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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.
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?
I'm a first year engineer at the University of Virginia contemplating computer engineering, and I find this man's letter truly appalling.
I use a mixture of open-source (free) and commercial (some free, some not) software here at school and at home, and I can honestly say that there's a lot I can't do without free open-source and commercial software.
If I had to pay for every piece of software I ever used, I would be tens of thousands of dollars deep in debt...just so some of the top execs at Microsoft, Symantec, AOL, etc. can "make money."
In the future, I'll be writing software too, and I wholeheartedly disagree with your letter. There's more to life than just money. There are a lot of average people out there who just can't afford to pay the exorbitant pricing that some *cough* Symantec *cough* (at least MS is helpful enough to let you buy genuine used, older versions of their software) companies charge.
To every open-source developer out there: thank you! You've helped a lot of people!
To Mr. Clemens Vasters: stfu. Under your reasoning, there are a lot of things that shouldn't be free...
I think that "Young Programmer" got a good point against Open-Source. I think he is right, especially you spend about $100000(US Dollar) in college education for a Computer Science degree.
So software codes should not be free because people make a great effort in creating them.
If people want software to be free, I think they don't have any college education and they are only idealists.
A spectre is haunting the world, the spectre of the Linux zealot.
What the Linux zealot is will appear evident to whoever has experienced or came in contact with the discussions which daily rage the Web disguised as news, e-mails, reference material, etc. The Linux zealot, is nothing but an animal wandering unceasingly in virtual and true reality (which moreover he treats in the same way) claiming to be an authority on the Linux operating system, an out-and-out guarantor for everyone's freedom, opposed to any safeguard of intellectual works (for a Linux zealot, the expression "copyright" is tantamount to sin against the Holy Spirit: there is no kind of expiation); in fact, he champions software freedom as a fundamental point for world evolution.
But first and foremost, the Linux zealot is a deeply dangerous being as he claims to be the guardian of truth, and sees with suspicion (when it goes off well) or scorn (for the rest of cases, i.e. most of them) those people who simply think differently from him.
But what's Linux? A Linux zealot will never give an authentic answer to this kind of question. He won't, not because he doesn't want to (even if this is the case), but because this question has been answered already, somewhere else by someone else. Linux is nothing but an operating system. The Linux zealot will claim that it is a different operating system from all others. But this is not the case. Because an OS is an OS, its main function is to manage the resources of a machine we will call "computer" from now on, for comfort of description. By the term "computer" we mean what is commonly meant by this expression, i. e. the system of hardware resources which are fixed to a certain purpose, be it home use, business use, or server management. Linux is an operating system. Like Windows, MS-DOS, OS/2, etc. There is no difference, in this sense, between Linux and other operating systems. Linux manages a computer, no more, no less. So do MS-DOS, Windows and OS/2. What the Linux zealot self-importantly and arrogantly highlights, is the fact that Linux is a free operating system, i.e., it is made available free of charge to the end user. This of course isn't true at all, but the Linux Zealot believes it. Linux is freely distributable, not free of charge. This means that the kernel and everything included in the operating system's minimal requirements can be freely distributed, not that they must be distributed free of charge. This is the first great misapprehension of the Linux zealots, who find their claim challenged by facts: if the essential parts which make the operating system, and some additional software, are freely distributable, they should explain the reason of the costs -- not prohibitive but certainly notable -- of the most popular Linux distributions, Red Hat and SuSE foremost. And most of all, they should explain the fact that companies like Red Hat are regularly listed on the stock exchange, and Mr. Linux Torvalds enjoys a rather high standard of living. These benefactors of mankind, these software alternatives, these computer non-conformists (so much non-conformist as to be terribly conformist in their non-conformism) naturally justify the distributing companies' profits with excuses like "but there's a printed manual", "but the bundled software is qualitatively and numerically superior compared to the most popular distribution". "but it is easier to install" and other unspeakable nonsense. "On the other hand" they say "if someone wants Linux, they can just as easily download it from the Internet". Sure. Download it from the Internet. But how long must you stay connected, if you regularly pay an Internet bill, to complete the download of an updated version of a decent distribution of an operating system? So what? Is Linux free? No. Linux is not free, same as nothing downloaded from the Internet is free, unless you have access to an University server or can in whatever way scrounge a connection. If you ask a Linux zealot to burn the material you are interested in, he will do so with great d
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.
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.
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.
What the hell else could you draw from this statement other than chics only dig money?!
I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying that I'm only going to listen to the opinions of people in this thread who use open source as a sustainable income source (working for Red Hat counts). I'm not saying that those people don't exist, nor am I saying that it's an invalid business model. But I'm not going to pay attention to the naive, idealistic opinions of someone who has never needed to support him or herself.
That's right, all you GPL zealots are hippies. Internet hippies! Damn you all, damn you all to Hell. Mua hahaha!
/Hippie has defeated look on face
Obligatory quote from Futurama (slightly modified):
[Hippie]: "You can't like OWN software man"
[Prof Farnsworth]: "I can, but that's because I'm not a pennyless hippie!"
This is...
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I think it's the part where he can't smoke dope in an alley a few blocks off from the quarterly anti-WTO protest.
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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.
Everytime Bill Gates looks in the mirror he sees Bill Gates looking back. Also he spends a lot of time with Steve Balmer.
Either of those things mean you can claim to be in a living hell.
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".
All these stupid Linux arses are just making IBM make more money - and they do it for free.
They complain about outsourcing and Microsoft at the same time and wonder why they are getting no love back. Because they are all think they are being clever, and want to be part of a revolution, not realising the end result of their revolution - communism does not work, and in the long term, other than as an academic pursuit, after all these idiots have been fucked up the arse by big corporates, hopefully they will realise this.