someone in your position might do to help stop the spread of free software. Aside from encouraging young developers away from it, I would also recommend not making use of it anywhere in your business. Since I don't know your business, this may already be the case. Nevertheless, it's always good to verify this, since teaching the evils of writing free software on one hand while benefiting from it on the other would make you look insincere. Once you've verified your business is not using free software, the next step would be to talk with other companies to let them know about its evils.
Perhaps with enough effort, businesses and people will stop using free software. If nobody's running it, there will be little motivation for developers to continue writing it. Although there will always be free software, this would eliminate most if not all of the large projects that do the most damage to commercial interests.
Thank you for your time, and good day to you.
(Okay, it's subtle, so I'll just say it -- this letter is meant to be sarcastic, preying on those who speak out against open source while simultaneously reaping its benefits. It also encourages him to discourage those who benefit the most from open source, which is a hopeless endeavor. And no, I didn't actually send this letter to him.)
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
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.
Should people stop climbing Everest, traversing the ocean solo in the small boat, exploring cave hundred meters undeground because they are risking their life for no money ? Should people quit dangerous proffession if they can not impress girls with it ? Was WWII guerillas stupid because they were liberated at the end for free anyway ?
Companies need internal software. They take an OS project, and pay a dude to add some whistels. The project grows... Young programmers need training. They learn the job on an OS project. Sure they aren't getting rich, but their CV improves... The whole picture of O.S. beeing made by 100% succers who throw their lives away is a little far streched if you ask me. There are anyway plenty alternatives: double licensing, an O.S. "Base" project with a commercial add-on for MS-compatibility,... Seems to me like some people are still afraid of change...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
> 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?
Funny, I always thought it was the other way around - you can always do a better job writing the program than whoever wrote it, and that's what OSS is. That's why most OSS projects get started anyway. That's why we have forks and rewrites and upgrades and people who say "what moron wrote this? I bet I could do better than that." Thinking that everyone except you is a good programmer might end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and for that very reason I would strongly suggest you reconsider your motivations. It's all right to work on OSS if you think you can do a better job, but it is an abomination to do a rotten job, dump it on SourceForge and expect other people to clean it up.
Unfortunately, the unemployed moderators here who loathe capitalism will mod down any comment that speaks critically of open source software. My suggestion for readers who value good discussion is to search for all the -1 comments in this story. We all know the fascists here will try to silence criticism.
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... :-)
If his website was running Apache, on Linux.. that would be one thing.
But it is running IIS on Win2k appparantly.
How much you want to bet he posed it from a Linux system with Mozilla Firefox?
"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."
Until the coding (code monkey) is outsourced to a country were the money made is less. Your argument stands, but it's no bed of roses either.
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
As was pointed out in the letter, a lot of the really useful software ideas have already been realized. Of course, there will always be new hardware, and new drivers for it, etc...but how many new word processors or operating systems will there be?
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
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. At the bottom of the food chain are people like you, who are easily fooled by the "let's make the world a better place" rhetoric and who are so enthusiastic about technology that writing open-source - or any source for that matter - is the absolutely best imaginable way to spend their time. It doesn't matter whether you love what you are doing and consider this the hobby you want to spend 110% of your time on: 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.
But what if I don't give a damn who uses my stuff which I willingly given away for free? What if I give my software away and license it under GPL, will it still be stolen by suits which are waiting to suck me dry? What if solving programming problems is just fun for me? I can have a paid job and still do some hacking on free/open source software just because that's what I want to do and this above flamebait fails to see, but categorizes me as a being living "on the bottom of the foodchain." The point is I'm not being tricked into doing this stuff, I'm doing it because it's fun, dammit!
TFA was written by a person who can't see a computer without a dollar (or rather a DM) sign on it. Poor fellow.
This guy's letter has succeeded in sand-blasting away my youthful optimism. I guess free software is a good thing -- for other people to do. Let the suckers give away their work if they want; I won't say no to a free lunch.
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
Most of us work for a corporation.
There is no fame and very little recognition while working for a company. After all, it's not your work. The company owns the rights to what you do.
How many famous Microsoft sofware authors have you heard of?
At least in free/open software, the users recognize and appreciate the authors, and if you change jobs, the free/open software that you wrote is still yours ( and everyones ).
How many famous Linux software authors have you heard of?
If the only thing that mattered about any human endeavor was whether or not you could make money from it, the world would be a poorer place. Perhaps Vasters has spent too much time toiling away in some enormous corporation where the only visible proof you've done something is your paycheck. In that world, his arguments make sense, but in the bigger picture, there is room for other definitions. And that makes all the difference.
Outsourcing is a big problem. I can't imagine why a smart thinking company with any common sense would export intimate knowledge of his core business processes and pay for it too!
So because every CEO and his goat is tripping over himself to do exactly the same as all his competitors are already doing, all these companies are flushing their corporate secrets to third world countries.
Might as well do law school then, because that will be the only business model that generates any revenue at all in the years to come. If only to sue all these outsourcing shops who suddenly decide that your (local) competitor, or your foreign competitor pays better for their (read: your) knowledge.
If you're a law school graduate, many employers won't even look at you if you haven't done significant volunteer work while in school. Pro bono work and "giving back to the community" are DEMANDED.
In the Tech industry, why should it be any different? If you're looking for a job, and you can point the employer to a project you've done that demonstrates that you have excellent coding skills, then unless the employer is an idiot, this will do nothing but increase your value.
You can also think of this as a way to separate the wheat form the chaff. The free software community forms a ranking system based on merit. Being very unstructured, there is no one who can "push you down". If you're good, you're good, and if you suck, you suck, and someone looking for you on the net can determine that if you've participated.
... but if you look for a materialistic value, I for one haven't had a job interview where my (actually rather meager) list of OSS contributions didn't make an impact - quite contrary to Clemens' blather. In fact, it tends to shadow both my education and work experience as an employment factor.
That's because you can *prove* your worth with a couple of URLs.
Mind you, I have no problem with writing software for sale. But I also require (before accepting any job) an explicit permission to continue with OSS on my own time.
--
I refuse to use
"You can't just go post something to a bulletin board and watch as the teeming hoard of OSS geeks magically code it for you.. "
Like Netscape.
I'd say if software companies go down because of F/OSS, then it's payback for treating programmers like shit or putting out shit products.
Granted, sometimes programmers are cockier than fighter pilots, there's the other end of the spectrum where management requires 70+ hour workweek and forces software out the door then blame programmers when something goes wrong.
My programmer friends started a small but already popular website. If it weren't for
Linux, FreeBSD, GNU, gcc, gdb, Apache, PHP, PostGres, Squid, Horde, SquirrelMail, QMail, Perl, Ruby, fetchmail, CVS,
most possibly they could not start it at all.
I work at a small company. Without the open source Sphinx speech recognition library, the company wouldn't even attempt doing speech recognition. But thanks to Sphinx, they do attempt, and they hired me for the job. So I thank free software for my job.
He says that you will not get a job because already there is an open source solution for the task you would do. But the software business is not like this. Tasks are plenty.
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?
Yeah, right.
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.)
How many of you have helped out at a Homeless shelter or soup kitchen? Donated clothes/etc to the Salvation Army? Helped the Big Brothers or Big Sisters? Helped out Habitat for Humanity? Or thousands of other things one can do to help their fellow humans? I have, and the look on peoples faces when I help them with no selfish intentions is worth 1,000's to me. I just recently helped a co-worker setup a new computer. I saved her a lot of money by building a new computer and using some of her old parts. I gave her a spare 20GB HDD and a video card. I refused payment. Why? Because I wanted to help. Not because I wanted money. She still thanked me and gave me 4 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. That meant more to me then her handing me an impersonal check.
I have a 2 1/2 year old girl, should I start to charge her for my time, since "time is money"? Of course not, I would not trade my time with my little angel for any amount of money.
Now, I can think of thousands of ways to make money in a world where the majority of software is free. I think a balance can be met between free software and pay software. What I do not want to accept is proprietary software. I am a developer for a fortune 500 that does a few billion a year in sales and non of it comes from selling software. This company and hundreds of thousands of other companies in the world need software developed in-house. That requires hiring programmers to build custom applications. Most purchased software are too generic for companies and those companies want to tweak those apps, build extensions or develop complimenting applications. Most companies do not want to fit their business to sofware and instead want software to fit their business. So there will always be a strong need for sofware developers. The only issue that could hurt software developers is not Open Source, but out sourcing.
One other point, why do closed minded people like Clemens Vasters still think that you cannot sell Open Source software? MySQL, JBoss, Red Hat, SuSE, Ximian and others are doing it. What is required for a company to make money with Open Source is a for that company to trully add value. In a world where most of the software is Open Source, companies will once again have to innovate and create value. And that scares a lot of people.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
This guy is falling into the old trap of thinking that open source software is all written by unpaid volunteers. THIS IS NOT TRUE. People who work for companies use open source software to do their jobs. Often they fix and update that open source software when they find something wrong that they are capable of fixing. People also make money writing open source software full time. Open source often makes business sense and therefor it's worth it for businesses to support it.
That said, I agree that not all software should be free. Programmers wouldn't have motivation to write software if they never got paid for it. But the author also points out another very important point: building things on open source software is more profitable. Companies who build things on open source software make more money because their costs are less. The key is to take advantage of that but when you do that, it also makes sense to support and improve the software that allows you to be so profitable.
Open source is not about no-cost software. The costs are still there but they are radically different and they are paid for in very different ways than the pay-for-license model. OSS also doesn't make much sence in a lot of places. Comodity infrastructure software like operating systems, office suits, web browsers, etc.. are the best candidates for open sourcing. The benefits to having a standardized infrastructure that is available everywhere are huge but if a company has ownership of the one standard, they gain monopoly power and charge monopoly prices. People blame Microsoft for being evil but any other company in their place would do the same thing. Having the infrastructure be open source makes good business and ecanomic sense. The burdon of development can easily be spread out.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
1990? The way he was speaking in his letter, I thought he said 1900 at first. I hope when I turn 35 in six months, I have that much wisdom.
Josh
I fail to see what the author of this letter is so worried about. If he honestly believes what he is saying, then open source software will only be produced by European students who have no costs and plenty of time. These students should fail to be able to compete with more mature developers, who needing money, work for closed-source organizations. So... what exactly is he trying to achieve by this letter, other than to be condescending?
Dear Newton,
I think you remember the conversation we had recently at this university in Cambridge. You came up to me and told me how the math I was talking about was mostly useless, because it is a mystical secret where people need to be inducted into a secret soceity to use it and those who divulge it are killed. Unfortunately I don't have your letter, but I am sure this will reach you.
First, I would like to thank you for the interesting conversation that developed and to make sure that none of what was said just fades away, I'll tell you here once again what I am thinking about what you do, what you think and - most importantly about your future.
When I was young - like you now - I was also at university and was pursing a natural philosophy degree. Back then, I was very enthusiastic about mathematics as a humanitarian discipline. And thought that I was the best mathematician in the field has ever seen and everyone else was mostly worthless. And I did indeed derive some theorems that mattered and made a difference. The theory I spent some 3 years writing in algebra from when I was 18 was to solve a problem for my father's business. Because the business he's in requires a lot of interest calulations, he and my mother spent about 2-3 daily hours on average doing all of this stuff by hand. Using my theorem, that time went from 3 hours to about 15 minutes a day. That was math that absolutely improved the quality of life for the entire family! And his friends and colleagues loved it, too. I didn't sell many licenses at that time (I think I had 3 customers), but each one was worth 1500 Brittish Pounds and that was a huge heap of money for me. Where did the money go? I can't really remember where it all went, but I guess "lot of partying" or "Girls, Drugs and Minuettes" would be a reasonably good explanation. Hey, I was 21 and that's what one is supposed to do at that age, right?
That was in 1640 - let's fast forward to 1669 and you. All math that you and your father could possibly be interested in has already been written. That's probably not true, but it's hard to think of something, right? Ok, the math may not be easy to understand with your notation and may cost money, but what you can immediately think of is likely there. So where do you put all your energy? Into this absolutely amazing free math project you co-coordinate. I mean, really, the stuff that you and your buddies are doing with derivatives is truly impressive. There are a couple of things I'd probably do differently in terms of notation, but it works well and that's mostly what matters.
However, I start to wonder where your benefit is. You are - out of principle - not making any money out of this, because it is free 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.
In the end, Newton, it's your choice. Do you want to have a horse, a house and a family when you are 30? Do you love being a Natural Philosopher at the same time? If so, you literally need to get a life. Forget the dream about stuff being free and stop advocating it. It's idiocy. It's bigotry. If you want to put your skills to work and you need to support a family, your work and work results can't be free. Math is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again.
With best wishes for your future
Cardan
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
"Nobody asks a programmer to work for free."
Because they wouldn't get away with it. Not because they necessarily like putting out money for salaries. At best they will pay the lowest they can get.
How are we supposed to eat in the meantime?
I don't see Linus starving...
I don't see Kid Rock or Jennifer Lopez starving either, does that mean that waiting tables for years until you get a record contract is a smart thing to do? Most musicians die hungry and penniless just like most programmers will die hungry and penniless if people like you get your way.
Every line of open source code you write digs yourself and all the rest of the software industry a little bit deeper into the hole we are in. Selling support is NOT viable way to make money except for a select few companies like Redhat. You want programmers to have to take "day jobs" like waiting tables to support their open source projects? This is why I got out of music, its a shitty way to live and an impossible way to support a family. At least music doesn't require 4 years and $100,000 of college. Programmers today are fucked before they even get started. In the end Open source will kill the US software industry long before outsourcing ever does.
A programmer that codes sendmail, for example, will be a more intelligent, higher skilled programmer who doesn't spend the time with it. Having an employee involved in an open source project teaches them things like how to work well with a vastly distributed team, the inner workings of a large system, and just plain hones their skills more. Yeah, you may not make money on it, but there's an intangible benefit you receive from bettering your skills
--pete
...another letter.
Dear Aiden,
I don't know you from a bar of soap but I'd like to encourage you in your efforts developing Free Software. I understand your antipathy towards Microsoft given its track record of mocking, attacking and undermining Free Software but don't waste your energy hating it. It is, as Professor Eben Moglen, counsel for the Free Software Foundation, said the other day, on the wrong side of the software movement. Rather continue to write, improve upon, distribute and enourage others to use Free Software. And don't think you aren't perfectly entitled to charge money for Free Software - I do it for a living and it earns me quite a lot of money.
I'm not going to bore you with all the stupid Pascal stuff I did at your age, neither will I drivel on about making a few bucks from the odd software sale. What I will say is this: make sure you do something that you really enjoy for a living when you finally need to earn a living. Never take a job on the money alone. To spend most of your time doing something you hate just because the paycheck is good is soul-destroying. Using a job as a stepping stone is fine, but make sure you have a goal to do what you want. Don't worry if this process takes ten or fifteen years - you can still have lots of fun along the way while picking up experience. And there's at least one attractive woman out there who will love you for who you are, not how much you earn. You'll find her if you keep looking. Sometimes you'll find that she was there all the time - just that you didn't notice. Good luck.
You sound like you have much enthusiasm for programming. That's great - and one day it might provide you with a steady income. Developing Free Software teaches you all sorts of good habits which will stand you in good stead in the real world: client expectations, deadlines, having to work with obnoxious idiots who are nonetheless brilliant coders, version control and a passion for elegance and cleanliness. Even if it doesn't and you do something else for a living, writing Free Software is a pleasant part-time addiction that can provide many happy hours - I hesitate to say relaxation - occupation for your mind.
Free Software is not a myth or a lie: it is the largest single technical knowledge repository on the planet available to all who want at no charge. None of the code contained therein has been obtained by trickery or extortion. On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of intelligent coders want what you want: to program cool stuff and share it with others. And they have done so. There is no food chain in Free Software. It is perfectly possible for a young University student like yourself to change the world given enough talent, hard work and help from like-minded people (you may have noticed this somewhere before).
Like some other correspondents of yours, I also happen to know a few choice quotes about political systems. But since none of them shed any light whatsoever on the process of or motivation for writing Free Software, I will not waste your time with them.
You will encounter opposition from many quarters. Some of this opposition will be from genuinely concerned but misguided people who want to deny reality, ignorant as they are about the 21st century, the market share of Apache or sendmail, and the difference between bits and atoms. Some will even call you stupid or a bigot. Don't worry. You will be proud one day to tell your grandchildren that you created a program that thousands of people - maybe even millions - used to improve their lives. Right now your skills and enthusiasm are of enormous worth to yourself and many others. Many people will appreciate it when you share and share alike. And that by itself is worth much more than choosing life, a career, or a fscking big television.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
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.
Who says Aiden needs to get a job writing software? He can certainly find some other kind of job that can pay the bills. He could be a network administrator, systems analyst, etc., all sorts of computer jobs that pay well enough and do not require you to write non-free software.
He says this too:
"So you are putting all of that time and energy into this project for what? Fame? To found a career? Come on."
If the project is as impressive as he says it is, he can certainly use it on his resume to land one of the aforementioned jobs.
I mean, I'm not saying I agree that all software should be free, but if that's what this kid believes, there's definitely a way for him to live that doesn't involve mooching off of his parents.
This guy needs to watch "You Can't Take it With You" or if he's Christian, listen to Jesus some. I can see this guy now: "What are you telling that man to give away all his money for?! He needs to pay his bills!!" or "Lillies? Birds?! What a bunch of hogwash! You need to take care of yourself!"
Damn materialists,
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Microsoft produces plenty of software that runs on Windows and OSX that's (surprise, surprise) actually free.
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.
"Software is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again."
I wonder what this guy thinks about air. I mean, it's free, but pretty important to him. One could argue that while it's free, it's worth more than all the gold in the world, simply becasue without it, he's gonna die.
Granted that air wasn't developed by an outside party, but the analogy still holds (sort of). If this kid were to develop something very useful and gave it away as open source, His contribution would be appreciated everywhere, and worth far more than they paid for it.
So the kid isn't an uber-capitalist out to make billions on his products. So what? He wants to make software that everyone can enjoy, review, and improve. Money isn't his goal in life. Personally I think that says more about his character than anything else.
"Because Doctors Without Borders doesn't do anything like that. And lawyers never do pro bono work right?"
And we've had just about enough of that.
We all know that free SW isn't necessarily gratis. It costs to write it and it costs even a lot more to administer, maintain and support it.
You can try selling your services just like RMS says and try to keep control over the SW you produce. This is not easy but neither is it impossible. I manage to work this way since a couple of years now.
Businesses hire me to develop/support business systems and pay me a very decent amount of money. The first SW I produce is usually to meet the time-to-market needs and hence more often than not it is specific for the customer, so I don't care too much about GPL-ing it. Then I try abstracting general purpose knowledge I obtained in the process and cast it into general purpose GPL SW which eventually will be used by my client.
(I must add that although I'm not too bad a programmer I realize that there are a lot of guys [mainly] out there that out-program me, that have much fresher and usable ideas and that work in larger groups/communities that are prone to achieve much more than I do. And so my contribution to free software is minute (but not NULL) compared to programmer gods.)
It is also realistic to realize that you're most likely to be a main stream/mortal programmer (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this post but programming for big money) and that you're prone to spend more time administering your work than writing actual programs. Since I started offering GPL SW of a reasonable quality to the world my qualities as a SW pro boosted. I combine these two facts and I conclude that "giving away" GPL software doesn't cost me too much and results in me getting better.
