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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?
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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'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.
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.
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
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.
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
"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 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
"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
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
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 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.
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
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.
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?"
Proprietary software prefer a "call by value" scheme, while F/OSS use the "call by name".
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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 ?
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... :-)
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
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
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.
Maybe you have the best job on Earth, where every programming assignment given to you is fresh and invigorating. Or maybe you shoot cocaine. Or maybe, you haven't worked as a programmer a day in your life. Yeah, that's what I'm guessing.
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.)
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
First of all, I offer these counterarguments to his premise that open source cannot make money: IBM,RedHat,Novell,MySQL,O'Reilly Publishing,Yahoo,Google, etc etc etc
IBM makes money off of hardware and support. They also make lots of money off their non-OSS solutions. They are also quite large. They do release a big of OSS but they support whole systems that you buy from them (combined hardware/software) and their hardware isn't OSS.
RedHat finally started making a little money recently. I haven't seen their numbers for the whole of last year.
O'Reilly seems to sell a lot of books (which are intellectual property and copyrighted and not open for free distribution) but they do have some online and you can download some.
I haven't seen where I can download the source to Yahoo/Google's search engines or other software that they wrote. Perhaps they are consumers of OSS and make money via advertisements, but they aren't producing any OSS that I've seen.
etc etc etc... You mentioned some large groups and the only two that I've seen are MySQL which isn't GPL (you have to pay for their software in many situations, just most don't pay) and RedHat, which as far as I know are struggling.
The only difference with OSS and closed source software is that you have the option of paying or not with OSS. IF you supported OSS, you'd pay for support instead of just leeching. Closed source software just requires you to pay for support up front. In the end, there is little, if any, difference other than the ability to leech from the system in the case of OSS.
- 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.
It's like saying a professional caterer will loose his job if he cooks once a week at the Salvation army.
stupid.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed, I've been saying it for years now. Why exactly would I work for free and give away my time to corporations who are here to make a profit? I'm expected to pay for everything, why shouldn't everyone else?
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.
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.
I'm not familiar with QT -- but if a company didn't need to put it into a closed-source project, it would still be free-as-in-beer, no?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Yeah, because young guys hate meaningless relationships and sex. I am sure those guys were going to bars with their lab coats on to find their one true love. Give me a break.
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.
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
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.
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
I just finished typing a reply to another poster...you might find it somewhere below if you will.
My question to all you romantics there is this: what's stopping you from coding software to your heart's content and giving it away for free or next to nothing WITHOUT having to call companies and individuals that want to charge others much more to buy it?
Do your thing, let Microsoft and other companies sell their software for their exorbitant prices.
If the general public doesn't like MS' prices, they'll stop buying from MS. After all, you are giving them an alternative aren't you?
On what basis are you passing a value judgement on them insinuating they are "Evil". I mean "you" here as the proponents of open-source.
You may not want a house right now with kids and a dog and a fence, but when you DO want it, or for the other people that do want to live that kind of life (and I surely hope you aren't going to say that is wrong too, cos it really is nobody's business how other people live...I'm not telling you how you should live) it should be clear that no amount of geek fame is going to get you those things...only money will. While I fully believe that money is not the be-all and end-all of life, it has it's importance and that's a substantial reason for our studying and working.
So you're free to LOVE the spirit of open-source software...I just don't think it's necessary to clamor for the entire world converting to OS.
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
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.
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!
This is...
O
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Stop with open source?
Behold, my confused fellow...
Cluestick upside head.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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...
> 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!
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
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"
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.
"Free software" = Read "FREE SPEECH" not "free beer".
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.
-------
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
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.
"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
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.
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....
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Wow, it's so clear now. Thank you, Mr. Clemens !
>|<*:=
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.
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).
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?
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.
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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.
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a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Employer: "Next!"
Candidate #2: "Hi. I wrote Samba."
Employer: "Welcome aboard Mr Tridgell!"
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.
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 #!
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?