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Is The Lone Coder Dead?
CyNRG writes "The little guy. The one-person software company. Can it still exist today? That's me. I'm once again, after many years, writing my own commercial software to sell. A few things have changed: the patent feeding frenzy. This is my main concern. My perception is that one must verify that you don't infringe on any patents when developing new cool software, and that the explosion of patents granted by the USPTO has reached epic proportions. If this perception is true, then that makes it almost impossible for the Lone Coder to create something new that doesn't infringe on other patents. The amount of money required to perform the due diligence research seems like it would be greater than the amount of money needed to develop the software, or even the total revenues that the software could ever generate. Please someone tell me I'm wrong!" Is he?
Yeah ... particularly if they have the letters "Esq." after their name. Seriously, when the Great Collapse of 2047 comes, and human civilization falls and we revert to barbarism ... who do you think will
be first on the list? Doctors aren't particularly popular anymre, but we'll still need them, but there a number of groups of people that will be lunchmeat.
"Hey you! What did you do before the Fall?"
"I was a lawye...{thud}"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Coward my ass.
YOU stake your life's savings on an idea and build a profitable company from scratch.
My guess is you'll choose to keep cringing in your little cubicle instead, waiting for the day your job is outsourced to India thanks to the magical cost benefits of collaborative open source code.
>Does redhat care about open source? No. It's just
>a means to an end.
Good thing the 'means' was put together by a bunch of kids giving out their labor for free. Who received payment at the IPO? Certainly not the coders who put the backbone of all those spiffy tools together.
Open source code is put together by those who don't know the value of their work.
I'm sure you'll have all the time in the world to work on free open source projects once your job is gone. Who needs a paycheque when Open Source Solves All Problems?