With that in mind it's easier for me to accept "the loss" of control and exclusive ownership over GPL SW I wrote.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Choose proprietory software. Choose Windows. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who grok the new model and take home a check. I'm sorry he doesn't maybe he can catch the next meme before it gets fully exploited by someone else.
Also the author needs to realize that the world is bigger than his viewport. In the developing world free software is the reality - no one is going to spend a month's wages to buy an OS.
The software market is changing - free software, open source and outsourcing are driving costs down and pushing commoditization. Some will benefit, some will get crushed. Trying to stand in the way is an excellent way to make yourself irrelvant and broke.
I'm sorry we aren't all filled with the greed to profit through money. I profit through people commenting on software I write. I enjoy a simple "good job". Some people are just generous, why try to convert him to your views on life. I'll continue to help others by sharing everything I have or do.
Some people persue a degree as something to fall back on in case their main plans don't pan out.
The degree they persue may be in a field they love, or just in a field where they believe they can make a decent living.
It is possible to be a rational person and have no real plans on earing money with your major.
A Nony Mouse
OK... as somebody who makes a fair amount of money, involved in a profession where people make a fair amount of money (medicine) I've watched colleagues make that mistake over and over and over again.
It's painful to watch. I have colleagues that go to bars practically wearing lab coat and scrubs... you can sit back and watch the gold-diggers come a-runnin. Later, when their shallow relationship blows up, they go do it again... some stay in this rut for years. If you're going to use money to attract chix0rs, beware... you might get exactly what you're asking for. Ostentatiously waving money around is arrogant, obnoxious, creates resentment in others, and is no way to build a relationship.
For my own part, I don't advertise my income or profeesion... never did. It's not on my car, it's not on my checks or credit cards... not even on my correspondence. In fact, apart from this largely-anonymous forum, I'm damned circumspect about it, because it makes you a target, particularly when dating.
I'm married now, but even as a single guy, I didn't tell women what I did for a living... "I'm a student" was my pat answer. They'd eventually figure it out later, but after I'd had a chance to vet them for their real interests and motivations. If you're dating for dollars, you attract avaricious partners. I hope for Mr. Vasters sake that he was making that remark tongue-in-cheek.
Using bucks as bait to get dates is a losing strategy all the way... unless your idea of companionship is a using others and getting used yourself. And when it's all done, all you'll have to show for it is a shallow, disease-ridden string of one-night-stands; that's a pretty empty way to live.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I see nothing wrong with walking up to a girl and in the middle of the initial conversation you tell them about your coding adventures, courteously, and not ad hominum. If she can relate to that then she might be someone special for you. If she can't relate to that and you still want to get laid? Well, I'd suggest practicing those social hacking skills and just tell her what she wants to hear; either that or use her to draw other womens' attention your way.
Free Software! Expensive Girls! Ra ra ra!
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, or do you want to be like Steve Ballmer, who is widely called Monkey Boy?
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.
"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"
Tell that to RMS!
Sometimes there are more important things in life than money. Like ideals and beliefs.
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
In the US, lawyers are expected to perform a certain amount of pro bono work each year. It's part of their ethical code, to provide access to the justice system to everyone, not just those who can afford it. Doctors are also ethically bound to help those in need - for instance hospitals have to accept trauma patients even if they can't pay. (I may be explaining the details wrong here, but the point is still valid.) Even among professions that have no ethical code requiring pro bono or gratis work, people still go out and volunteer their time and abilities to help those who need it.
I see nothing unusual at all about programmers performing work for free to the benefit of society. But the nature of programming is different from professions where the output is a service or product for an individual. Software can be copied freely, so programmers have the opportunity to help not just one person at a time, but the whole of society at once.
Doing volunteer or pro bono work exclusively won't pay the bills, but it is part of being a professional and a responsible member of society. While I wouldn't bet on being able to support myself doing only OSS, there is certainly a time and place for it in every programmer's career.
of my SourceForge projects, then I'll stop writing non-free software.
In the meanwhile, the stuff I do GPL is fluff I do to show off, not how I spend most of my hours.
Clear, Dark Skies
You might be interested in the book "Missionary Position" by Christoper Hitchens.
As luck would have it, there are ethical ways to make money.
Yes, someone considering a career in computer programming had better think long and hard about how he is going to put the food on the table and the kids through college. If he is a decent person, and he sees the evil of proprietary software, he may look for another line of work. He may deem it unlikely that he will be able to pay his bills without writing proprietary software.
If a gangster understands that his career is unethical, yet persists in it because he enjoys his job or because he is a valuable, skilled gangster, then I say he is clearly in the wrong, and ought to find another job.
Are computer programmers any different? If you write proprietary software, you turn yourself into an exploiter, bully and big brother, who sticks his nose where it has no right to be stuck: into other people's computers, and other people's lives. You metamorphosize into a computer policeman who scrutinizes the programs on other people's computers, examining each one to ensure that it is allowed to be had, and punishing anyone found to be having a forbidden program.
If you are a bad character, you may have little objection to that sort of behavior. Otherwise, be rational: don't fill your gas tank with evil.
It's an simple economic truth: copying software is very, very, cheap. Therefore software will become very, very cheap.
If you don't write free software, someone else will.
Not all software has to be free. But there are a few good things that will come from his open source project:
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.
As others have said, balance is the key. Not all software should be free or be proprietary. I contribute regularly to Apache jakarta projects. The reason I contribute is often commercial products are way too expensive, or it doesn't fit my needs. Take for example, load testing tools. If I want to load test a complex webapp, I can fork over several thousand dollars for Mercury loadrunner/webrunner, or I can use Jakarta JMeter. Since most of my work experience is contracting/consulting, getting a PO for loadrunner is 1% chance of being approved and 0% chance of getting a license in time to meet a deadline. Or take another example. Say I work for a company that uses weblogic and I need to stress test some simple servlets. The free version of weblogic only accepts 10 concurrent connections, so it's not appropriate for load testing. Instead, I can use Tomcat to get a rough idea of how a servlet will scale. The biggest problem for me is getting approval for a piece of commercial software. I'm unwilling to do a half-ass job and leave stress testing to someone else, so I contribute and use OSS software. It's pragmatic and lets me get on with my job, instead of waiting for until god knows when and then have the project blow up because I couldn't stress test the app.
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.
So, you can't make any money by giving away your knowledge for free? News to all the academics who have been publishing their research rather than hiding it from the world and only revealing it when they file a patent (although some of us might get more money if we did)
Not only is free software destroying programming jobs in industry, so is Do It Yourself home repair! But wait, why stop there! Look at all the home auto repair work. If we put a stop to this madness, we can save thousands of construction and automotive repair jobs! Albeit at the price of consumer fraud and scams in those industires ...
'company', not 'software' at second word point.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
The man has some valid points. I've never really sat down and thought about this much but instead arrived at a similar conclusion after leaving my parent's home (8 years ago). I've been programming since I was 16 (I'm 25 now) and have mostly taught myself everything I know. Of course, I didnt just invent all of these things. I've spent and still spend time looking through books and free source code and papers. Thus, I feel an obligation to give back to the world free, open-source programs that will help others learn in the same way I did. However, do I care if IBM has to pay for a license to buy software I've worked on? No. Big business does not "care" about open-source or closed-source, they care about money and that is all. So, why should they be the only ones making money? Why should I make some boardroom exec rich while I lack sufficient funds to buy a home or go on vacation? Thus, I write free tools and programs and put them in the public domain (no copyright, no license, nothing) to teach myself new concepts and to share what I've learned while also working on a closed-source project that pays my bills and enables me to keep studying and writing free tools and live a decent lifestyle. This seems like a balanced way of doing things to me.
http://www.lookout.net/~mike/
I personally think "The Man" is laughing at "Us" all the way to the bank.
Who's "Us"?... We that write the software.
"The Man"?... The big business that uses our software.
While it makes perfect sense to me to release code under license that makes it free/cheap/easy for developers to use. I have never and am not likely to ever understand the benefit in giving the wallet of the business who hopes to make a buck off the back of my software a break.
Yeah I know the immediate come-back about making money from supporting software, but guess what, I'm a developer not a support consultant.... remember. I'm not a demi-tech sat on a phone.
You give an application of type X away for free and you are directly taking money out of the pocket of every developer working on related projects commerically as their product must now compete not feature for feature but against a product that costs nothing.
It is laughable that the one place where you will find most angst about outsourcing is the place with the largest numbers of free software advocates.... have you not made the connection between the drive to reduce costs in the production of commercial software and free software?!... You give your software away for free and you devalue the value of the programmer to the point where companies have to outsource to compete.
Free software costs jobs not money.
I code at work, I'm told what I have to do, I have to write endless documentation, put exception handlers everywhere, argue over spec etc etc - it's not much fun, but it pays the bills.
At home I can code what I like, when I like, I can create a buggy mess if I want. It's cathartic, it works out all those little gripes that build up over your day. It'll do cool things, it's FUN.
These two things do mesh together though, as much as I'd hate to admit it, my code occasionally falls over and I go back and put those exception handlers in. I look at a mess of code with screwy indentation I made a month ago and wonder what it actually does before gutting it and rewriting it. On the other side due to code tinkering in my spare time I have more marketable skills and am a better coder. I sat down with an O'Reilly book on weekend and made www.bobpitch.com - the site's never going to make me any money, but the skills I've aquired will get stuck on my CV and if anybody questions my abilities I can just point to something physical which *I made* - gives me a warm fuzzy glow just thinking about it.
I have a full-time job that pays me to write software. However, the software I create at work has little/no personal value to me. Now, as a programmer, there are software programs I write for myself, for nobody but me. This, is where I think Open Source/Free Software makes the most sense.
If I've spent two weeks of my personal time trying to solve a problem that is of particular interest/use to me, why not share it? Gad knows I couldn't possibly have created some of the things I have had it not been for other people/companies giving me stuff for free in the first place.
My point here, is that some people believe that everything should revolve around a profit motive. Some of us have paying programming jobs, and also have open source projects... and for me, they coexist in a harmonious environment.
So, when the Slashdot effect dies down, please could somebody knowledgeable in MS SQL server put up a portrait of Clemens on his site?
God forbid american's actually have to work to produce the things they consume! We need an ever-increasing supply of destabilized 3rd-world countries with corrupt leaders who sign on to "free trade" so that we can consume to our hearts' content.
Free software is the technological equivalent of the Alexandrian Library, but more spread out. It is one of the greatest gifts to humanity ever made by human hands, even though it was written on the backs of exploited workers everywhere (how were they able to live in the first place?). We are giving back something, even though it is mostly useless to them. And that is a good thing. We just need to do more of it. How about reimporting some of those low wage jobs and making sure multinationals don't rape countries and steal all their profit? Too drastic, I imagine. What American would want that? Myself, I'm happy making $16k a year, I just wish I had free medical insurance. If more people weren't such avid consumers (international-oppressors) then, well... I guess I'm losing track. Just remember your context folks before you complain about no money and giving things away for free. Chicken little is dropping ecstasy right now and trying to get over last decades mass devastation.
So this guy has written a long letter to some random programmer he met at a conference (and, possibly unintentionally, to the slashdot community). He's put a whole lot of effort into saying that you shouldn't give away your work, and then... he gave it away. The only thing that makes any sense is if he was paid by some organization to oppose free software, since the recipients are clearly not going to pay for his work. So he's either a hypocrit or a shill, and his advice is suspect in either case.
I really wonder how intelligent a girl can be that wouldn't understand something simple like that. I don't know why Clemens assumes that if you wrote some successful commercial software that that would mean any more to her. Unless of course he's just talking about the money you're making. But if he thinks it's worthwhile having a relationship with someone that likes you because of the amount of money you make I can only feel sorry for him!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
I listened to a speech this guy gave just a few weeks ago on Microsoft tech, and he and his company are heavily involved with building interest and solutions for the Microsoft platform and their idea of a service orientated architecture.
::Super::
Although he might be doing this anti open source ranting on his spare time, people should be aware of that he has a lot vested in the closed source world.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whwta are the benefits of writing open sourcve software? Why bother, because it does not benefit us as an individual. By the same logic, charity is pointless, and kindness, and in fact any act of giving without recieving. But thats not strictly true, there are several things to be gained. Respect, admiration, the feeling of a job well done. Sure, the girl at the bar won't know you. But does the girl at the bar know any closed source software developers either? Does this girl know the person who invented the messenger program she uses, or the ftp program, or the browser that she uses? Going into a job interview saying "I am the author of this software" is not going to be less impressive because it is OS.
I keep thinking of this sort of thing in terms of Language. Language is a medium, a means to an end. No one charges me to speak English, no one entity controls it, and I'm free to modify it however I see fit and distribute those changes to my peers; yet somehow I seem to make a living using it because I'm not selling my talking/writing directly but rather what I accomplish with it.
Could you make the same argument for software?
- Apple - Darwin and Safari
- IBM - Linux kernel
- Novell - Netware, NDS, eDirectory
- Trolltech - creators of Qt
- MySQL - major SQL database
- IndexData - networked information retreival
- RedHat
- Sleepycat - dbms
- Google
Note that all of the above did and still do top notch work before, during and after the dot-bomb hysteria.So if you want to know how to make money, look at the experts.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
First of all, the city that hosts the Olympics has yielded a profit on them since 1984. Before that it was hit-or-miss, with the 1976 Olympics being most notable for losing a lot of money.
So, the Olympics turns a profit.
What about the pure sport of the athletes? They pay their own way right? Well, no. Some do, but in the major sports, the athletes have their way paid by sponsors, their training paid by sponsors. In exchange they wear their clothes/accessories on TV during the games.
So essentially the athletes are adware.
In a capitalist system, if you do remove all chance of making money off something, it pretty much does wither and die. So there is some question as to what happens to software and programmers in a free-dominated system. Big changes, at the least.
Of course I'm trolling a bit here, but it's true, without question, GPL is going into many, many apps without so much as attribution let alone a GPL reference. And companies as well as developers are makin' bank on it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Am I an idiot or a bigot because I've don't expect to be paid directly in case for my efforts?
It's like saying a professional caterer will loose his job if he cooks once a week at the Salvation army.
stupid.
.aspx dude, you totally missed the point. which is: it's not about cost. it is about the ability to modify the code and do whatever one wants with it.
Hallowed are the Ori
The last line should read:
Am I an idiot or a bigot because I don't expect to be paid directly in cash for my efforts?"
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
While I agree with much of what the author of the letter has to say, I must say that I'm always dismayed by the holy wars that are fought in the technology community; moreover, at the amount of time and energy that are wasted on the holy wars. Open- vs. Closed- Java vs. MS Explorer vs. Mozilla/Firebird/whatever MP3 vs. Ogg (joke)
THINK
I write open source software, and it is LGPL'd and GPL'd. I am also employed writing closed-source software, which is actually based on my GPL'd software. That software is the FLTK toolkit. In case this joker wants to know, FLTK is NOT a big deal, it is not tiny, but it obviously will not take over the world and is a distant third (or fourth) to Qt and GTK and maybe even WxWindows in popularity.
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.
Would authors ask young writers to turn away from libraries? What about videographers and television producers asking young aspirants to documentaries to turn away from PBS? Or maybe radio journalists asking young aspiring journalists with an interest in radio to turn away from public radio?
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?
Un-news
Joey, you are full of hot air and a liar. I don't believe you. Open source economics don't work.
If what you say is really true, then please post the URL or your employer/company. Educate me, enlight me, I want to believe, show me how it is done.
If not, then STFU !!!!!
Whitney and Gutenberg will burn in hell forever. Won't somebody think of the slaves and scribes?
+&x
Is there any "free as in speech" project that isn't also "free as in beer"?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I know that everything I'm about to say has probably already been said by others, but I feel compelled to respond to this anyway.
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.
Aren't we past this free-as-in-beer vs. free-as-in freedom yet?
Ok, let's get this straight. I could've been that young guy that Clemens wrote about, with the exception that I'm couple of years older and took a break from university some years ago and currently makes my living through consulting and free software.
Yes, I have food on my table. Yes, I have my own apartment. It isn't an easy time doing consulting in the IT area, but life's hard for everyone. At least I have my niche. Free software makes a great business deal for most companies. I just wished more software was GPLd, because GPL is often much easier to explain as a business case (moving costs from licenses to consulting and support) to my customers.
I'm much like Clemens too. I have programmed since an early age, all the way from C64 to PC, where Turbo Pascal was king. I've been there too, writing software for my friends parents businesses. BUT HERE'S A CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE: I don't think I'm the greatest programmer in the world. Because from time to time I study the source code of Linus Torvals, DJ Bernstein, and other people. For some areas they are much more skilled than I am. So I learn from them.
Does Clemens learn from anyone? Can Clemens compete with my software when I have tons of ready-made free code available to build with?
Let me guess that Clemens business logic sotware has exactly ZERO paying users today? How many license paying customers would your new software get? Not many, I suspect. Selling licenses is extremely hard today. Integrating systems and selling solutions is hotter than ever. Free software competes very favorably on that market.
Clemens is scared his skills aren't on par with the times in a market that has shrinked rapidly. So far nothing new...
If me or Billy Bob Blow over there can write a perfectly servicable software package in their spare time, and they are willing to give it away, then maybe that software package has lost its value to developers.
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.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
But people should also be free to write commercial, proprietary software, with the full protection of copyright. I believe that the combination of free and proprietary is the best of both worlds.
There's a storm brewing. Many (although certainly not all!) developers in the free software movement believe there should be no intellectual property rights for software - that "software is knowledge, and knowledge should be free".
Thankfully, the odds that they will be successful in bringing about this revolution are remote. It would require a radical rewriting of the law, and that isn't going to happen soon.
Programs are not people. Software can be free as in beer, but not free as in liberty. One may as well liberate your television. Only people can have freedom - the freedom to do any damn thing they wish with the fruits of their labour - whether they sell it, license it for money, use it for their own personnal use, release it under the GPL, or place it into the public domain.
Some people call this greedy. If wanting the freedom to do anything I want with my work is greedy, then I'm greedy. If wanting to be rewarded for my labours and provide for my family is greedy, then I'm greedy.
"You will destroy the way we live and since we can't imagine any species living in a way other than we do you will destroy yourself. Fools!"
Really, that's pretty much what the old experienced dinosaurs told the young aspiring mammals.
The poster's reasoning goes like this:
- I invested a lot of time and money in my education.
- So i want to keep software prices high to get a decent return on my investment.
- Someone, maybe someone younger, offers his services at lower prices.
- I have to convince them to stop competing with me. After all, competition ist bad for both of us.
Face it: no one can escape the market. Competition is a fact of life. Maybe in a country where you are not allowed to open a computer repair shack without a 100kEUR Meisterbrief, you may for a while be able to hang on to the illusion that you live on a privileged island where competition does not exist and you'll never have to adapt to a changing environment, but ultimately, either you get the market or the market gets you. Just ask the dinosaurs.Stallman started the GPL with the idea that ALL SOFTWARE should be free, and the idea that all non-free software is evil. Of course, he is living on academic subsidy so it works out for him!
Dear Clemens,
I'm not Aiden and I don't speak on behalf of him. However, your arrogance is truly astounding.
As you're german, I presume you know that we're living in a social market economy. Note the social. To help each other is a ideal that you're discarding much too lightheartedly as "communist", where in fact it is a premise of our society. I'm currently doing my alternative civilian service. Without OSS, I wouldn't have a chance to earn a few bucks by writing homepages (using MySQL and Perl) and deploying Linux servers. There goes your "there is no money to be made with open source" argument.
