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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?
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...
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 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.
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.
Your post shows a clear misunderstanding of the software industry and what coders do. The vast majority of coders in the world aren't working on off the shelf software, which by and large Open Source/FOSS software replaces. Most work on bespoke applications for business. I have worked on perhaps 10 different software projects, only one of which had the aim of producing an off the shelf package (which failed to sell by the way), all the others were bespoke projects.
This is where most coders work, this is where most of the money is (unless you happen to write windows or office) and this is why Windows so dominates the desktop environment, because MS made it easy for people to create bespoke applications.
People will write free operating systems and database engines and paint programs, but if I want a bespoke package written to my spec to run my company then I have to pay for it, and that's where coders make their money.
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.
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.
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
Please name a couple of restaurants that were opened AFTER giving away recipes. You're living in a dream world.
Ok, I'll rattle off a few: Elaines, Wolfgang Puck's Spago, Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, Commander's Palace...want more? Let me know.
But please, you MUST know that a recipe is only one part of a meal at a restaurant...it's also the way it's prepared, WHO prepares it and what could be substituted at what it goes with etc etc.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
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 -
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.
if an open source / free (cost) solution does what your expensive product does, count yourself out of a job.
So what you're saying is that if you charge for your product, you'll get no sales because someone else does the same thing for free? And if you don't charge for your product, you'll earn nothing and starve? Nice, a lose-lose situation!
How about starting out writing OSS (instead of shuffling burgers or doing tech support) and when you're built some experience and reputation either start charging for support/book deals/customizations or accept a reasonably well-paid job coding for money and keep doing OSS on the side? I don't see Linus starving...
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
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
"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.
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?
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.
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 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 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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I agree, what I meant by 'put some hurt on the Microsoft juggernaut' was 'gain market share in the corporate workplace.'
... but the 600 consumers could give a fsck about the refreshment 'holy war' going on between the two stew's - they just want something to drink with ice in it.
Overall the numbers of OSS developers with regard to consumers is analogous to two stewardesses on a transAtlantic 747-400. Serving drinks to 600 people. Twice. Those two can argue about whether bottled water is better because it is free and everybody knows what is in it, or Pepsi is better because of all the R&D that goes into it, or Jack Daniels is better because it is America's favorite and Pepsi is an evil corporation
IBM, Novell, Apple, and to a lesser extend RedHat - what these companies are offering is not OSS for the emotional well being of the customers, nor OSS so the customer can have the source, nor even a PR boost with the OSS crowd. IBM, Novell, to a lesser extent Apple and to a much lesser extent RH are offering a complete end to end business solution that a company can implement, satisfy 100% of their business needs, run the software they need to run in order to run a business. A chunk of that is the desktop and Linux on the desktop with OpenOffice is something they can directly make changes to (ie, have source to) in order to be a best fit solution for a large company's needs. In is only part of the solution, however, with big back ends supplied by IBM or Novell doing back end processing of business stuff (this is where they make the big bucks, IBM in particular.)
In addition to shaving $500 a seat (bulk subscription costs of MS operating system and office suite) in order to move those funds into the development and implementation of a customer's back office, if I had to guess they are going with Linux as the desktop component (Novell, IBM) because they will then have control front to back of the entire business environment in order to better make a complete solution work. And that is what they are betting corporate America (etc..) will pay big money for down the road.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
> 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
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!
"Free software" = Read "FREE SPEECH" not "free beer".
The ironic thing is that the author of the letter realizes this, as he talks about the program he wrote exclusively for use in his father's business. Open-sourcing that would have had very little effect on his total revenue, as he would be payed just for developing the program in the first place. His mistake (or one of them) is that he somehow thinks that everything businesses need already exists today. In fact, there are quite a few in-house applications that businesses need, and allowing external sources to contribute to and use their code will increase the benefit to the businesses and the original programmer, rather than decreasing it.
"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....
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.
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.
Wow, it's so clear now. Thank you, Mr. Clemens !
>|<*:=
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?