So you tell him to "get a life". Sure, earn enough money to buy a house, have a wife, children and die. The conservative middle-class dream. Ever thought that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want that life? Freedom of choice, ever heard of it?
Your attitude towards Aiden is truly astounding. You single-handedly make fun of his coding style and smack down his ideals. Nice going. Of course, he can't do the same with your code, as it's conveniently hidden. And his ideals of a better world, which he can help making possible doing his share are "idiocy" and "bigotry". Speaking about bigots: By definition this applies to people who assume their ideas to be the only valid ones, who view the world in black and white, who dismiss other ideas as idiotic without knowing them. Now, who's guilty of bigotry again?
With kind regards,
Johannes
Wow. I symphasize the writer of the comment on the time it took him/her to write such a long comment to bash linux zealots.
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?
If the standards of living improve in your society, your society is healthier, and so are you. We're not in this for a quick buck. We need to have a plan that carries us for sixty to eighty years.
In other words: YOU ARE NOT A CORPORATION. DO NOT ACT LIKE ONE.
Some people have pointed out already that the division of labor and costs don't work out the way you expect for software. At the risk of being redundant, I think it bears repeating.
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.
Money is just a secondary aspect to this process. The primary goal is to make my mind grow and my abilities to be enhanced through experience.
I think the open letter to the young developer is rather bigoted and assumes that all knowledge and ability a person has should be kept out of sight, like a black box. I heartily disagree with that viewpoint.
In America, the saying goes "blah blah blah Liberal blah blah blah Conservative blah blah STUPID!"
Funny how Europeans can throw around a word like communist and not have to worry about the connotations. This dude seriously needs to watch his back for Ashcroft.
Or would you like to be like Mr. Gates, a "rich" man who cannot buy the things that really matter?
... Uhm ... what part of this isn't a "rich, fulfilling life?"
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
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
And I am grateful to God that I was able to earn a decent living - without having to in any way violate the rights of my fellow human beings.
Free Speech and Free Software are not the same thing. Only a fool and an idiot would confuse the two.
Imagine for a second that you are a political prisoner of a totalitariate regime. The crime you have been jailed for is speaking out against government policies. You tried to express your right to free speech and now you have lost your freedom. This happens in many countries around the world and it is a great injustice.
Likening Free Speech to Free Software absolutely cheapens the meaning of Freedom. Period.
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.
This letter raises points that any rational mind should raise. I have a few comments to make, to further the discussion.
The advantages of open source work on both sides. The consumer gets the ability to inspect the code, fix bugs, and adapt it to his needs. This makes open source software more valuable to consumers, and should thus be able to make the producer more money. Also, the producer can expect to see bugfixes and improvements developed, without him having to do all the work. This further increases the value of the product without any spending on the producer's part.
There is no reason why open source software or even Free software couldn't be sold for money. In fact, the freedom to do so is a necessary condition for something to classify as open source. This is a point so often overlooked that it bears repeating until enlightened.
So how can all this be exploited to make money off open source? Providing auxiliary services and support is one thing. Selling your product for money is another. This can be combined with a (non-open source) license that prohibits redistribution, or requires paying the original producer for distributing. Or software could be dual licensed, where you pay for the binaries, and can opt to pay extra to get the sources.
Finally, we need to distinguish between software categories. I don't expect the small hobby programs on my website to make me tons of money. I give them away so that they benefit others; some public domain with no strings attached, some GPL so that I get a chance to incorporate any improvements made by others. This software won't make me money directly, but by publishing it as open source I can get recognition for it that could get me paid more later on.
A step up from hobby software is commodity software that is used with few variations by many consumers. This is a category where open source could be very benificial to the consumers, but not make the producers a lot of money. The software could be endlessly redistributed and improved by third parties, without the original authors seeing a penny. Conceivably, a company could make it's brand stand for high quality (audited?) software, so that some people would buy that company's version rather than cheaper alternatives. Trademark law can be used to protect the brand; this is done by Red Hat.
Finally, the big money is in custom software. A software company could provide software to customers that is specifically adapted to the site. Here, the software company doesn't risk much in terms of redistribution (the software would be mostly useless outside the site), and open source becomes a selling point.
Thus, there are opportunities for open source, but it's not necessarily or always better. There is only one magic solution for everything, and that is Death.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Software is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again.
He seems to have confused cost and value. Free software has no cost, but still has value.
the Open Source movement is one of my main motivation to code and learn more. Its not about wanting money or more money, its about having a passion and make the work i do available to everyone in the world you would want to look at it or use it.
When you do something, the way you do it, is driven by the ideology behind of it. Sorry I dont beleive in capitalism because i think its simply a stupid short term way of thinking.
IBM and such is maybe making money on the back of people who code for free, but the code is still free. And thats what people who write it want.
At least these compagnie understand that there is a huge potential in the OSS. Don't the article writer think that if big capitalism industries like IBM profits that much from open source, its because open source IS currently really good?
OK i dont have much in my pocket for coding for free, but as a student i'm happier with more knowledge and less money, for the moment. Of course, once i'll have to get a real job I will have to get paid for the code i produce. All the source and projects i will had let on the internet will certainly help me getting a good job.
If I cant get paid to develop open source softwares, sure i will continue to use my time to contribute the movement out of my job.
But wait, i still havent choose the exact path i'm gonna follow in the futur years at school. I'd like to learn some about politics. I will need this skill to be more efficient in my activism.
The governements and learning institutions are the first we should "harass" about then not using free softwares. My goal for the moment would be to convert the places in my country's governement to use linux as desktop for example, when its technically possible.
Also, I try to become better writting open letters and articles to try to explain the open source to the mass (in my native language heh). Ignorance about this technology is the number one enemy in my view.
Well, i'm becoming pretty much offtopic. But it was to say that the guy who wrote the article simply dosent have any kind of social consience and think for himself at the too much present moment.
Not exactly, but close. The idea is that if you send me a document or data set, I should be able to use the software of my choice to read or analyze it.
Many software vendors try to lock you in with their software so that your data is inaccessible but through the manner they choose.
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.
Yeah! And you would be out of business in no time. So I guess your opinion really doesn't matter then?
The big fallacy of this letter is the assumption that open source developers write open source code for a living. In truth, the vast majority of us code as a hobby and have "real" jobs elsewhere. We're not devaluing our own abilities because we don't make money; the reward we receive for our work is the body of professional-quality open code that's already out there for free.
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.
Parent's going for the nuts here. Even if he does not agree with grandparent, he could have chosen a less vitriolic analogy to use.
Let the Mexican food-eating begin!
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
Sure, we don't give away all our food, we can't afford to. However, everybody can benefit from sharing amongst ourselves what we can afford to.
However, some people try to crash the party, don't bring their own contributions, and see the party as simply a free buffet. (And then cause a ruckus claiming someone stole their recipe...) These are the companies which pile their plates high, but which refuse to bring even a bag of pretzels.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I use open source software for reason #4 (using the software to sell tabgible goods). We operate several B2B and B2C websites that are used to sell toys that we manufacture to retailers and consumers respectively. Most development (excluding the graphic arts) for these websites takes place using open source software; we use Apache, Ant, CVS, Samba, FreeTDS, Perl, etc. Our production systems do run commercial software for the application and database servers, but this will be moving to OSS in the future.
I can use the open source software packages like Lego blocks when building solutions for the company. It's all freely available, typically well-documented and very accessible. All of which translates into smaller budgets and a quicker turnaround time than I could achieve using the typical commercial alternatives.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Free software is worth what it costs, I've found
I think a company like Red Hat, which is a public company (which did yield a significant "going public benefit" to their founders) and is profiting from the work of countless unpaid volunteers and enthusiasts, is a very clever, but deeply unethical entity.
I wish more people had the guts to say that. It saddens me deeply that the only open source economic models that appear to be working are based on the exploitation model.
PS I am a Linux desktop user.
I think the article missed a subtle point. Open source is a developer-created phenomenon. Open source software is normally written for some real use. That is, we need the software we write. Sometimes it's only written to be able to understand how software engineering works [students]. Now that's the reason there are a gazillion of different IRC clients/bots, for some reason, many students seem to like IRC and want to understand how such "cool" technology works, so they write IRC clients/bots or whatever is the latest fad. Sometimes we write software because we hate the existing alternatives and want to improve the situation, and the current state of affairs is causing headache. This is why most open source software is intended for developer use only, it's developers writing software for ourselves.
Sometimes the reason is that there is no alternative available, but you need it. But more often, the reason is convenience. It's often easier to write some small utility yourself than try to use any existing solution or commercial package for it [not to mention it costs less]. I would view this as a failure of the commercial marketplace for handling commodity software.
Now, of course, the article makes the correct point that usually we don't get any money from the software, even if we use lots of time writing it. Why is that? The reason is, it's not possible to distribute software commercially that doesn't have the critical mass, which would allow all the participants in the distribution chain to recover their costs, which means generating a steady revenue stream for a very long time. This is highly improbable for the kinds of software where open source is most successful. This means that if your software is not "good enough" for the commercial market, then you have only three choices:
1) Not distribute it at all beyond your friends
2) Start a company to sell it, and improve the software to "commercial grade" by using various funding mechanisms available in the marketplace.
3) Open source it
From this point of view, open sourcing those is the least risky way to approach the problem. Starting a company for your 1000 line utility isn't a good choice. Starting a company doesn't work, if you already have a job. Open sourcing is one way of getting access to a large pool of people who are willing to try your software out, and find problems in it before you cause yourself problems due to those bugs. Once your software reaches the critical mass, it's already been open source for so much time that it's not possible to revert it back [and it would be counter-productive]. Also, keeping the software for yourself has no point, if you know you can't finish it by yourself. And most people are not willing to contribute for a cause that doesn't help them [e.g. if your licensing only allows you to benefit from it].
I think this might change if there were ways to commercially publish, reuse and distribute small pieces of software without huge distribution costs. But this doesn't exist. Long time ago, shareware was thought to be a solution, but it proved not to work, because people are not willing to send money for some random software for which there is no way it could ever evolve past its primitive state due to the licensing hurdle needed to get the money. Open source really solves this problem well, this allows everyone to benefit, even if it's not in monetary units. Just having the software is more valuable than the money you could ever make from it.
-- Esa Pulkkinen
There will always be persons for whom money will be god. They will never understand the motivation behind altruism, charity or volunteering. To them, since these activities do not make profit, they are foolish, naive and idiotic. I am over 30, and I feel sorry for them. Yes - it is a good idea to find ways to support yourself. However, that does not mean that contributing code to an open source project (or volunteering at your local animal shelter or whatever) is not a worthwhile endeavor.
What is truly foolish, naive and idiotic is to spend one's life pursuing nothing but money under the wrongheaded presumption that money will make you happy. Or that at the end of your life you will feel fulfilled.
The fact of the matter is that IBM, Novell, Red Hat, etc., hire (and will continue to hire in greater numbers) software programmers on GPL projects. Why do this instead of getting something for nothing? Because of capitalism.
Think of it like this: the Microsoft model of economic efficiency is to drive software expenses down to zero (through offshore hiring, part-time consulting or other means). However, free software starts from zero and goes up in manpower costs to a level determined by competition. This is the IBM/Redhat et al model. Why would these companies pay good money for programmers instead of getting something for nothing? Because of natural capitalism, having an advantage over one's competitors. These companies realize that in order to having a better distro and better service means to write and package software in a proprietary manner that is distinct from and arguably better than one's competition. Having software free and open does *not* mean simply giving stuff away to your compeititors in the real world.
There are a couple of reasons for this: one is each company's desire to differentiate its package from anothers and address certain markets: Red Hat has its market, Lindows has its. This means dedicated programmers to address specific problems for each OS. Yes they can and do borrow from each other, but it makes no sense to take enterprise class software and stick it in Lindows. Same with regionally specific distributions. And so on.
So again why hire instead of 'letting it happen', so to speak. Because these companies quickly realize that it does not happen of its own accord--you have to hire people to get what you want. A good case in point is Star Office--Sun and others quickly realize that in order to develop this MS Office killer beyond perpetual beta status, they have to hire personnel to coordinate and write for the project. It does not mean getting something for nothing. Since it's also in IBM and Novell's interest to help this project, they will also contribute man hours to Star/Open Office.
So finally, if other companies are willing to pitch in dollars, why not simply wait for others to pay up first, and reap the benefits of their investment? Again, competition: in the real world there is a distinct time lag, a friction if you will, between the time of invention and the distribution of a software product. Look at the 2.6 kernel, for instance--free and open, yes, but how many distributions have it incorporated in their packages? Not SuSE, not Redhat, not Debian (at least in any final form). This takes a serious amount of time and work to properly coordinate in one's package. The time lag between your ability to have these features over one's competitors leads to a very real world advantage your competitors, one they can advertise and sell to potential buyers. Six months is a lifetime in the software industry.
So how much should one hire F/OSS programmers for? However much the market will bear. If you have the skills, IBM (or whoever) will hire you. I'm no economist, but this is a very promising area of investigation--my guess is perhaps less than existing salaries, but more than offshore hiring (due to again natural advantages of having a programmer in the same room as the project manager), and certainly more than zero.
To say that all those companies are bankrolling OSS with the hope that they'll hurt M$ is ludicrous.
That may be one bonus to the move, but the primary reason for all of them is that their customers appreciate having the source, people contribute fixes and features and they enjoy a PR boost with the OSS crowd.
Also, RH still sells a workstation distro, but it is marketed at enterprises, who were paying for desktop as well as server support before and will continue to.
Over the years, I've worked at a number of companies - and I've written a lot of software. A lot of that software I've written again and again (like three different OR mappers).
Well what working on Free software gives you is mobilty. Rather than writing yet another half-assed piece of software that provides the minimum of what you need, why not work on some fully-assed software that you can use again and again and again no matter where you go? This gives you a real base of valuable experience that lets you go to a company and say "You know, for the kind of work you are describing I am well versed in these frameworks and as a result can crank that out really quickly. Let me whiteboard the structure for you..."
Here's what I've learned over the years. Code itself has absolutley zero value. Probably less because it requires an understanding of structure, which absorbs time from those in contact with it.
Above the code lives the application, the combination of the deployed code and the knowledge of how to deploy process against that deployment. There's where all the value (and money) lies.
To work on a closed, proprietary solution might seem good to the company but is actually harmful to the company - but far more harmful to the developer working to implement the system, because they have no mobilty for any of the work done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm also 40, and have been in the software development, and later the IT operations world for decades. When I was a young software developer, I didn't get paid shit for all my hard work. My employer instead made a killing off of it. The software I wrote was grossly overpriced, but because it was for a niche market, we had our customers captive, and we reamed them. Charged them extra for the vasoline, and apparently they liked it because they kept coming back for more... for a while. Those days are long gone. Now I get paid a *lot* more money for running the IT operations of a moderate sized business organization (~1000 users, ~50 servers). As a manager who now chooses what software to buy, or what to develop in-house, I can tell you I will choose open source before closed proprietary stuff too. Even if I have to pay for it. Not just for the "free speech" part either. It's more about being able to control your own destiny. If you have the source, it really helps you maintain that control.
He's wrong, you can make money with free software. I have made money with free software. Free software doesn't reduce the amount of work available, instead it makes the work that is available more interesting and more usefull to society.
Instead of reinventing the wheel for each client I can add the features the customer desires, getting paid by the person with the itch and benefiting myself, the customer, all of my previouse customers and all my potential customers.
What software product does everything you want it too? If you need a delta in free software bad enough you can hire somone (such as the original author) to add the feature you need, or to remove the bug thats bothering you.
Think of programming as a service and it works. As for giving it away completly, you just providing the service to yourself.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
"Do you want to have a car, a house and a family when you are 30?"
No, not really. Well, I've got the house, the other two I can well do without.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Clemens,
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
What about the junk, er um software Microsoft gives away for free? Or does bundling programs for free not count in this case?
What if these young coders just say, "Yea, for your company I can take this OS program, that OS program, that OS database and implement and customize them for your company for $XXX/hr because I know this stuff inside and out"?
What if the profit motive is secondary to the personal value/recognition motive? What if we just got on whith our lives and write what we like and to heck with those who can't make money off of us?
What if the real value in OS software is that it provides a mechanism for leaning how to write secure code, how to develop in an mega-colaberative environment, helps close the digital divide and benefits everyone?
What if...
when people listens to the free software term always thinks of something than can not be sold. that's wrong, free software can be sold (and it's been sold), the word free should be used as in liberty not as in (the best beer in the world) free beer (yeah i know that phrase is a cliche, but it still serves its purpouse). yes it may seem idiotic and a good way for taking advantage of people that are more romantic than the average, but (the omniprestent "but") what's wrong with that if we are all itdiotic and sharing our knowledge with each other?? ;-) software enthusiast, i'm not thinking right now in having a family or a litte house with a cute white fence on the (carefuly crafted) front yard or a couple of kids running in that yard (desmond and molly ... obla di obla da) or anything like that, so, i write free software beacuse i can (as all the free software developers do), and because i see the efforts of the other people, they might do it because of fame and yes it is fame between geeks, so what?? that's the fame that matters not the bill gates fame that desinforms people and they end up saying extremely stupid things like "bill gates invented the computers", and yes the bill gates fame like is the one that sells software, but in the end people want software that works, and people that knows how that software works (so it can be modified in order of their necesities, not modify their necesities in order of the software); but at the end of the day it's all about sharing the knowledge, and giving back something to the community; and the MOST IMPORTANT, they do it because they LOVE IT, that's the secret of free software, we LOVE writing code, we LOVE reading other peoples code, and you know, when you do something you love, it is always good because you leave part of your soul in it and you are going to take care of it very carefully (just check the response time for the critical bugs in free sw and you'll get my point). ;-)
i'm concerned of your words because i'm almost 30 and i'm a free (free as in liberty
the code writng part is the part that makes you happy and the using/installing/configuring/administering is the part that makes you money.
so, what happens when have to share your love between your wife, kids, car, house, job, you just have less time to write free code, that's it.
finally, i believe in freedom, and freedom is using/writng free software as it is using/writing propietary (or any kind of) software, this leads us to another point, choices, free software is another choice based more in your heart than in your pocket (not that money is bad, it gets you things!!). it is in each particular point of view whether is a good choice or not. yes, if i find a propietary product that is better than a free sw product i'll use it, but only in the time that takes it's free sw equivalent to catch up with it (if i can i help, if can't i just wait).
free software it's just another (very romantic) choice, a choice like the others that can feed the kids, the car, the wife, and the soul
"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."
Hoo-boy. You should read her *very* unofficial biography, by Christopher Hitchens. She was twisted and manipulative, and sucked up to dictators for cash. Just one example of her unfitness for sainthood: she ordered her staff to let sick people rot, until there were maggots that could be pulled out. Instead of pulling out the maggots, she could have just given them antibiotics that would cure them, as any hospital would have done. But no, she preferred the "romantic" notion of "tending" to festering wounds.
I am a young programmer (still in school) and I _love_ open source software. The idea that you can take a computer and install all the software you need on it without cost is amazing. Also, open source software helps you learn how to code certain things. I learned network programming by looking at different SourceForge projects. I cost me a lot less than a book would have and showed me (obviously) working code samples.
I like the idea that I can change something in a program to make it work better for me, which might not be a feature a commercial software company would put in its products just because I asked them to (although this has happened).
Agreed, its hard to make money from something you give away, but their are other ways to profit from OSS.
Why make software available for free? Why write tutorials on the new things I've learned? I learned all the things I know either for free or for the cost of a old computer book. Free software (especially if it is anything worthwhile) is a way of giving back to the community.
I work in the health industry, and all the software we use is available as free software. I make $76k/year. Is that good money?
During the day, I work mostly on infrastructure. During my free time, I contribute to projects where I can.
During the last couple of years, when other geeks have lost their jobs, I have been employed, without fear of losing my job.
Am I making money directly from Free software? No. But I am demonstrably saving my employer over $100k/year, about enough to pay my salary. Since they'd have to hire someone like me anyway, this is pure profit.
There are many people like me in the world. Most of the people who contribute to free software have day jobs. Some are professors, some are doctors, some are plumbers. I'd bet most, though, are just like me-- geeks, employed as geeks, doing geeky things. Since we'd be employed like this anyway, I don't see where it hurts that I use only free software, and that I contribute to free software.
I doubt many of use are millionaires, but I didn't get into computers to get rich. I got into computers because I love to program, and I love to make things work for people, and I love the idea that the $100k I saved may help save somebody's life.
Do I write a lot of software? No. But I write some. Hopefully I write enough to pay my debt to those that also write Free software.
If a KDE developer likes a GNOME feature, she can read about how it works or even ask the author to explain it. If the feature is built on some very clever hack that took six months of work to complete, she can just grab the results of that labor for free. Now, if MS Word has that same feature, and Wordperfect wants to implement it also, they've got to do their own R&D. That's where the redundancy comes in. The same clever hack has to be researched twice.
In terms of how open-source projects often emulate closed-source projects, there is a redundancy. But that's not inherent to open-source; the redundancy is because mozilla, for example, can't look at the guts of IE to see how to pull off some HTML rendering code, so they have to figure everything out themselves.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
The guy didn't say anything approaching that. He says that a guy has to pay his bills. If all programming is done for free, programmers don't get to pay their bills.
Moreover, he points out that Joe OpenSourcer doesn't make money on open-source; the big fishes like IBM or Red Hat do. Is that fair to Joe?
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
"donates enormous amounts of cash to educational facilities"
MS gets enormous amounts of cash from educational institutions.
Some things are more important than an animated rat
You'll never come up with a purely quantitative and accurate measure of "worth" since the word itself is far too vague, and is dependent on the observer. It's entirely a human-derived qualitative value, so trying to find some scale that measures it perfectly like degrees Kelvin is simply not possible.
Money as worth? That's insane. The cost of something is simply how much two parties were able to agree upon, where "agree" should not be construed to mean that both parties have equal say in what the final cost is.
Is the "worth" of a CD $15, or is it the average of the times I decided to pay $15 for a CD and the times I said "That's not worth $15" and didn't buy it? Maybe I'd have been willing to pay $7 in some of those cases, but the opportunity to negotiate wasn't there. What is the "worth" now?
The only time money is a good measure of worth is to the person/business selling something for money. In that case, money is the only thing they get for something, so that's all they can measure by. In most other cases, if money is involved at all it is simply a factor to be considered as part of overall worth.
Equating money and worth is nuts! There are way too many obvious examples for me to list them all. Teachers and diamonds both come to mind.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yes, and we all know more money = more happiness. I'm sure those M$ guys are having a blast. Ignorance is bliss!
GrimRC
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
the amount of money you can charge for software that you are giving away is pretty close to $0 - unless you find someone particuarly stupid who is willing to pay for for something they can get legally for free.
All the Linux distributions make money off this. You can make copies if you want, but they still make a profit.
Wow, the impossible happened!
So far as I can tell, the trick with open source code is in the knowledge of how to implement and utilize it for your company's needs, then explain the cost/benefit ratio to your boss. "hey, look what we can do, and it's free."
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
I work for company ABC and my boss gives me a project. ABC is a pro open source kind of company so the first thing that I do is start looking there. Of course there isn't anything out there that is exactly what I need but I find a good chunk. I take it and improve apon it then contribute it back to the OSS project. At the same time company CBA, XYZ and PDQ are doing the same thing ( though PDQ doesn't contribute - the dorks... ). Now instead of a labor pool of me and the other three programmers at ABC I have a bunch of programmers. My project gets done on time and in budget. Companies ABC, CBA, XYZ and PDQ are very happy! My boss say "Stacy is awsome! Better keep him happy." and they do. Everybody wins!
This REALLY happens. I do it and have seen it done by others. No, I am not going to become a bazillionare but what do you expect from 8-5. I am happy and so are my wife and kids. What more can you ask?
Amazing amount of false assumptions in that letter.
First is the assumption that you can actually make more money in closed source than open source. I have done both. The money is about the same. The difference is that with open source, I own my work. It is not taken away from me for a salary.
There is also the assumption that all programming is done for money. That is not always the goal. Most of the Open Source code I have written has been to fufill a need, not just for a paycheck. Cash is not the only reason things get done. It would be a pretty terrible and expensive world if that were the case.
He also claims that Open Source credits will not get you a job because geeks are the only ones who pay attention to that sort of thing. So geeks don't own companies? They don't hire people based on what they have done? I have gotten lots of jobs because of my activity in Open Source. Open Source also has more active user groups. Actually knowing people in the tech community and having a good reputation will get you more jobs than sending in resumes to whatever gets posted in the Sunday classifieds.
There is also a lot to learn by actually participating in an ongoing programming project. It is a good learning experience, as well as something to put on your resume when you are trying to get that first programming job.
He also does not seem to understand the concept of "giving back to the community". There were a lot of people who helped me when I was a young programmer. They did not do it for money, but out of "giving something back" to the general programming community. That is one of the reasons I help with user groups and open source. It helps with that next crop of programmers that this guy seems to want to clear-cut.
Programming is more than just a job. You have to love what you are doing. It has to be more than just a paycheck.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
but if i waited for others to pay me for my free speech i doubt i would speak very much on anything vaguely relevant.
I think that when you said "Completely different than the real world", you meant "Completely different than the world of commercial software." Apache, Linux, PostgreSQL, Mozilla, etc. are all part of "the real world." People use them for important things every day.
Maybe working on an open source project won't be as impressive as the same number of years in a commercial development environment...if you're looking to get a job as a commercial developer. But if you're looking to get a job as, say, an IT person in a company which doesn't sell software as its main focus (or at all), they'll know they have a person that's familiar with software that tends to be free; someone who knows how to work on it and with the community. Such a person will probably save them money in operational expenses.
Most software development isn't going towards a product to sell to other companies. COTS software is a small part of software in general. Even with expensive stuff like Peoplesoft, implementation is a huge part of the cost.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
that the vast majority of software-creation jobs are in-house, and that giving it away is pretty much a moot point, because the company hires you to spend your time writing something very specific to THEIR BUSINESS? In such a case, isn't it possible to keep one's FLOSS principles and still get paid for software engineering? The writer of the article also seems to ignore the fact that there will always remain people who feel it is a civic duty to write software for people, in the same way that there are scientists who would spend all their time researching for the good of mankind if money weren't an issue. For enough people, money won't necessarily be an issue for them in writing software. They just like to do it.
Free Software would probably have a hard time spreading if Closed Source didn't have as glowing a representative as Microsoft. MS has shown us some of the worst-case scenarios of closed software, and they are often things that can be avoided using OSS methods. Being a Free Software advocate is not just some idealistic phase for youths (RMS isn't exactly YOUNG, is he), it is a proven method. It is the logical social result of the freedom of the Internet. No matter what this guy says, FLOSS will be sticking around, if not always growing. So why not just learn to live with it instead of trying to spread fear?
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I hate when people say this.
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.
Except that you're not violating anyone's "rights" by writing closed-source software. People don't have an inherent right to source code. They have the right to live and be happy and to have a Bill of Rights and so forth. Last I checked, having source code wasn't one of those rights.
You've got your head WAY in the clouds if you think making money is a violation of other people's rights. Let's be realistic here.
Programmers should be paid to code.
They should not, however, be paid per time their software is distributed, or installed, or executed. Building a business model in this way weakens the leverage gained by using computers to increase efficiency.
A computer that can do a task millions of times more efficiently than a human should by all means be allowed to do so. There should be no artificial barrier or artificial scarsity that makes it hard for humans to put computers to work to do these sorts of tasks. By paying the programmer (once) for coding (and additional times, as needed) for maintaining the code, but distributing freely, we can have machines that work for us.
But by paying for the mere distribution of software, or for the rights to install and run it, or worst of all, per instance of execution, we strip away all the advantages in efficiency gained by using computers, and put it all in the programmer's bank account (or, most likely, the company the programmer works for, not the programmer himself).
These companies get fat and rich, meanwhile people who can't afford to pay such ridiculous amounts of money for shrinkwrapped, EULA'd software, remain impoverished and now even enslaved by the software they purchased on the good-faith hope that it would make their lives easier and better.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Hell yeah I want some cheesy poofs?
In german?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. ... As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals."
In other words, go ahead and believe in OSS--just don't necessarily believe in IBM. :)
We DO care what happens with our software. We don't mind if it's used to make money, but anything made in connection with it must be given back to the community. It's the only fair thing to do. The attitude of the BSD is more like, "Here's some stuff I made, do anything you want with it.". The attitude of the GPL is more like, "I have some code you might find useful, but in order to use it, you'll have to give me something in return and that something is YOUR code." Sounds pretty fair to me. And if you don't like it, you can just go the fuck away and use someone else's code you selfish bastard.
you insensitive clod!
Dang, your right! I here by remove the GPL from EVERYTHING! Everyone, if you want to continue to use your Linux distro, your apache server, MySQL Database...please make your checks out to me or else! That includes you too Clemons!
Seriously though, I have been interested in open-source projects for a long time and want to use my programming skills to help the movement along. Recently, I started working on an open-source spam filter using open source technologies. If I had to pay for all the tools, i wouldn't bother building the thing. If people had to pay to use it, they wouldn't bother trying it out.
I make money by doing customized work for a small business and think of my spam filter as a hobby, not as a business. I'd shamlessly provide a link to it, but there isn't anything worth looking at yet..lol
There's no place like ~/
...as i understand it, free software has always been a creative development and distribution model. a model afaik, is much more cost effective than closed-source alternatives. and this is felt even more with large development teams. its like giving away the blueprints to a new car. the community use their own materials to build this car and then go ahead and drive it. they still need to buy gas and car parts. they still have to be compliant with standards. and as soon as they notice an anomaly they alert the community at large who then looks into it and fixes the issue. the end result is a car you are proud to drive not just because it was well made, but you feel you are a part of the process and that you have a voice in its development. you are not just a survey response or a trend analysis. your voice is not just want the market wants. your voice is right on the level with the engineers of the car. you drink beer together.
This is...
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ok, maybe i live in a hole and while often girls might not be interested that you co-wrote a component of a particular linux distro, why do you think that people can not appreciate the details? besides mister open letter man, its the details that make open-source code so nice. even while you might not have the glamor, everyone can see your code. just point them to it. there is no need for a NDA. you can totally pimp that piece of code on your resume. not only can potential employers take a look at it, but they see exactly how relevant your code was to the project. this is important. you dont necessarily have to ride on the fame of your closed-source employer, you can make a name for yourself which lives on even if you are broke as shit. check this out: "im 34, im broke as shit, and i worked as MS on a project i cant talk to you about until im dead, please hire me?" yea. you gotta love that BS.
I am 20, I earn a heavy (over the average) paycheck at a small Linux support company from my knowledge. I study at a University for my bachelors degree.
I am starting a Jonas adaptation project that will bring me the double of my current paycheck within 6 month and a % from the profit of the ready system when it's running. And I also have a plan for my own company that could bring big buck in.
(And I also have a great girlfriend living next door, but that is a different matter)
There is a lot of money to be made with the in-depth knowledge of free software. The know-how is the most valued thing in the industry now. Just pick a project, take a free software project that is close enough to your needs and adapt it. You'll easily get the contract if you show the client the allmost ready prototype at the very beginning.
Just go for it! Risk and work and you'll succeed.
The Fountainhead (one of her books; also an OK movie) was all about the creator owning his/her creation. If Howard Roarke writes a program, then it is his choice to sell it as closed source or to distribute it under the GPL. The creator decides--what could be better? Howard Roarke is the protagonist of The Fountainhead and he destroys one of his creations rather than have it bastardized for profit. The Fountainhead is a good book; read it.
Stop with open source?
Behold, my confused fellow...
Cluestick upside head.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
As long as there are regulations to comply with there will be jobs for programmers. As long as there are politicians those regulations will change. The deal is, it's really boring work - these funded projects. Fun stuff - unfunded projects, like unix was, like linux is, like GIMP, like GRASS, like PERL will always be done on saturday, because the people that hold the purse strings and decide which projects to fund will never have a clue about what is worthwile, they aren't even interested in advancing the interests of the species. They're only concern is in making money so that they have more with which to fund more projects with the goal of making more money to fund more projects to make more money to eventually take over the world, ala pinky & the brain.
I don't think, I hope, we never run out of people that will write code, or dig a well, or build a hospital because is it a worthwhile venture of its own accord, because it's fun/cool/we can. I know we will never run out of people whose only interest is in making money to squander on wine, women, and song. The only question is who do you wanna grow up to be, 'cause you surely won't change the aspirations of anyone of the other ilk - only temper their resolve - no matter which position you argue.
I'm sure that there are people spinning in their graves over the thought that their altruistic endeavour has become a platform for someone else to make a profit. But at the end of the day, giving someone a job, even a PHB, is a pretty noble accomplishement. Of course it would be more fun if you could find a way to make the PHBs sweat a little while they're doing that job. And it would be even better if there was a hospital/school/well standing there when they got done, but ya gotta take what ya can get - even on a good day.
Not everyone is this world is so god damned materialistic. If I can do something to help others - be it a corporation or, preferably, individuals or charitable organizations - without appreciably lowering my quality of living, I would happily do so without needing any further motivation. Many, if not most, open-source projects are done in a person's spare time. If that's your thing, go for it. And there are a hundred other impetuses for creating free sowftware. In the end though, it is like 'giving back' to the community, whether that is the intent or not. If you want to make money off of it, then write it with that intent. It's more likely then that you'll be doing it full-time too.
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
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
He is right to some extent. I am a young programmer (22) and I write proprietary stuff. I try pushing some OSS products when I can. But I understand very well that with out the proprietary work that I do, I would not be able to do the things that I enjoy. I like going out with friends and being able to pay for drinks. I like being able to take a girl out and not go broke. I want to be able to buy that new and shiny processor. Materialistic? Hell yes, but that's life. I am not some monk! So I think this man is right, almost. I think that OSS and proprietary software can live together. OSS does extremely well for the general stuff and ninch stuff that corporate types ignore. Proprietary has its place too. Inter-company software belongs in this world. Systems that run corporate data. So on and so on. I understand one thing. If most programming would become OSS, most programmers will have to find other jobs to sustain their lives, since food, shelter and recreation is not free. Now I just hope my job does not get outsourced...
Free speech is getting expensive...
Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens
He worked hard to establish, promote and grow the current copyright regime.
This Authors name is Clemens I guess it is a PenName or NomDeGuerre Hmm...
> You're giving away half of what you have to offer. They'll find someone who will be cheaper to do the other half.
:)
They'll find someone who will pay to do the other half?
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
One outcome of the massive distribution of free software is to force those older programmers, whose livelihood depends on developing software for financial payback, into those areas where years of experience count. The software must be too complex for those young programmers, and the software must be built on top of years of feedback from real-world paying customers, valuable information to which college professors and students do not have access. This kind of opportunities are typically in the hands of big corporations, like Microsoft. Smaller companies, which can only afford to developing less complex software and which haven't stayed in business long enough to garner sufficient user feedback, suffer the most from the competition of free software. In the end, it will be much harder for young commercial software companies to succeed, hence strenghening the stronghold of established corporations.
I own a small business with 49 employees and we make commercialy avaialable, off the shelf software for account managment in a specific industry. Why oh why would I want to have someone on my payroll developing software that I'm just going to give away for free? Our software is our competitive advantage. True, we could get bug fixes, more eyes on the code, blah blah blah... but at the end of the day, if a customer of mine can go and download my software, compile it themselves, and just say screw off to me and my licensing costs, what's my motivation?
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!
Now if you charged $101.00 each, you have a profit of $100 dollars per piece of plastic minus shipping and handling, still about $1 BILLION profit.
Now if you make an incremental upgrade that requires only one million up front investment, and you still sell that to your customers by ingeneously forcing an upgrade, you now make another $1 BILLION profit, but the cost per disk is now TEN CENTS.
Now if your customer base is 50 million people and your sell price is anywhere from $100 to $300, you only have to do this a few times to be rich as Bill Gates.
Another guy that completely ignores that lots of software these days (most of it) is actually built inside large companies, and not for sale. For all those people working in corporate America, free software is an asset to be leveraged and it makes good business sense to "pay back" with some code of your own.
People gladly contribute to Perl because they use Perl to do the job they are being payed to do, in which software is not the end result, but the means.
But the software industry (and most of our colleagues; as well as Clemens) can only see their own belly button, where they think is the center of the whole Universe.
Nova transcript
It was a Monday morning, September 19, and I was trying, convincing myself that it didn't work, just seeing exactly what the problem was, when suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible revelation. I realized what was holding me up was exactly what would resolve the problem I had had in my Iwasawa theory attempt three years earlier, was -- It was the most -- the most important moment of my working life. It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant, and I just stared in disbelief for twenty minutes. Then, during the day, I walked around the department. I'd keep coming back to my desk and looking to see if it was still there. It was still there.
I'm sorry, I should have said indescribably beautiful.
I think the balence we have today seems not too far off the mark, but in the long run who knows?
I believe that after 2 decades of abuse US patent and copyright laws will be libralized significantly.
an ill wind that blows no good
Are we talking about software that's free as in pizza or free as in beer?
I think you totally missed the point of the parent post. Entirely. Essentially he is saying that "The only way to get extremely rich is to take someone else's share of the economic pie. I do not want to do this."
Sounds about right to me. And now your analogy: If your 'farmer' could only make a big profit by becoming an agri-business that employed illegal migrant worker, then it would be equivalent to the discussion at hand.
==============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I notice you didn't say that you admire Bill Gates.
There is also another reason for open source - Microsoft. Recently in Poland (sorry for the language) there was a campaign by Microsoft - companies that managed to release a software product within half a year that used ms server product(s) got MSDN for ridiculously low price (half or even lower). Then, when this companies got their products released, convinced their customers to use MS SQL, Windows on the server and stuff, guess what happened ?? MS started to offer competing software. These buissnesses were just to "pave" the way for MS software and infrastructure, so that is was cheaper and easier for MS to distribute their software! They were reportedly even so kind as to offer some of the naive buisnessmen to sell MS software instead of their own ;).
Now, could such a thing happen to Trolltech or MySQL ? There is something more important than fast money - independence and stability that stems from it!!!
The love of money is the root of all evil.
(Timothy 6:10)
So, some guy 10 or 20 years older than me can tell me what to do just by virtue of being older? Can tell me my ideals are all crap because I'm still wet behind the ears? 'F off!
Now, judging from the first paragraph, the young one could certainly be a bit more diplomatic:
Telling people their work is useless doesn't seem like a very skillful way to start a discussion. And responding that you're just too young too understand isn't exactly a helpful answer either.
Basically, there's a lot of ego mixed in to ideological debates, further adding to the confusion.
There are some anti-social nuts on both sides of this argument. Some that would have me coding for free to stay ethical, others that feel a need to hoard billions they can't ever spend.
FOSS is practical for me. I've released very small amounts of code when it could help others, and I've gotten good feedback which has helped me improve my code and my coding ability. I also benefit tremendously from using free software, and I'm capable of producing useful, value-creating code for my customers.
Linus released his OS in part because he was too lazy to finish it all himself- and that's an admirable quality in a geek. We're all richer for it.
I suggest we shrug off as a nuisance both the condescending "realists" and the strident "idealists", and stay a practical course that's working just fine. If we ignore them, they might not go away, but at least we won't get sucked down to their level
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
"Free" software is not about removing people's right to make a living. It is more about removing the gun being pointed to our heads to force us to pay and pay and pay for the same software over and over again.
I spent 8 years of my life as a computer consultant for small businesses in my area. As such, I had a lot of experience with people just starting (or established and faced with an "automate or die" choice). In virtually every case, the ongoing cost of software upgrades was eating into their profit margins. When you add the cost of upgrading the hardware (c'mon, when was the last time that Windows actually RAN on the minimum hardware requirements?), all too often, small businesses found themselves just running in place; every increase in their business was being eaten up by hardware and software upgrades that were needed just to keep from falling behind.
Computers are a tool. They are not and never should be an end in themeselves. I have moved quite a few of those businesses to Open Source software; not for my benefit (hey, I charge a percentage on top of every package that I just buy and resell to them, so I am decreasing my profits by giving them "free" software) but for their benefit. Why? Because when I give them an Open Source solution and set things up so that it works, a business no longer has to worry about it; the same solution can be used 2 years or 20 years with no changes required or desired! I have 8 year old solutions out there that are still doing their jobs.
Now I am going to mention Microsoft in particular because that's the experience I have, but it applies equally well to other proprietary solutions out there. You cannot develop a solution in Microsoft Word or Excel or Access and expect it to survive even ONE revision in the software. In fact, if you set up a client right and drill them in the update process, it may not even survive the next update! I have seen it happen with Word macros, Excel macros, Access reports and, hell, even simple page formatting in Word documents. And you simply MUST upgrade your Microsoft software! Microsoft has made their wealth by insuring that they are predominant and that last year's solution will not be good for this year.
Let me reiterate: software (and computers in general) are nothing but tools. Anything that increases the availability of those tools for small businesses or improves the productivity of existing businesses that otherwise could not afford them improves the economy and, ultimately, all of our lives! Open Source software does that. In fact, I can make a good economic case for proprietary software's endless upgrade process eating resources that could be put to better use creating new products, jobs and businesses, rather than just being wasted on keeping old businesses exactly where they were last year!
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Its only after something is obviously successful and widespread that such true believers become more of a liability than a benefit (see Capitalism (a good thing with obvious success) and Any Rynd (a true believer who hurts capitalism *because*of* the passion of her beliefs)). But RMS, while a brilliant person, is not the FOSS movement, he's merely a large part of it. My post was about the flaws of the anti-FOSS arguments, not RMS' own flaws of belief, conviction, and dedication.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Here's why I license my work under LGPL:
I have a core technology of PHP code that I developed over the years -- it allows me to do very rapid development of a broad class of common web database applications.
My career would be devastated if someone had the ability to tell me that I could not use my code anymore because I had been "paid for it". They pay me only for my time -- not for exclusive rights to my previously-written PHP source code that I use to solve their problems. The only purpose of my PHP code is to make me a more attractive employee/consultant -- it has been a tremendously beneficial investment for me.
However, it's entirely possible that some greedy lawyer could feel that my acceptance of compensation entitles them to exclusive use of my PHP code. For this reason, I flamboyantly wave the LGPL in my employer's/client's face and tell them that if they want me to solve their problem in 2 weeks (instead of 3 months), then they have to license the code from me under the LGPL. (I do it flamboyantly so they'll remember in case we end up in court.)
The LGPL is responsible for my current career. It gives me the ability to freely and safely use all the work that I have invested so much of my time in. Without the LGPL, one greedy lawyer could take away my whole career.
Clemens Vasters just doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. The LGPL protects developers from their ex-employers and ex-clients. Vasters is basically asking developers like me to work without legal protection. He's a crackpot who can be safely ignored.
Completely different than the real world.
So a group of people working together internationally on a project that fulfills some very real needs, is somehow less real than your internal office politics? I don't think so mate. It's your "professional" world that's the imaginary one.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"Free software" = Read "FREE SPEECH" not "free beer".
The main thrust of that letter seems to be:
"Yeah Open Source stuff is a nice idea but you need big companies providing closed source software and paying you to earn a living don't you ?"
Personally I don't think that's necessarily the case and in fact closed source software might well inhibit my ability to make money from software engineering rather than promote it.
Most companies buying IT aren't really thinking to themselves "Hmmm, BigSoftwareProduct Ver 3.2 has just been released, I must buy it" they are more likely thinking "Hmmm, I'm sure this process could be done more efficiently - perhaps we can buy some IT to do it better ?". So there is a demand for soloutions not packaged software from big companies.
From my experience once companies have paid out there millions for BigSoftwareProduct Ver 3.2 which the salesman told them would do everything they wanted and integrate their existing processes flawlessly they quickly realise it is not in fact a perfect soloution to their problem and creates more work in related areas than they were anticipating.
At the moment if I wanted to set myself up as a consultant selling soloutions to the problems of business I would probably firstly have to pay out large sums of money for certification / training for various software companies offerings, if I wanted to sell a soloution to a business incorporating one of these software products the software company would most likely get a lot more of the money than I would.
What I would like from Open Source Software ( I don't know if we can achieve this - or if it's an achievable goal ) is a situation where I as a consultant can dip into a vast pool of tested, free Open Source software and find the components to create a perfect soloution for my client and put my modifications back out there in case anyone else finds themselves needing similar functionality.
I get paid, I add to the universal toolkit of open source software and my customer is happy. Is that a dream or could it be a reality ?
If the first one costs 10 million and you have 10 million customers, you recover your cost with the first $1.00 per customer.
Now if you charged $101.00 each, you have a profit of $100 dollars per piece of plastic minus shipping and handling, still about $1 BILLION profit.
Now if you make an incremental upgrade that requires only one million up front investment, and you still sell that to your customers by ingeneously forcing an upgrade, you now make another $1 BILLION profit, but the cost per disk is now TEN CENTS.
Now if your customer base is 50 million people and your sell price is anywhere from $100 to $300, you only have to do this a few times to be rich as Bill Gates.
Would you care to try again, using real figures. You can get them from SEC filings, you know. You're off by a factor of at least 10 for your costs, you're forgetting that Microsoft doesn't get retail price as profit (at most they'll get about half that). Etc. etc. etc.
Try using some real world figures instead.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I just read Clemens' letter and dashed this off. The next time someone tries to tell you that Open Source is bad, hopefully these might help. Please feel free to add on and flesh out the arguments with better ones, links, etc.
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Analogy:
This is no different from complaining that Medicins Sans Frontiers give away their medical skills for free or that Habitat for Humanity offer the efforts of skilled tradesmen at no cost.
Refutation:
Assertion. You will need money.
Rebuttal. Participating in an Open Source project doesn't eliminate my other opportunities to make money. In fact, it has occasionally created opportunities for development work.
R. Participation is scalable, much like charitable giving.
R. Participation has value in and of itself in increased skills and industry contacts, both of which facilitate making money in my field of choice.
A. Companies benefit from your work.
R. That's the point. Benefiting the common good means benefiting corporate citizens equally with private ones.
R. Companies aren't the only ones downloading Samba, Gnome, etc. In fact, IIRC, Samba was created because the developer wanted to share a printer with his wife. Individuals benefit from my work.
R. By removing the profit incentive to write and release software, Open Source developers enable development and exploration of new techniques and technologies that might not have ever been explored simply because no one could conceive of a short-term way to profit from them.
R. Someone else using my software in no way limits the benefits I receive from using my software.
A. The whole thing about "free software" is a lie created 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.
R. Free software was created by Stallman, OSF, etc. (Needs detailed research, but you get the idea.)
R. Some companies are able to realize a profit from supporting or re-distributing specific combinations of Open Source software. This is almost universally a company adding value in the form of subject-matter expertise and profiting in the process. They are profiting from the added value, not the software.
R. The economic barrier to entry for an Open Source company is very low. Anyone with an entrepreneurial bent and a sufficiently competitive idea can do the same kind of bundling and consulting that an IBM can. In time, it's possible for anyone to grow a company that can compete with IBM in this space.
R. Getting paid to advocate an idea is not a bad thing. In fact, if I could make a living advocating something that benefited society as opposed to, say, trying to sell chicken rotisseries, I would consider that an ethical victory.
A. At the bottom of the food chain are people like you, who are easily fooled by the "let's make the world a better place" rhetoric and who are so enthusiastic about technology that writing open-source - or any source for that matter - is the absolutely best imaginable way to spend their time. It doesn't matter whether you love what you are doing and consider this the hobby you want to spend 110% of your time on: 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.
R. I am not at the bottom of the food chain. In fact, I maintain ownership and control of all my work, and I am able to choose the terms under which I license it, just like any other author. No one is allowed to use my work without my explicit complicity.
R. I am not easily fooled, and your grounds for asserting that I am seem to stem from the single conclusion that because I support Open Source, I must somehow be unintelligent. This is, on it's face, a logical failure, compounded by a lack of supporting evidence. Please stop saying it.
R. No one is tricked
Oh, I understand their motivations perfectly well... but I don't have to respect them.
Considering that most of the individuals I'm thinking of are/were 30ish before they even completed their training, one would hope they'd have grown out of that kind of nonsense by then... but you never know (I don't know how old you are... you may still be there yourself). If you're trying to point out that young men often behave in an idiotic, risky, and hormonally-poisoned fashion, then fine... that's virtually axiomatic.
If you're arguing that some guys are after indiscriminate sex and hedonism (ala the puerile tucker max types), there's some truth to that as well... but that brings its own set of problems, and I ought to know; I deal in the aftermath. Picking up random chicks at bars and doing the nasty is all a numbers game, and your number will come up eventually. It might be in the form of a psycho boyfriend/husband (but I'm sure the girl assured you she's unattached, right?), the STD dujour, conception... let your imagination run wild. I've seen it go wrong every single way (sometimes more than one way at a time).
If that's all you want out of your relationships, then go nuts... enjoy it while it lasts; hopefully you'll mature before your luck runs out. However, as your peers grow out of such activities, you'll find your herd of potential "mates" thinning considerably. Over time, you'll gain weight, lose your hair, lose your youth, and you'll eventually be forced to either beg/scam for sex, or at best negotiate for it... or you could be reduced to a pathetic sugardaddy and engage in the kind of thinly-disguised prostitution the name implies... even if you're wealthy enough to afford the best, you'll still be an object of scorn. Wave money around to get women all you like, but even a leper can buy sex.
As I said... an empty existence. What's most sad about some of these guys is that they're smart/worldly enough to know better... I don't know whether they lack insight, self-control, or both. Indulging your id like the lowest form of animal... Understandable in a way, but hardly admirable.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
There is an old tradition in which people donate some portion of their time to work that improves the general welfare. In some professions, such as law and medicine, a certain amount of pro bono work is considered almost part of the job.
So I question the assumption that one must choose between creating open-source work and profiting from the fruits of you labor. Even for companies, it may make sense to devote a certain amount of resources to open source development of generally useful operating systems or utilities, thereby "buying into" a body of open source software which adds value to the company's proprietary products.
...then maybe you have no business charging for your software.
Who told you that? Serious open source projects always have deadlines (KDE, Mozilla), which are sometimes even met (KDE 3.2). Hey they sometimes even have code audits (KDE 3.1), which many commercial products do not (managers want to save money, you know). The thing about developers going prima donna is particularly funny - have you ever tried to participate in well known open source project ??? I once thought I would give it a try - I examined xmlbeans on apache.org, subscribed to the mailing list and all. Guess what - most developers where from BEA, someone was from Reuters, someone from Bank of NY, someone from Toyota asked a question and so on. When someone with a weird nick from yahoo offered to write documentation he or she was ignored!!!. You must be reaaally someone to write important open source projects!!!
Don't write software for free;
write it for me so i can profit?
> In many cases she will leave with a large part of
> your money, and may also get support payments for > years afterwords.
Let me enlighten you, grasshopper: there is such a thing called the "prenuptual agreement", which can prevent things like that. It is advisable to talk to your future wife about money, custody of children, support payments, and other such things before you actually need to talk about them, since after the divorce you will likely not get along too well and any such debates would not go well. It is much better to have the discussion while you still love each other and are capable of making rational decisions untainted by negative emotions.
"Software is the immediate result and the manifestation of what your learned and what you know. How much is that worth? Nothing?"
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Software is the immediate result and the Manifestation of what you learned and what you know.
Here's what I learned and know: Software reusability is an awesome thing. Public (and most likely open source) packages are a lifesaver. They save me and the company I work for time and money, and help me to write complicated software without having to worry about low level implementation details.
To put it another way, reinventing MyWheel because someone has already written Wheel 1.0 and won't share it is a big mistake. If I happen to be the one inventing Wheel 1.0, why not share it and help a lot of other people write great software?
This guy is living on another planet if he thinks people should get paid for every since act they do. His perception of Free Software developers seems to be of a starving unwashed bum writing valuable and salable code between sob stories to the tourists. If that were true, he might have a point.
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?"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
No, this misogynist prick is stating that you can purchase women at bars. What do women go for? Money? Power? Fame? Your huge cock? No asshole. The right girl will go for this kid and will dig that he holds to his ideals and writes money code, not code for money.
So they actually just release it (to be free - no strings attached), without dictating who or how it will be used as long as it remains free.
Free is not an economic term it is a software ecological term.
This is just my personal opinion though, but I think many people can agree on this view. Up, up and away....
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."
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I use open source software all the time - I couldn't live without it. I probably won't bring the authors in as consultants but I would certainly look better on somebody's CV better if they had open source experience.
Why? Well someone who has worked on open source is at least interested in writing code and is probably proud of their own code quality.
There are several reasons to write free software, and several not to.
1. Cost of Entry. If you write your own application and hope to sell it, you usually need to provide some advertising, sales, support, and delivery. If you don't have enough buyers, why not make the first version or two freeware until it's popular? Then you're only risking your time, not your money.
2. Personal Satisfaction. If you write programs for fun and don't want to mess with what someone thinks the market wants, why not give away the software? If an application happen to takes off in the market, then you can charge money for upgrades. Or not.
3. Food. If you're good at programming, it's a fun way to make a living. Most humans need food in order to program, and it's easier to get food if you have at least a little money.
4. Payroll. If you're running a company with programmers on staff, they will likely get rowdy and cantankerous unless they occasionally get paid. It's easier to pay people if there is some source of income, such as paying customers.
I could go on and on. There is lots of room for free software, and lots of room for commercial software (as exhibited by Microsoft, et. al.).
I'm friendly to paying customers, because they are the ones that pay my wages.
By your reasoning I should be rude to my neighbours, because they don't. If anything, neighbours cost time, effort and money.
Not all gains are monetary. (just kicking in an open door..)
But what they fail to understand is that programmers are artists. I believe that good programming expresses as much, or more, creativity, complexity and subtleties than any master work. The majority of the value in what programmers do is not in the payback it receives but rather in the creativity that it expresses.
That is why free software exists. For the same reason that their are lots of struggling artists who perform their art for the purpose of self fulfillment.
Programmers may suffer from the nature of their art which renders itself invisible to the common eye yet they gain from another aspect of their art form which lends itself toward the benefit of society by providing a practicle use as well as self fulfillment.
I think that sums up what I believe to be the "value" of free software.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
"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."
There speaks someone who's never had job offers because of the open source work they've done. Those of us who have received such offers know how stupid that statement is.
I think you know very well how many charitable non-profits on low budgets there are. Besides I enjoy OSS. My dad's broke needed a new computer. Rather than have to pay for an expensive MS tax I built the computer out of old components for cheap and put fedora on it.
Photos.
(With tongue firmly in cheek...)
Dear Vincent Van Gogh,
I think you remember the conversation we had recently at this art show in Brabant. You came up to me and told me how the Dogs Playing Poker stuff I was talking about was mostly useless, because it is mass-produced, people need to pay for it and that companies charging for art are evil anyways - especially DogsPlayingPokerCorp. Unfortunately, email hasn't been invented yet, but I am sure this will reach you.
First, I would like to thank you for the interesting conversation that developed and to make sure that none of what was said just fades away, I'll tell you here once again what I am thinking about what you do, what you think and - most importantly about your future.
When I was 21 - like you were at some point - I was also at university and was pursuing an art degree. Back then, I was very enthusiastic about art and creating stuff that mattered. And thought that I was the best artist the field has ever seen and everyone else was mostly worthless. And I did indeed paint some art that mattered and made a difference. The painting I spent 3 years drawing in pastels from when I was 18 was for my father's business. Because the business he's in requires a long time to do, his customers spent about 2-3 dialy hours on average sitting in a waiting room. When I was done with my painting and he put it in his waiting room, people started enjoying their time there. That was art that absolutely improved the wuality of life for all his customers! And his friends and colleagues loved it, too. I didn't make many prints of it at the time (I think I had 3 customers), but each one was worth 1500 German Marks and that was a huge heap of money for me. I mean - I was living at my parent's house, getting a monthly allowance of 120 German Marks and worked as an ink grip for a couple of printing presses every once in a while - maybe 2-3 times a month. And if I ever had 400 Marks per month I could really consider myself massively rich at the time and for my age, because I had very minimal additional expenses. So 4500 Marks on top of that? Fantastic. Where did the money go? I can't really remember where it all went, but I guess "lot of partying" or "Brahms, Bethoven, and Beauties" would be a reasonably good explanation. Hey, I was 21 and that's what one is supposed to do at that age, right?
That was in 1880 - let's fast forward to 1894 and you. All art that you and your father could possibly be interested in has already been painted. That's probably not true, but it's hard to think of something, right? Ok, the art may not be as pretty as you like and may cost money, but what you can immediately think of is likely there. So where do you put all your energy? Into this absolutely amazing art you paint. I mean, really, the stuff that you are doing there is truly impressive. There are a couple of things I'd probably do differently in terms of design and composition, but it looks nice and that's mostly what matters. And you do make an impact as well. I know that one person has bought one of your paintings. That's great.
However, I start to wonder where your benefit is. You are - out of principle - not making much money out of this, because it is art for art's sake and you insist that it must be respected. So you are putting all of that time and energy into this painting for what? Fame? To found a career? Come on.
If someone buys your prints from an art gallery as part of a collection of paintings, they couldn't care less who you are. The whole fame thing you are telling me only works amongst painters. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bistro that you'd really like to talk to doesn't care much whether you are famous amongst a group of painters and neither does she even remotely fathom why you'd be famous for that stuff in the first place. I mean - get real here.
So once you get your degree from school, what's the plan?
Right now, your university education is free like in many places
Education is the silver bullet.
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.
It seems like the author and the recipient both missed the point of OSS. It's not to make software free as in beer, but to make software open so that anybody can understand how it works and work on it himself if he wants. The author does realize the implication, however. The implication is that OSS is free as in beer. You can't charge for something when you're giving away the source code unless you make it difficult to compile, and even then, someone else can compile it and distribute it for free as in beer. People make money supporting OSS, not by developing it. So what's the solution if you want to make money writing code; open standards. In the harware arena, there is real competition for any particular part. Why? Because the parts are designed to conform to a known standard, and are thus somewhat interchanable in designing the whole product. Open standards have never been the case until recently, however, in the software field. html is the first instance that comes to mind of an open standard in software. With open standards, people can develop competing products that are interoperable, so users have a choice. Users having a choice seems to me more important than users having access to source, which they rarely, if ever look at. Open source is fine if you want to give away your work, or hope people will donate money to support your work (OSDL), but if you want choice in software, but don't mind if you can't see the source code, push for open standards
Vote for Pedro
I was wrong! Om my god! I was wrong! How could i share my knowledge and help people FOR FREE?
;)
Sir Clemens, i will immediately relicense my projects to greedy commercial licenses, also, i will send out C&D letters to everyone who has looked at the code, used the application or even mentioned it (intentionally or accidentally). If they do not agree to relicense their lives with the "SCODIAL LICENSE 1" and pay me 1.000.000$ i will proceed with a lawsuit.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
That letter up there was the most rational thing I've ever read on Slashdot. YOU young programmer should read it. Indeed there was a save the world mentality when I left uni. When you leave you throw yourself into the first project you get at 200%. Luckily there was no free software, so I worked in a real job.
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.
What you are in love with is your own pocketbook.
... does this guy work for SCO?
I was unable to read the article, apparently it has been slashdotted.
My first thought when I read the excerpt on Slashdot is that telling this to a young programmer is a lot like telling a young composer to not write music or telling an aspiring author to now write a novel.
In a very complete sense, you can compare authoring software to composing music or to writing a novel. In many cases, the author doesn't necessarily do it for profit but rather because it is something they are either compelled (as in driven) to do or, because they simply enjoy doing it.
Other postings on Slashdot and elsewhere tell us that the term "Free Software" is distinctly different from the term "Open Source Software" and that people like RMS suggest the use of Free over the use of Open Source precisely because we do not want to muddy the waters - we want to be clear that the writing of software is a free speech issue.
I don't want people to not write anything because they think that their thoughts are too valuable. I think it would be quite wrong to think that way.
Supply go up, Demand is stagnant or declining = Prices going down :-)
Supply go up, Demand goes up in Lockstep = Prices holding in line with inflation and external factors
Supply go up, but demand goes up exceeding supply = Prices going up faster than external factors
Good old college economics
...in bed
Last summer I decided to make a major move and planned on being able to land in a new city and find a job within 2 months. Insane you say? I admit to misjudging the situation. It took me 2 weeks to land a 6-figure job, at which point I had 2 other likely leads headed my way before I really got into full swing.
How did I accomplish a miracle like that?
Here are the contributing factors. I use a productive open source toolset, allowing me to be worth a lot to a potential employer. Feedback from open source work has both massively improved my skills and given me a portfolio that I can point to as proof of my ability. Through personal contacts, mostly made through open source, I found out that Los Angeles had a good job situation despite the overall poor economy. And through another personal contact, made through open source, I was able to arrive in a strange city and already have a network of personal contacts though whom I could get a referral.
Worked out pretty well, huh?
Now what would have happened if I had followed the advice in the letter to Aidan?
Well I would never have addressed some of the deficiencies that open source feedback corrected me on, I wouldn't have had a public portfolio, I would have never had opportunity to develop those contacts, and I probably would be using a less productive toolset.
The fact is that most programmers are not hired to produce software for sale. They never were. They are hired to produce inhouse software to meet specific business needs. The more productive those programmers become, the more they can justify good paychecks. Working the other way, anything that you do that discourages productivity makes it harder to justify a decent paycheck.
This equation doesn't change if you add a lot of free software is out there. My employer doesn't make money by selling software, nor do the employers of most companies that hire programmers. As far as they are concerned, software is a cost of doing business. Anything that brings it down improves profits and makes it easier to justify spending on complementary goods. Like my income.
Speaking of which, I'm declaring lunch over and stopping reading this site. It is time for me to continue keeping my employer convinced that I'd be a steal at twice the price.
to your GPL'd software?
If so, how do you reconcile creating closed source software based on GPL'd software?
Young poets, do not go and read your poems in coffee houses for free. Cartoonists! Never share your sketchbook with friends. Demand payment, and help the capitalist system prosper. I mean, imagine where we'd be if we all started sharing?
$8.95/mo web hosting
So the fundamental question is then how do I make money from developing software? Or is this the fundamental question. There is as has been pointed out a middle ground to everything. I may make my living writing embedded systems software (and I do) while in my free time choose to write or work on some music or graphics editting software. Why would I do this? Why not sell my work on both ends?
Simply put, there are often great ideas that I would like to see develop, but that I do not have the resources to develop on my own. Similarly, there may already be a killer application for sale in that arena that I would end up competing with and could not. It takes time (man hours) to develop a high quality application with features and stability. If I want to compete with Photoshop, I need to offer as high of a quality program with comparable features at a sufficiently lower price to justify the consumer making the switch. Adobe has an insurmountable lead on me in this endeavor, thus it is an unwise business to pursue.
If however I can come to an agreement with like minded programmers who also would like to have this application available to them, we can pool our time and talents and develop the application together. We also need to assemble a group to perform testing of the application and find users to provide feedback to improve the product. As the scale of this endeavor increases, the open source (gpl) approach starts to look like a good choice. You can thus end up with something like the Gimp, arguable not equal to photoshop for the professional (lack of 16 bit support for example), but more than adequate for the amature shutter bug to play with some powerful features. This model arose out of the huge gap between the high end product (Photoshop) and the low end alternatives (mostly provided free with cameras or scanners) and initially from a total lack of availability on my OS.
When planning a business, you first go after the biggest market that you can. You must, you have slaaries to pay and capital to recoup. If the market will not support your entry, you can either go anyway and fail or abandon the attempt and try something else. In the end a for profit only model in this arena supports the existing giants only. Is Microsoft evil for wanting to generate profits for their investors? Of course not, that is the function and responsibility of a corporation. Can another company come along and have the resources to invest to unseat them in the desktop world? Probably not without violating some serious patents and they will be persecuted for trying. The abundance of software written to use the windows platform and libraries gives them a tremendeous advantage. To unseat them, my OS would need to provide the same amount of features/applications that the potential consumer wants, and at a significantly lower price to entice them to take the risk. Since we already know that Microsoft can operate at a loss long enough to kill off my business should I get to that point, and that interoperability with their applications would be requried in mine since they have the mindshare, while they would have no such obligation, clearly there is no business model there.
Therefore, there is no profit currently to be made in fighting the Desktop war. Thus only a not-for-profit motive can fuel this. Working on a free word processor is not preventing me from making money to feed my family. I could not make money from writing a Word processor anyway. By freely contributing my work to that of others, I do provide for myself and my family a free (in money) program that saves me the $500 I would have spent for the Microsoft program. It scales nicely too. If my labour provides free cost alternatives that organizations funded by me (either by donations or taxes) then my money can be used for other purposes.
If the existence of these free alternatives and the source code that makes them work can help a developing society (country) then the long term benefit to humanity is a nice side-effect.
If the long term resul
If MS is producing something that "it doesn't think will produce revenue" then it isn't worth looking at- Unhappy customers vote against shitty products by using their wallet for a competitor.
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...
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.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
That basic economic principle that justifies FS is not the much-hinted notion of communist/socialist ideaologies (since everyone with an IQ higher than 80 knows they're both failures). It's instead known as "Spillover Benefits". Granted, an FS programmer did pay gobs for their education, and the expectation therein is to profit from their labor. However, there is no reason such a programmer can only write either proprietary commercial apps OR FS For years, software companies have released free software to gain recognition, marketshare, and increase visibility of theirselves and their other apps. To put it simply, it's the "Crack Dealer" method of marketing. You give them a taste for free, they get hooked and need the software, and they come back and pay you for it. Even Microsoft does this - a few years back they succeeded in crushing the competition by giving away the Internet Explorer browser for free. At the time, it was faster, more innovative, and more feature rich. Now there are people who don't even say "web browser", they say "explorer".
It's not my fault (nor yours, nor anybody's really) if people suddenly figured out that standardization of practices in software development would lead to increased commodization of said market, with the side effect that many jobs would be outsourced (as previous industries have in times past).
Just because it's biting you in the ass right now doesn't mean you're special.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Simply put, Open Souce is like genetics. When ideas and information are shared between individuals and groups, software design benefits as a whole. When this is fenced in, such as closed source, then the idea pool stagnates, much like a gene pool. No fresh ideas enter, no interchange happens, and you end up with the same stale code being ground out again and again.
As an example, look at Microsoft's NT lineage. OS2 (Microsoft Variant) found it's way into NT 3.51, then NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (Windows 2000), and Windows XP, encompassing a span of roughly 12 years. Each shares the basic NT undercore which hasnt seen much more than incremental improvements. (I recognize the fact and the argument that Microsoft tries to keep backward compatibility, but something written to run X86 real mode generally has problems working on a protected mode NT platform.)
Over a shorter period we are up to the powerful 2.6 kernel, and have ported Linux to everything from simple microcontrollers (Broadcom MIPS and IBM 405GP) up to heavy iron mainframes. Linux is not fenced in by a single processor architecture, but enjoys running on many.
We need Open Source to keep the idea pool fresh.
Jeeeeesus. I mean, come on. Most of the "great works" of classical art, music, etc were indeed commissioned.
This gets modded up? Good god. What the hell is slashdot coming to?
Get an education, freaks.
Alternate Strategy: If you want to be the Old-School Curmudgeon with a Classical Education, fume about how there's no such thing as a "Lexius".
The whirring sound you hear is the sound of your grammar-school teachers collectively rotating, at lathe speed, in their graves.
Well, basic economics says that we'll go with the donated work (provided it's of equivalent quality).
The thing is, there is no right of a guaranteed career. Being an expert in mounted combat used to count for something--now it doesn't, and those who do it tend to do it for fun. Being an alchemist used to be quite profitable; now it is a hobby. Being a computer programmer used to be a job--in the future it, too, will be a hobby in most cases (just as there are folks getting paid for their skill at jousting, and getting paid for their alchemy--just not an awful lot).
Once software-writing has gotten to the point that it's so easily doable, there's no reason for it to behave as though the skill were a scarce one.
Just as with offshore outsourcing, economies move towards the most efficient solution. Paying a few dozen engineers $100,000 apiece for several years to produce an OS isn't nearly as efficient as letting college students and hobbyists (many of whom are engineers in their day jobs) hack on an OS until it's good. OSes are solved problems: there's just not much more that needs to be added.
Code-writing just isn't going to be a mass-marketable skill someday. Neither is aurochs-hunting.
Okay, there are lots of silly things you can believe about Free Software. Believing that no one should ever make money selling software seems daft to me. Some people believe such things, I don't. However, I do believe than an increasing amount of software should be Free Software.
When I was a young child I knew that I wanted to write software. When I actually started programming it was every bit as satisfying as I had hoped. That youngster stumbled across some piece of Free Software and I was confused. Giving it away for free? How do you pay the bills? This Free Software thing is clearly bullshit.
Since then I've regularlly rethought the issue. As I learn more and more about how the world works Free Software makes more and more sense. When I graduated from college I felt that some core software (operating systems, compilers) should be free, some other things might be free, and some things (games, for example) should never be free. Now, as I continue to look back on what I've seen I think even more software should be free and I can reasonably imagine a world in which everything is Free Software. I'm a programmer by profession and this brave new world of Free Software doesn't worry me in the slightest.
So why aren't I worried?
First, the vast majority of programmers don't write software that is sold for a profit. Most software is used internally to the business or organization that commissioned it. If the market for software suddenly dropped to zero these programmers would still have jobs.
Second, of the remaining software, that software which is sold, much of it derives most of its value from supporting data sold with the software. The most obvious example is video games. Without the level design and graphics and sounds the software itself is basically useless. Sure, you competitors will appreciate being able to take your great engine and reusing it, but you'll at least have a lead; they only start work when your product is on shelves with all its shiny graphics and level design tuned by people who worked on the core engine.
This does leave the minority of software where the value is really in the software itself and the money comes from selling the software. Do these poor programmers starve to death? Of course not! People clearly want the software and are willing to pay for it. Programmers are capable of writing the software and want to be paid. Ultimately I have faith in the free market to work it out. We might see software sold using the Street Performer Protocol. Users are generally going to trust the original developers more than people who just copy it; this means that software can be sold on the basis of that trust (Sure, you can get it for free, but do you trust those guys?), or to convince users to accept ad-ware. Yet other software might be supported wealthy patrons. Also, some of those users are large businesses; they might band together to fund a team of developers to develop software they all need. In practice I would expect all of the above and some innovative ideas.
The world of 100% Free Software is in the distant future and may not ever exist. But the near future, the one in which Free Software is a small but significant force, isn't some doom-and-gloom situation. Most programmers wouldn't notice a thing. Of the remaining number, ultimately capitalism will figure something out. Clemens compares the situation to communism, which is an interesting comparision. One of the best things about various attempts at communism is that the free market inevitably sneaks out (often in the form of black markets).
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I was updating my CV the other day and realized that I now have 20 years in IT. yikes! Many of my customers over the years have held opinions similar to that of Mr. O'Connor. It is a widely held belief in many older corporate IT departments that software is worth what you pay for it. Free=worthless. This just shows how isolated many (most?) workaday programmers are from the experiences of the FOSS folks.
IMNSHO, the future of most business IT is going to be in the service industry of installing, maintaining, and modifying freely-distributed and OSS (FOSS). Programmers sometimes fear OSS because FOSS = (some degree of) peer review. The worry that peers will see how really _shitty_ their code is. In practice though, lack of peer-review = poor coding skills. Managers fear OSS as well. To this group FOSS = loss of control.
This kind of thinking won't change unless more service oriented companies come forward and sell servies for FOSS. Services for FOSS = installing, modifying, and maintaining FOSS. Interestingly perhaps, many small and medium sized service companies (consultancies etc) make about the same amount of money whether they sell the software of just install it. They just buy (or arrange for sale of) from a bona-fide distributor of the software in question, then pass that cost (occasionally with markup) to the customer. The majority of the profit is in the placement of the programmers, analysts, and admins, permanently or for the duration of the project.
This sig kills fascists.
Let me choose another example, since the OS example is confusing, and people feel pretty vehement about it. So let's look at...compilers. One the one hand, we have Borland's development suite, various embedded compiler companies, Microsoft's Visual Studio suite, and so on and so forth. Then we have gcc (and Wacom, as a previous poster pointed out.) The former cost approximately $1500. The later costs $0. As a developer who is striking out on my own, I need access to a good development environment, but I also don't have a tonne of money to kick around. What am I going to choose? That's right: gcc. Would I pay $50 for gcc? Heck yes I would. Would I pay $5 for Mozilla? Yep. $50 for Linux? Sure would.
I think it's great that there are developers out there making free software. I'm not, however, convinced that they aren't doing any harm. I think they're making it difficult for small development companies or individual developers to sell software. My anxiety is that when I put a piece of software on the market, that a potential customer is going to look at it and say to themselves "hey, I'm not going to pay $30 for that! I'm sure there's something free out there that will do the job just as well!" Perhaps there is -- and perhaps there isn't. Either way, the expectation is hurting my sales.
I can't think of any other field, really, where I could do quality work and worry about people getting it elsewhere for *free*. In almost every industry, professionals have to worry about being undersold, but I think we have a unique phenomenon here in software development: a market where you have to worry about competetors giving away the same product.
This guy's perceptions seem to suggest that the only way people value your work is by money.
We'd be living in an extremely desolate and hostile world if that was the case. To be honest I can't see any reason to argue against anyone else writing free software, unless it's from a position of vested interest, or purely political.
It is actually hard for people to believe people aren't chasing dollars in any talent they might be lucky enough to possess now isn't it!?
It isn't the person that fails to seek a numerative value for their passion that is sick. It is the person that tries to put an numerative value on that passion.
Just as in the music industry, the best innovation will always come from those who seek the best of their art, not those who seek to make money from it. The art itself is the ends, the money is simply the means to keep doing it.
Anyone who is smart enough to write good software is smart enough to keep a dinner on the table! In fact, I think most people would value integrity, and passion over bean counting developers. The job market isn't that bad that you would end up homeless and desolate just because you decide to make one decision of principle over monetary gain. The more people who are willing to make decisions of principle, quite frankly, the less nasty the world will become.
That is of course entirely aside from the fact that open source code benefits all developers by virtue that they can actually see it, in order to learn from it.
Why are people so keen to stick a dagger in the side of any kind of charitable cause? If I wasn't so skeptical, I'd think everyone was a cynic.
i havent been able to read that article as it wont load. but i did read a few snippets as posted by others here.
i get a feeling that the OSS model is going to lead to a drastic change in functioning for other scientific fields very soon. this is typical of any revolution with the old guards trying to kill the new ideas.
for too long has our vanities been massaged till we are fuckin blind. the OSS model is helpin reduce our egos'. it can only be a good thing.
while what this man apparently whinges about is short-time/temporary, i see many long-time/permanent boons. i don't mind what the cost is, if i can see these changes happening.
Slashamatic, I would have contacted you directly, but I cannot figure out how to do that in Slashdot, if it is at all possible. I'm doing some research on the CIA blows-up Siberian pipeline via a trojan story, and would like to speak with you about your work in '79 Lomotpk
This article left a somewhat bitter feeling on me. This comes from aknowledging that some things being said here are true. We live in world where work means gain and wealth (relatively speaking), wealth that help us to have the many little things that we believe to be a good life.
I sayed some things, but not all. The part that I personally believe not to be true is that concerning the hint this person gives to the young programmer, about no longer cooperating on open source projects because they are the equivalent of giving his work for nothing.
In fact, I believe that open source programming actually gives a deep satisfaction to those that produce it, because it gives them the opportunity of doing many things that do not have equivalent within a traditional work-for-bucks framework.
The young programmer being slightly patronized in this letter, could be very well working within a company that put him in a helpdesk, attendind and solving all day the complaints and little problems users usually have with their Access databases, but certainly, he could also be left with the feeling of wasted creativity, if he/she perceives himself capable of much more. Programming as many others human endeavours have some kind of artistic motivation.
For me, this is the reason behind so much variety and exhuberance on the domain of open source programs. People capable and creative find the products available unsatisfactory, so decide to go and do things by their own, only to proof themselves capable of it.
The creative drive impulsing all these people needs an adequate space for expression, in things that are at the same time rationaly exciting and emotionally fullfiling. It is not very polite to remember computer geeks that they are people as any other, but it is true nonetheless, however, discouraging them (specially when they are young and full of ideas) using the worst fears any human being has (its personal fullfillment) is kind of a cruel deed.
I'm sure I'm echoing sentiments and thoughts already expressed a hundred times over in this discussion, but I think analogy demolishes this argument better than anything.
Do doctors keep their methods secret? Do architects refuse to file blueprints with the local planning authority? No. Can everyone on earth perform open heart surgery just because the methods are available in textbooks? No. Can anyone slap together a design for a skyscraper, even though blueprints are on file at the planning comission? No! Because the skills and knowledge are of value not the product. (Well, of course the product has value, but not in the same way). Most people who write software are not writing commodity components (operating systems, word processors, web browsers) and using the fact the compilation is tantamount to encryption in conjunction with IP law to create an artificial shortage to permit sale at inflated prices. Most people who write software are paid to make specific devices work or to automate processes for specific businesses. Free Software is eroding the market for a tiny fraction of the software economy. The fact that it is "software companies" whose market is being eroded makes it look like catastrophe, but it is NOT. Software is transitioning from a commodity to a profession. And that is a good thing.
No, not every programmer is going to be a Linus Thorvalds or a Larry Wall (or "insert your favorite famous programmer here"), but then not every architect is I.M. Pei either. There are plenty of architects, but few superstars. There are plenty of doctors and lawyers, but few Christain Barnards or Melvin Bellis. But so what?
The point is, software shouldn't be secret. It should be the quality of your practice and not the secrets you keep that set your value.
What a metric moron. Let him writhe in his inferior software and vaunt in his "sophisiticated" ways.
He's just trying to validate his own existence.
He's right -- you *do* have to make money, and communism sucks, but he's wrong if he thinks the work of the Closed Source community is not a total fraud. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you?d really like to talk to doesn?t care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks and neither does she even remotely fathom why you?d be famous for that stuff in the first place. I mean ? get real here
This point is provably false. Take the name of any maintainer of a dONLYecently sized project. type it in to google. See if it comes up as that person, how many links. The bigger the project, the more links. I think that is the sort of fame understood by any 'intelligent' person.
Read some industry magazines. Who exactly is making money out of ?free??
This guy should take his own advice. Companies like MySql, Trolltech, Redhat use opensource software to make money. They do it in ways that are not outsourcing deals, running data centers or selling hardware (Although I believe they make some money out of outsourcing deals). Of course, that was in the 10 seconds of thought I was willing to devote to the question.
So, two provably false statements, and not a lot of proof for the rest.
peopleToIgnore->append("Clemens Vasters")
Well, students don't make much money...
Also, I love that you can learn from software, which you can't with closed source. I don't mind paying for a book, but I don't feel I learn as much.
I partially agree, but also partially disagree. If you are a uni student and run a free software project, dont expect to go out in the open market and get employed as a project architect. You may be lucky and skip the junior programmer level, but that will be it.
But..and there is a but...if you are already a senior programmer / project architect, and you also manage a free software project, it will put you in very good stead against your competing candidates for the job. It will be an additional achievement, and you are demonstrating that you can accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously.
To summarise, its very good as an additional achievement, not as a main feature of your CV.
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
I have written much software in the last 20 years and I have made the most money on software that did something, and I have made much of it public. The only software not made public has been either because my employer would not let me make it public, or because I simply haven't the time to publish it. My employers (and me early on) could not see that it was the service , not the source code, that we were selling.
The actual money earned has come from customizing the software, installing it, and maintaining it.
It is only dinosaurs like Microsoft and the RIAA that try to maintain the completely outdated idea that bits can be controlled.
Both should instead focus on what they provide the end user. In the case of music it is a cultural and entertainment experience, not disks of plastic. They (the musicians) should be focused on concerts, clothing lines, and nifty posters. Microsoft should (and won't) focus on providing working, bug free, virus free systems. Instead MS
is clearly focused on 'marketing'. The fact is that MS is in a defunct business of selling an operating system.
A fresh-out-of-college programmer should focus on getting experience in listening to the customer, customizing the system (with as little glue code as possible), and provining it to the customer so the customer makes lots of money. That is the long term and enduring value of an engineer. Such skills outlive 'dot com crashes' and company failures.
Often you make the source code public, others pick it up and make it better, and return it to you. Now the synergy between the programmers results in you provinding better systems to your customers, so they pay you even more. The customers then gain trust in you to get the job done no matter what, and when the do some nifty startup company, you get invited to the party. Then you make the big bucks.
Sometimes I think I overrate this place. Despite the abundance of apparent intellect there are
so many who either willfully misunderstand the concept of open source due to entrenched political bigotry, or are actually too stupid to fully grasp it. God please give us pateince with these idiots.
Being a developer who makes a living out of programming, I agree with you 100%. Have you ever heard of Businesses giving out their trade secreats to the competitors to create a "level playing field?" No, its only the idiolistic geek that always gets screwed by the smart business guy. Everything about businesses is about trade secreats, and having the competetive advantage, but some how the smart biz guys at big and greedy corps convinced the geeks to give out their work for free and get rich off the sweat, blood and passion of the developers.
In answer to the dope that wrote the open letter:
The value's not in the software, it's in the ability to *write* the software. Duh.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Maggots clean wounds. When you work on a shoestring budget, you tend to go for homespun remedies. Antibiotics are expensive -- especially in the volume necessary for the number of people she helped. It may offend your delicate sensibilities, but it works, and the money saved can be used for expensive treatments that maggots can't solve.
Twisted and manipulative? She twisted and manipulated her way into helping more people than most. Sucking up to dictators? If they gave her money, good. Shouldn't the relevant question be "why didn't supposedly civilized democracies give her all the support she needed?" She played politics. Big whup.
You want duplicitous? How about the Beastie Boys? They organized huge events in the name of "Free Tibet." Know where the proceeds went? Not to Tibetan resistance groups. Not a check to the Dalai Lama. Not money to Amnesty International. Not to relief organizations.
To the musicians who played and most specifically to the Beastie Boys.
So which is worse? Sucking up to dictators in the name of the sick poor to help the sick poor -- or -- sucking up to rich democracies in the name of social resistance in order to help your bank account.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Where is the "Out of Touch" moderation?
It's scary that enough people consider this "Insightful". Insightful = a thought that wasn't naturally obvious, being brought up (my interpreation anyway).
So who here wasn't aware the Microsoft still exists because people buy stuff from them? Since people buy stuff from them, they can continue to exist as a corporation, and therefore have the ability to release stuff for free. Obvious.
Let's see if I get modded Insightful: Linux is not "free"! There is no such thing as "free" software! Based on the parent's premise, every single programmer that worked on supposed "free" software, has been given food & shelter by someone selling something or providing a service. Therefore, how can software claim to be free (as in beer), when it only exists because people are making money?
A non-profit that tries to spend everything they bring in is a VERY POORLY MANAGED non-profit. Ideally, a non-profit would like to have enough investments/savings on hand to run the non-profit for three years without additional income.
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.
paintball
I actually liked one of the points that the guy brought up, namely: there's a pattern of exploitation that happens in modern (2004) Free Software.
There's a lot of companies using Free Software, making money from Free Software, who aren't contributing proportionally back to the movement. Apple is a great example, IBM, Sun... all folks who are happy to encourage Free Software if it's coming in their way, but not so crazy about releasing their own stuff (or patents, or whatever) as Free Software.
So we've got an economy that's supported on the backs of 15- to 25-year-olds, making older and richer people richer yet again.
I mean, we keep hearing about investments in Free Software, but where is that money? In Oracle advertisements? IBM spray-paint campaigns? How about supporting some Free Software writers instead?
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the ideals and ideas behind Free Software. Sharing and freedom are important -- more important than money. But some of the folks who are rakin' in the bucks based on teenagers' unpaid work, without paying anything forward... they should be ashamed of themselves.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
That with the GPL, it does. I mean let's say I write a nifty app, one that lots of people like. I want people to have access to ALL the source, plus I'm a big Linux fan. So I do the Linux thing: I GPL it. I want to make money, so I sell the game as normal. You buy a boxed CD for $50. The only difference is that on this CD, there is full source code and a copy of the GPL.
So this works great right? Wrong.
What happens is someone goes, buys my app, makes some minor changes, and releases their own version, with source code for FREE (as in beer). Well what now? I mean the GPL explicitly gives them redistribution rights. They are abiding by the license terms in every way, but they are making it free. Well most people who have a choice between free and $50 will pick free. I'm now out money for my app. The only cash I'll get is from people who want to "do the right thing" and buy my copy. No different than if I just made it free and asked for donations.
So as long as open source means (or is taken to mean) the GPL is WILL mean free. A company can charge, but any person is then able to release a free version completely legally. As you said, a different license will be required.
I have a job does this mean i should not work for a charity in my own time? Shouldnt they pay me?
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!?
Wow, it's so clear now. Thank you, Mr. Clemens !
>|<*:=
The guy lives in Ireland, which is actualy one of the Outsorcing hotspots. He may well end up writing code for some american company.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What OSS has google released? They are doing exactly what this guy was complaining about, taking OSS software and using it to make money without giving anything back.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Craig Vasters is a bit confused about the reasons why open source is succeeding. He seems to think that it's some vast political conspiracy to bring down capitalism. He seems to believe that there are huge numbers of people who, because of ideology, write open source software and just do without food, clothing, or housing while doing so. Nothing could be further from the truth: open source is succeeding because it is efficient and economically competitive. Real businesses find it cheaper to participate in, and contribute to, open source projects than to license their software. Real programmers develop it because someone pays them to.
What Vasters is advocating is much more like what communism used to amount to in the real world: Vasters wants to distort the market by appealing to people to accept higher than market prices for some ideological reason. Vasters wants central planning, courtesy of Microsoft. And the reason he is advocating this is simple: Vasters is part of the Microsoft Central Committee: he benefits personally from those market inefficiencies. He just can't accept the fact that he and his company are being made obsolete by newer and better ways of doing business. And, like other obsolete businesses, he is trying to portray his company and his way of doing business as some kind of victim of a vast conspiracy.
As for Aiden, yes, he can't follow into the footsteps of Bill Gates. People generally don't get rich anymore founding software
companies, and no amount of whining by Vasters is going to change that. What Aiden can do is make a good living doing custom software development. Whether he open sources that custom software or not doesn't even matter much--by definition, custom software is tailored to the needs of one client. You see, even in open source nirvana, there are plenty of people who will pay you for doing software development. Free software doesn't mean that nobody pays for software, it just means that people don't pay for software twice.
LOL, me too. I actually read it all though, in the spirit of giving a fair hearing. Please I hope to God it was a cut and paste job of a prototypical rant, anyone who spent so long presenting such a poor (he merely states some self evident truths in prejudicial and negative language) argument to an audience of ... well 2 of us read it for sure, and I'm a confirmed Linux zealot, is wasting his time and ours.
This article helped me find out how can we use open source for a financial gain? So far the situation is that some one that may only have half an idea of what he/she is doing stumbles upon a good idea comes out with it gets bought up by a bigger fish with a sum of money and they are left to their own devices. Now with open source no one person can make money off of on idea but on the quality of thier work. Now instead of getting a lump sum or 15 minuites of fame they are rated on the quality of the code they produce and since OSS is based almost purely on upkeep and maintence this gives a much longer lasting job to those who deserve it rather than those who jumped the bandwagon to fix y2k issues. We will no longer have to compete with the quantity of programmer corporations now have the money to invest programmers for the long term, more stable and reliable jobs... but that's just my 0.02 c (CDN) ;)
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
"The young, being immature and impulsive, always attempt to do the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation".
Yes.
Intellectual property has never before been subjected to such ridiculous shackles as the software industry has placed on it. More tragically, other creative industries (the music and movie industries, for example) are piggybacking a ride on the increasingly draconian IP laws that have resulted from the sucess of the software industry.
Furthermore, the unprecedented modularity of the software industry has been bastardized by Microsoft et al to create an enormous vertical monopoly, using tactics which are of questionable legality, to say the least.
I'm currently studying to be a mathematician. I'll be doing several years of research, eventually leading to a Ph.D. But in all of this time I will not own any copyrights or patents, nor will I ever see royalties for the applications of my work. Instead, my work will be published in publicly available journals for anyone to see and adapt as they wish, provided that they give me credit.
Sound like a crazy idea? Some new-age such-and-such that will only last through my 20's and leave me living in my parents' basement? Think about this, then -- this has been the standard practice in pure mathematics for at least the past 100 years, and I don't know of any vast supply of starving 40-year-old mathematicians.
By the way, who is this idiot who wrote this letter and why are we listening to him anyway? This guy, as far as I can tell, has nothing to his name other than running some obscure German software company that nobody has ever heard of. If that is qualification enough, I can find a lot of my friends with small, unheard of software companies who will say much more interesting things than, "You need to go out and get a job, boy. That's just the way it is." I mean, seriously, he sounds like a comic-book redneck.
I recently saw a performance of La Boheme directed by Bahz Luhrman. The opera, written a hundred years ago by Puccini, is the story of a group of creative artists - a musician, painter, playwrite, and philosopher - who live together in poverty. The opera celebrates the Bohemian lifestyle -- rejecting social customs to pursue a more meaningful life. In case you wondered, they don't write operas about pragmatist software engineers, no matter how much money they accumulate. There's no price that can be placed on a well-lived life.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Software prices are way, way too expensive. For $50 what could I get? If you just spent that much on food for one person per week, your money would be much more productive than buying a a firewall. Is a firewall really worth what you can spend on food for a week? Yes, it protects your PC, but what is the total cost of a PC and how much does it pay for itself? Is a PC really cost effective? No. It is buggy and overpriced. PC's should cost $50 and software $5 dollars a piece. Free software supports that idea and gets the major companies to notice. "Hey, software is too expensive. We need to lower our prices." Yes, of course they hate it. They get rich off of us. Look at the top ten list of the richest men on earth. Two of them were founders of a software company. Software companies are conning us out of our cash for the sake of a snazzy new toy to play with. Free software is the consumer way of fighting back and lowering prices.
Dear Red,
What are you, some kind of Communist? Money buys happiness. You should not put effort into something if you won't get money for it. Money buys happiness. Stop being a communist.
With best wishes for your future
Clemens
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.
This sounds like an anti-big-company FUD argument.
Just for the record, IBM (one such big company) got it's ass kicked by Microsoft. So what did they do, they sat back, regrouped, and realized that the only way to win was not to play. There will always be someone doing it cheaper or free in the software world. Why? Probably because the software that you might care about deeply is fringe material or completely unimportant to someone else. This someone else can simply give it away. For example, Netscape vs. Internet Explorer (free) or OpenOffice (free) vs. Microsoft Office.
Netscape needed the browser to make money. IE was a lost leader for Microsoft. They could just simply give it away. With Microsoft Office dominating the market, no other Office suite can gain a foothold, unless it were free. Other things can be more important (such as winning). So now IBM and Sun don't care about monetizing the software directly in every case or perhaps not to the scale of every single copy. Why, because it is a lost leader for them, they make their money on services or by selling a more complete version or by gaining an open door which was once closed. There will always be someone who cares less about any given application and simply gives it away. Some will do it simply because they enjoy it. Others may do it, simply because they believe in what they are doing. Still others may do it because they make their money elsewhere. Still others find no other way to gain a foothold because another company dominates.
The problem with software is that one copy is infinitely reproducible. It might seem that it is wrong or unfair that it should be this way, but it is simply the fact of the matter. For software, a single computer can be the design studio, the prototyping platform, the proof of concept platform, and, finally, the factory. Closed source software holds it's value by virtue of restricting the inbreed ability of a computer to create copies of software and thereby sell licenses for them.
How many copies of crappy software have you paid for? How many copies of crappy software have you simply disguarded because it didn't live up to the packaging or fit your particular needs? How many different types of Office software can their be? How many times has this been rewritten and disguarded when the business realities killed off a weaker company's software?
Software isn't the be-all, end-all of this world and the same software shouldn't have to be rewritten until the end of time.
What is wrong with simply giving it away? There will always be some software which hasn't yet been written. But, for the stuff that has (dozens of times), give it away. I would rather my grandson to not have to pay for another version of an OS (for example).
Its software is buggy, though. Read the warning there.
To first order, when you write a program, say pong, and open source it, make it free, you effectively prevent other people from making any money off pong. Nobody is going to pay for it if they can get it for free. First order loss.
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.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
mod is a warez distributor on isonews.com. Someone who actively participates in stealing software has as many valid opinions as a horses ass.
I don't know why so many here are posting how much money they have made from software. It should be pretty obvious that there are very high paid programmers. It seems equally obvious that many programmers have really horrible jobs - long hours irregular pay and job security of turkeys in November.
/.ers are taking up - outside programming. Its not like we are starving to death here. Obviously, other countries differ.
_ __
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.
____________________________________________
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Writing free software doesn't help people improve their lives. It helps big corporations turn a profit.
That assumes that only big corporations use free software.
I run a webserver, which uses linux, apache etc etc. My desktop also uses a lot of linux GPL'ed software. I use open office. Am I a corporation? No, I'm just somebody who has benefitted from "free" software.
The idea is that everyone can use it. So you use free software, I do... doesn't that mean that it's making a different to somebody? And it's making my life better by making it easier, as well as cheaper...
You have touched a problem very important to all software distribution models, but you should also consider its consequences. The marginal costs (the costs of a second copy once you have the first) of software are very low; let's assume them to be 0. The initial costs of software are substantial, however.
If we can trust economic theory, there are two market models that maximize social profits (the profits of producers and consumers together). On the one hand you have perfect competition. In perfect competition the price of a product will be equal to its marginal costs, which in the case of software means it will be free (as in beer, but probably also as in speech). On the other hand you have the price-discriminating monopoly, where social profits are also maximized, but accrue entirely to the producer, meaning that everybody is charged just as much as he is willing to pay for the software.
All other models do not maximize social profits, and it seems, are ultimately crowded out of the market. Once a certain category of software is so standardized that products are interchangeable, you have two possibilities. Either there are several producers. In that case consumers will get the cheapest one. In order to sell anything at all, therefore, you have to lower your price below that of the cheapest producer on the market, and so on, until the price equals the marginal cost, i. e. until the software is free. If there is only one producer, he'll establish something as close as is possible for him to a price-discriminating monopoly.
All those of us who use more software than we produce for others (private persons, corporations that use software or only write software for their own use), then have the greatest interest to do everything we can to push the market for a certain kind of software as quickly as possible to perfect competition, i. e. free software. Those who make their living producing software for sale, and not because they want to learn something from writing it or because the want to use the software themselves, of course, have the opposite interest of establishing and vigorously defending monopoly power. Thus until the market for a certain category of software become competetive, and thus free, you have a necessary strategic conflict between producers and consumers.
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You're new at this aren't you! You should have read the article I responded to. Instead of guessing, you should have passed along the results of the SEC filings and how many years you have worked with cost reduction in a large company of 60,000 or so people.
The numbers are real, they are just not MicroSoft's.
Wow, that's genuinely surprising considering previous statements by Ballmer, et al. Again, I'm not picking an argument, just wondering what stuff that might be?
Which programs has Microsoft GPL'ed?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Employer: "Next!"
Candidate #2: "Hi. I wrote Samba."
Employer: "Welcome aboard Mr Tridgell!"
On the other side I use Linux and OpenOffice and don't have the money to buy their up-to-date commercial similars (it would cost me a month of work to buy them, poor country).
I can also use them to learn, to fit my needs and share that better version with my friends (without the guilty of helping a company dominate even more their users).
I also use Linux in the computers of a school for poor people.
On the other side, the community thanks!
Indeed some companies are getting software for free (as in beer) but if they want any changes on that they'll need to give them back to the community.
I think it's silly to make an OSS that will be used only by the industry, finacial market and other "just for profit business". If they'll use it just for profit there's nonsense in not charging them.
(not today, because bussiness aren't used to the idea of paying for something that will be also freely used by someone else).
But for software that will be used by regular people that don't make any or just little (just for their living) profit I don't think so.
Even if some company will eventually use it for profit I don't think regular people should be prived of the software because of that.
A restricting license might be the solution for that case but GPL have the "give back" thing, that let/force those companies finance modifications on the software.
Althought I'm not sure that will realy happen. Only the time will say that companies will "give back" or will just parasite.
I thought better and a lot of those may not give back themselves, but they pay redhat, suse, ibm and others that, on their side, give something back to the community.
How many of those companies that are making big money with OSS are using free of charge distros? (I don't think they took the risk)
Sometimes, when the software is for usual people but I think (and need) to make some money of it (with things like copies, support and banners).
The only thing that bothers me about FS is the lack of valorization of an original idea.
I may change a software and start to sell copies to get some money. Someone that doesn't help the community start to sell it also, just because it's a good opportunity.
As they have more marketing or a better price (because don't care about quality or don't need the money very much) they sell 10 times more than me.
Or I may create a new service (a website), but as I don't have a lot of marketing, money to host it always smooth or to pay a webdesigner. Someone with all that may start using it, offuscate my site, take all my customers, and I get nothing back.
Those are the only reasons that often desmotivate me to improve OSS (the first) or force me to close the source (the latter).
With valorization I don't mean making millions, just avoiding people making money of my product while I'm needing it (and think I deserve it more).
About the letter I think it's unuseful, as soon the kid get in the market he'll know it's harder to get money with OSS and that's not where the big money is.
There's a saying that goes: "If you are 20 and you aren't a communist you have no heart.", but it continues "if you are 30 and you still are a communist, you lack rationality".
It may be a translation issue, but the version I've always heard (and regurgitated) is: "If you're not a socialist at 20, you don't have a heart. If you're still a socialist at 30, you don't have a brain." As far as I know, this statement is attributed to Sir Winston Churchill (the KING of the clever soundbyte -- see sig), but I can't back that up with any sort of documentation because I'm really, really lazy.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Every time one of us develops oss without compensation, we hurt as many people as we help. The IBM's of the world are perfectly happy to use your open code to make money. Especially if they did not have to pay you to write it.
You don't get paid. Your local grocers, clothiers, and charities don't get paid either. The corporations have no incentive to create jobs in your locality, invest in your schools, or pay taxes to help with road repair. All the while, their profit margin grows.
Where does that money go? You aren't accepting funding, so the money can't be said to be helping to support oss. Is the money helping to support the poor or middle class of your community? Some of the middle class may have retirement funds which have invested in these corporations. Unfortunately once that money was turned over to a Fund, you and your community lost all say in how any corporation operates.
The only people benefitting from your altruism are those who hold large blocks of or options on the stock, and the end user who can count on a higher quality of software. In the end, you have created a net of less than zero for your your community.
You did not only export your labor without compensation, you have lessened the quality and amount of opportunity in your community. The next time you have an innovative idea for an oss implementation, form a core team and sell your team's services to an IBM. You get a contract and compensation. Those who want to make uncompensated contributions to the project get their fame, some experience, and the added utility they were needing.
You (and your community) don't have to wonder where the rent check is coming from next month. If you really want to be charitable, pick up an open sourced accounting package and an old pentium machine. Customize the package for a local food bank or community center and donate it to them.
OSS is not about having to form a commune to have shelter and sustenance.
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Buy sh*t, get chicks. Sharing is for suckers.
Is this guy the devil? Ah well, I guess they don't call it the rat race for nothing.
Anyway, the author seems to miss the obvious point that the free/open source software system pays off quite handsomely. For every 100 lines of code I write and share, there is a billion other lines of code free for me to use. Sounds like a good deal to me.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Sad:
It seems that he is speaking from his personal experience which comes from being caught in a position of financial stress and capital pressures (economic oppression). It is common to become cynical against others when you have been hurt and taken advantage of. We all go through experiences like this, but the trick is not to get caught in the oppressors net as the "it's everyone for themselves" mentality can end up exploiting you instead.
Angry:
I keep having to deal with this over and over again. Generally, people will not recognize systemic oppression and patronize/stereotype others to avoid an indepth analysis instead. Yes, I do a reasonable amount of "free" work and am relatively young, but I will charge him for the analysis instead of my code. His letter is dripping with ageism and classism, and at a certain point I have to say he should probably reflect within his reality than pigeon-hole politics in a coin slot. It's that analysis that will cost him money.
Response:
Other than the above, I think a healing process needs to take place. It takes a lot of time to break out of these negative class serving cycles. He may not realize it, but he is the one being exploited by corporations more than the young programmer.
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You know, right now, theories aside, I feel like a fool. I've been a major contributor to open source but I never looked at it this way..
.NET, here I come.
Only an "asshole" works for free.
Computers can do anything but ordinary people don't know that and companies use that fact to sell so many stupid "innovations" it makes me sick. SO, all it takes is look what relatively simple function costs a lot (anything cad related for example) and make free tool with easy interface, share it and then relax and enjoy.
Make the world feel the pain when everyone needs their income/food but reality, too many people, hits 'em back hard showing that markets saturate sooner when some people, like me, give key elements away for free. Hahhah. Take that.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
As an architect at a large Wall Street financial house, I typically review about 50-100 resumes per year. After finding this story, I would definitely *not* hire Clemens Vasters. So repulsed am I by this story, I will now urge my colleagues at other Wall St. financial firms to do the same. So busy is Mr. Vasters at defending some imaginary, Gatesian view of how technical software and people advance in big business, he misunderstands how we actually hire and make money. Mr. Vasters, I'm sorry to alert you -- and alert you for free, no less -- to the reality here in New York. Ask any Wall St. firm, ours included. Our strategic platform is *GNU* Linux. We have a great deal of Solaris, AIX, and some W2K infrastructure. But open source is already well established. Yes, the suits have bought it. But that means they actually want people -- *GNU people* -- who help them do this more. Your proprietary orientation is precisely what we farm out to India. I get three million resumes showing every skill imaginable, Java, C#, etc., largely from India and Russia. These resumes are highly crafted to show the supposed skills that we want. But these machine, business automaton products don't impress us (except when the person stands out from this mindless processing). Nor does your resume. I look at your .aspx service and I think, "what a shallow IT geek." And I say this as the technical lead of our Web Service strategy committee.
In contrast, people who have developed open source software show something important: that they actually care, and are in some way deeply interested in computers.
It shows they are invested in clean, publicly criticizable design.
This is who we want in IT departments. This is who we hire.
Money grubbers with overrated estimations of their own skills are a dime a dozen.
We leave them behind, I assure you.
I think I have already heard it somewhere...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
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 has summarised the lies which comprise this "strategy":
I have added emphasis to the points which specifically refute the bullshit quoted at top.
you had me at #!
But it doesn't have to be. Society already has established institutions for paying people to spend their lives producing information for the public good. The university system.
Free software should be a professional specialty within academia. There should be computer science professors and phD students whose mandate is not to discover only original results, but rather to implement known results well in the form of free software.
Structurally, the economics of free software production are identical to those of science. Both free software and scientific knowledge are "public goods". Once one person produces an piece of information, the marginal cost of reproducing the information is zero, and the knowledge becomes freely available to all. That is why the government finds it worthwhile to give money for the production of scientific knowledge.
Like science, the production of free software is a collaborative venture where publication is central. Like science, the system functions best when individual producers have a substantial amount of creative freedom to choose which projects to work on. Like science, it would be impractical for practitioners to do what is needed on their own, or in their spare time.
It is inefficient for society to reinvent the wheel in terms of funding free software. We shouldn't try to duplicate the university system by creating a separate ecology of free software organizations funding developers, and free software foundations making grants. Free software developers should be employed as professors in the university system.
I predict that the first university to appoint a professor of open source will quickly generate a flurry of publicity, and will, if they choose, become a hub for open source development. Such a move would be immensely attractive to students, as many computer science students intend to be industry programms, and would be better served by hands-on experience as a real team members in a real open-source project than by spending all their time on theory. The universities to appoint professors of open source will see their the quality and quantity of their applicants go way up. A second-tier university might be instantly transformed into a first-tier one, at least as far as the desirability of the computer science department goes.
This won't happen on its own. Although the economics are similar, free software is not research, and there is much competition in universities over what sort of professor to give open spots to. What is needed is a campaign to raise enough money to endow a new chair of computer science. This will be expensive (about a million dollars at the cheaper places). But if we as a community raised 100,000 EUR in just seven weeks to buy Blender, then surely we can raise ten times that amount over the course of a year. But we won't have to keep doing this indefinitely. After there are a couple of free-software professors, the movement will take on momentum in the academic community, and other universities will begin appointing professors with "free software" duties on their own in order to remain competitive.
I am considering starting a fund to collect donations for the endowment of a Chair of Free Software at some university. For the sake of compromise, I think it would be wise to allow the university to require that, beyond teaching, 50% of the professor's time be devoted to traditional computer science research, and 50% to free software efforts. Please let me know if you would be interested; my email can be found on my web page.
I am not a programmer and even if I would love to contribute to the one or other piece of free software, I do not really find the time. But here my little story:
I am an earthquake engineer and what I sell - my work - is no mystery at all and is not allowed to be. When I sell a finished product to a customer, e.g. a study on the seismic capacities of his building, I can't tell him "Hey, your building is fine. I won't tell you how I figured that out, you might steal my method." Everybody on the street will agree with him that this is not how it is supposed to be. Firstly because somebody should be able to check if I did the right thing - security reasons. And secondly, what I sell is not the way the study is done, even if I figured out something new that is better of equivalent to the existing ways of doing it. But I sell the specific study of HIS building. If he can find a cheaper guy he might buy from him. And now the best thing: You can find everything on civil engineering on the web and in books! No limitation! No mysteries.
What if programmers just became software engineers? And were allowed to tell how they did?
I'm expected to pay for everything
You aren't.
That's the whole point of Free Software.
theefer
money doesn't meassure value. money is something we use in the act of exchange but it doesn't meassure value. can't. value is a subjective term, unmeassurable by any objective mean. what money meassure's is price. now what is the right price for a piece of software? $100? $200? what piece of software are we talking about? there is NO objective way of saying what's the amount of money programmer should ask for writing software. it's a question of supply and demand(both are subjective terms). if he doesn't demand anything for his software (eg. supplies his software for free) it's as rational as demanding 1000 bucks for it. if for some reason, he doesn't want to get paid, it's his choice. saying that it's irrational is itself irrational.
"irrational" (first someone please define what exatly is rational) can be means to reach some goals, not goals themselves. if someone wants to earn money for a new car by giving away his software for free, then we can say that this is an irrational behaviour(probably, because we can't see all the consequences.thinking that we can is completely irrational). but that doesn't mean everybody writes software only to get something else for it. or that he does that all the time. or that "something for it" can be bought with money. for whatever reason someone gives away his program for free, it's his decision. it's his time, his computer, his knowledge, his decision. money isn't the only thing you are allowed to demand for your work. you would have to ask every programmer what was the goal he wanted to achive by giving away his code for free. if you do not know why they do it, then you can't really go around saying they shouldn't.
this letter deals solely with the aspect of programmers selling their programs to get money to help them achive their other goals. it completely ignores the fact that some do not see this as the only possibility. or that they know a way how to achieve their goals without directly selling their programs.
Author proves that he fits exactly that "If you are 20 and you aren't a communist you have no heart, but if you are 30 and you still are a communist, you lack rationality". he is in that group of 30 year old communists, who think they know that one objective truth and are going to force that belief onto the rest of us. they are those, who cant grasp the concept of different "truths" and different subjective values. he's the one saying this is right, and this is wrong and if you don't agree, you're irrational. he's completely ignorant of the fact that "value" depends on the view of every individual and there's no objective meassure that would allow us to compare them. he sees software from his point of view and argues that his view is the only right one and every other view is irrational. typical communist concept. rationality was a strong argument in the communist history of my country even though that rationality was completely irrational.
do what you want with your software. sell it if you want, write free software if you want. don't let anyone tell you, that he knows better than you what to do with your life.
"True, we could get bug fixes, more eyes on the code, blah blah blah... but at the end of the day, if a customer of mine can go and download my software, compile it themselves, and just say screw off to me and my licensing costs, what's my motivation?" @ Your motivation is yours to determine. If you want to make things OS, go for it, if you don't, DON'T. i make OS game material, i have no desire to get rich from it, and i like the idea of people using my work without having to shell out their hard earned money. Perhaps when you've made your fortune you might consider giving something back to the ppl who paid your rent and bought your food. It is an INDIVIDUAL choice to make/use OS products. i personally believe that every time someone gives of themselves, the world as a whole benefits, and the one doing the giving does as well. Are we in a Star Trek like world without greed and materialism? Nope... not yet. OS is a step in that direction. "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." @ Not all users will need that kind of support, only those who can't manage it on their own. "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." @ No, it is not even close to extortion. As i said, not everyone needs support. Plus there are plenty of ways of getting free support. No one using linux is obligated to buy support. Charging for support is not much different than charging for a new version of the Op Sys every other year, while leaving the software so buggy that it constantly must be updated, or that you have to hire ppl to maintain them or send your ppl to take classes to learn how to use the stuff. So let's not pretend that proprietary software makers are somehow noble or less incidious. Gates is a billionaire, linus is prolly not even a millionaire. " 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." @ But that is your choice to pay for that, and you no doubt pass that on to your customers. The OS ideals are not about the present, but rather the future, not what IS, but what SHOULD BE. If linux distro's aren't pretty enough today, they will be soon. If they don't have that 10% yet, they will someday. But it is not your place to tell OS developers how to use their time, nor theirs to tell you what to charge. @ The cost of the software is relevant in some cases. The US Gov't sends $10B to bill gates each year to keep up on software. Imagine instead next year they spend $1B on training ppl to use some free linux, and OpenOffice. Maybe even $1B to make a free and open linux or totall new Op Sys and then give that away. After a few years the gov't has converted and ppl are trained and used to it. TCO goes way down. That 10 becomes 1 or 2 billion a year. Let's be pessimistic and say... $5B a year in training and upkeep. That $5B left over each year can be spent on schools, universities, health care, research, going to mars, new bombers, soap for hippies, or maybe even given back to the ppl who earned it. "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!" @ No one asked you to do so, nor should they. It YOUR choice. The people who make OS products do so because they love the challenge, they like the idea of doing something to benefit others (think of it as volunteer work), and most importantly, they have an eye toward the future.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
this guy is missing the point... I mean, what he says is true, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the idea of open-source is flawed - perhaps its actually the monetary system? all his point says is that the one doesn't support the other, and then takes the assumption that the monetary system should prevail, merely because its been around longer.
how long did humanity believe that the earth was flat before chris showed em whats what? does the <u>age</u> of an idea make any difference as to its correctness?
sometimes an idea's age is a product of its correctness in most situations, like newtonian physics. But then there comes situations which no longer fit - (google the fact that mercury's orbit isn't described by newtonian physics, but needs the intervention of einsteinian relativity to plot it properly) - and this is where the old idea needs to be not thrown out, but de-emphasized, for a new one that does work.
open source is this, IMHO. All we need to do now is work out how to <u>effectively</u> distribute resources other than software in a manner that emulates the open source movement, and we'd be set.
Handyboard Hackers' Resource Guide
The programmers who provided the software for Google may not make money from Google but they and the rest of us get the best search engine on the planet for free.
They don't get money but we all get a service.
Aquiring a service, personal satisfaction, peer recognition, saving money, audience driven feature set, aquiring new skills... These are all good and valid reasons for people to contribute to open source. It can co-exist quite happily with payware and I can't see why it should be a problem.
Barf
"You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless because it is (i) closed source, (ii) people need to pay for it and (iii) that companies charging for software are evil anyways - especially Microsoft." (My numbering to separate out the threads of the argument).
So we are talking about both senses of "free" here, together with a more generalised argument about the ethics of charging for software. Seems to me that the rest of the letter obsesses on (ii)and doesn't really address the other two issues. The basic argument held up is "What's in it for me?" with the only real measure of value being money.
There are a number of rhetorical questions and assumptive questions which don't necessarily hold water. Their aim is to guide the reader towards a particular conclusion rather than to approach the initial arguments objectively. The general thrust is "You are going to be like me someday - don't piss in the pool".
Let's take some statements in turn:
1. "I start to wonder what your benefit is... Fame? To found a career? Come on."
It seems to me that there are other (better) ways to benefit. I have just recently been reading 'Cathedral/Bazaar' and it's interesting that it's stated twice in the 'rules' that good software comes from "scratching a personal itch". If the software is an end in itself, putting your time and energy into it doen't necessarily need any other reward. If this doesn't convince, maybe there are other ways in which you'll benefit which aren't considered in the letter. Experience? Fun? It is possible to do something for selfish reasons without being paid. Add to that that there are many who see their work as giving something back to the community which has provided them with something for free. And add to that again that there are those prepared to give their time over and above what they may 'owe' so that free software moves forward, this being an end to them in itself.
2. "The whole fame thing you are telling me about only works amongst geeks. The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar... doesn't care."
I don't agree. Increasingly, 'geeks' are getting noticed. Free software is getting noticed. You guys are at the leading edge of what the rest of the world is waking up to. The use of the word 'geek' here holds its perjorative sense high and the implication is that the worlds of geeks and "good looking, intelligent girls" can't overlap. That's just not true anymore (if ever it really was).
3. "You need to get a job that pays"
True. But not exactly counter to work in free software is it? In fact, experience in free software projects might even be an asset in this.
Damn. Lunchbreak and running out of time. More to follow....
I have made software still in use by Fortune 500 companies. They made money (millions and million and millions of dollars) and continue to make money from that software, but I don't.
if the companies were treating programmers better... acted like they cared about them and their families and their future(!) like we are supposed to care about those things (and thus not make free software), then there probably would not be a problem.
Who is going to screw us quicker... corporations and outsourcing, or Free Software. At least with Free Software we end up with tools we can build to make solutions.
I cannot use any proprietary code I've made, not libraries, not anything.
And I'm not complaining, I was paid an agreed sum and then some for my commercial work... just saying.
-pyrrho
Of course your company is happy to exploit the labor of *GNU people*. Why pay for software when idealistic children will write it for you for free?
"After finding this story, I would definitely *not* hire Clemens Vasters"
.aspx service and I think, "what a shallow IT geek."
What story?
I look at your
What ".aspx service" ?
Am i missing something?
Mr.Architect - you should see a doctor. You need an urgent help. I'm serious.
Not to worry! I'm pretty sure Clemens would never dream of working for you. Except for a big pile of money of course. He isn't cheap for a good reason. Alas, a reason you completely fail to realize. You are the prototype of the suit (albeit a 'technical one') who doesn't have a clue about software development. You think in your narrow minded head that all developers are equal and just sit around poking in codes like the rest of them. But, fortunately, one day, you will understand it. That's the day your system will crash and you will suddenly have lost money! That day you will understand why a guy like Clemens is paid a big pile of money to make sure that never happens. The 16 year old geek you've hired to poke in the codes for a burger and a coke does not have a clue either, yet! Rest assured that many of your coleagues in wall street (who cares anyway?) have understood these things, and ridiculing yourself in public like that won't help you in the long run. >It shows they are invested in clean, publicly >criticizable design This line shows you haven't got ANY clue what you are talking about. > We leave them behind, I assure you Oh, my. What a blunder. Pretty soon you'll be hopelessly behind. >And I say this as the technical lead of our Web >Service strategy committee LOL, what the heck is that!? Get real!
I can say with great confidence that the IT industry as a whole sees you as the ignorant person you are!
:-)
It must be a case of the blind leading the blind at your company!
Obviously Clemens posted his letter on the net to obtain validation. However, I do not provide free validation. Until he pays me for validation, I will not validate his position.
As he says:
"How much is that worth? Nothing? Think again."
Actually, I think I should get $1000.
Without his putting his money where is mouth is, I consider his ideas to be worthless.
I do agree with some of the stuff you have to say, but I have no idea what your point is?
Cover your eyes and click this link!