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Open Source is Not a Career Path
codermarc writes ""If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career path, you're doing something wrong." It's not that Linux creator Linus Torvalds thinks open-source programmers should work for peanuts (he doesn't), but rather that they should be properly motivated. Call it software with a soul, if you like. Only the truly passionate need apply."
This is so untrue... Novell now certifies "Linux Experts"
That applies to almost any job if you want to do well. Remember all the faux-geeks that went to school during the dot-com-bomb for the money? Those are the ones now working the help desk in their late 20's/early 30's or doing crap work for a 5 PC shop (assuming they're still working in the geek biz)
Trolling is a art,
So I've wasted my life?
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
AFTER THE QUALITY GOES IN...
After all, paying people to write software hasn't exactly given us bulletproof and easy to use products...why NOT have people write code because they like to.
what am I saying? software is the only paychek I ever had!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I know several people who've got good jobs specifically because they had experience on OSS projects.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I don't see open source as an entire career per se, but rather as a sort of means to an end. Developing open source is a great way to augment your career, to get your name "out there", and to give something back to the community. Being an open source developer gets you recognition, and recognition can get you business from people, organizations, or businesses that need closed source software. That's how I see things, anyway. Not a whole career, but a viable part of a career.
Also remember that some open source developers are// paid and do make a career out of it.
Hey, do you mean the lusty robots?
The only reason to get into this game is because you like to play. If you are looking to advance in your career or make a lot of money, you have got the completely wrong idea. If that's your goal, go to school and get an MBA and then work on becoming a business person. Otherwise, play, rock, compute!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
[Site was already beginning to slow down. Text reproduced in case of full /.ing]
Open Source is Not a Career Path
"If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career path, you're doing something wrong." It's not that Linux creator Linus Torvalds thinks open-source programmers should work for peanuts (he doesn't), but rather that they should be properly motivated. Call it software with a soul, if you like. Only the truly passionate need apply.
That's the message Torvalds and several other open-source luminaries have for the next generation of programmers. "A career path is not a motivation," Torvalds said during Tuesday's Open Source Development Lab's enterprise Linux summit. A reluctant visionary, (he blushed a shade of bright red during an intro that mentioned his inclusion in Time Magazine's list of most influential people) Torvalds is nonetheless passionate about his life's work, an open-source operating system that has blossomed into a major force in the technology world.
The future of open-source software depends upon bright, motivated programmers filled with ideas and initiative rather than programmers promoting their own, or their employer's, self interests. It's a concept that has been embraced by many but is nonetheless counterintuitive to an entire generation of programmers conditioned to view code (rather than the code's problem-solving capabilities) as a competitive advantage.
Times are changing, and the developer community needs to get with the times, said Brian Behlendorf, who shared Tuesday's OSDL keynote with Torvalds, Mitch Kapor, founder and chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation, lead Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton, and OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen. Behlendorf, chief technology officer of CollabNet Inc. and a founder of the Apache open source project, pointed out that the traits that make for a successful open source developer are different from what makes for a successful proprietary developer.
"In open source, you have to be a better communicator and to be able to defend yourself," Behlendorf said. He added that a thick skin also is a requirement when laying bare one's work for all the world to see and criticize. "There's not a lot of room for prima donnas."
StrayByte.Net
a) dumb, not funny
b) not true anyway
c) FOAD
When I went to uni there were a lot of people who were taking the IT degree to "learn how to program" so they could "make big bucks". Much the way law students take up law to join a law firm. Well sorry, software development isn't a summer training course. You need to actually feel some passion for the subject. I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer when I was 7 years old. I learnt to program in assembler when I was 9. That's the kind of drive you should have for your work, otherwise go do an MBA and become a manager.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What a sad day for news for nerds when this tripe hits the front page.
I think there is plenty of "career path" in Open Source if you approach it as a "service industry." Well, basically I think that software development is dead as an industry, OpenSource or no, except for the "service industry" angle. People who try to make software into a "invention" that pays out long after it has been written are IMO fooling themselves.
Anyway, there are other good reasons to do open source. My current one is perhaps a little more "real world" than those I have had before:
USCVprogs
Someone had to do it.
This is like saying that you shouldn't build model trains unless you are motivated to do it. Poppycock.
Doing anything for pay is a great way to guide your career. Here's the thing: You never know what the next step will lead to. That's really essential.
I was reading about a guy in Ohio who married a Japanese exchange student. They were dirt poor, he was only, through odd jobs, able to bring home about $100 a month. They lived in his parents' basement and it was really a terrible life.
So his wife suggested that he and she move to Kyoto, where she is from, and she could have better job prospects and he could work as an English teacher. They moved and actually did fairly well in Japan.
Then he decided to follow a "career path" and started his own English school. It failed, miserably. They were forced to move further out into the countryside of Japan.
Out in the country, there was less demand for English teachers, but the wife was able to make enough to survive on.
The husband was experienced in some carpentry since he worked a little with his father in Ohio building houses and furniture. So he built a house for the family out in the countryside of Japan. Very Western. Next thing you know, his neighbors are asking him to build houses and furniture and to redecorate homes in Western style.
Well, if he had followed his career path, then he'd be flat broke and living on the streets of Ohio or Kyoto. But because he was flexible, he was able to find a way to make money and support his family.
There is no such thing as a "career path" except for people with very narrow minds.
Ironically, the open source developers who developer "for free" in their spare time are, in a way, under-cutting their cousins who are getting paid to develop software for a living.
Like if a bunch of mechanics openned a garage after work and fixed cars for free, wouldn't that hurt the income of the mechanics who are open for business in their off-shift?
Just saying -- hopefully the effect will be to force companies to produce better and more innovative commercial software, but I feel sorry for the poor Borland employee who lost his job because his buddy is working on Eclipse after hours.
Just saying,
Sam
Do what you love and love what you do. If you don't like it, then you're in the wrong career. If you don't like programming as a job and prefer to something else for a living then do that. OSS for me (not for others) is about writing code that I am proud of period. That's it. I don't seek some reward or recogition. If someone finds what I write useful, that's a bonus, but frankly that's not my motivation. More often than not, I am forced to code crap because some manager thinks X should be done in Y time. Luckily, my current job isn't that way and I get to make code reliable and well tested.
Fact: Both space organizations used pencils at first, but pencils have problems because if you little bits of graphite floating in the air, you've got a problem.
And space pens were, in fact, not developed by NASA, but were instead developed by an independent developer.
Source.
(I suppose I shouldn't reply to this, but whatever. It's always good to get the truth out there.)
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Sounds like someone posted this to start an open sores flame war....The people that I know who use opensource the most are ones that program web ui's for business. They use opensource tools like apache MySql and php because it is just plain better. Not to mention the fact that they do not have to continually get hosed by update, security and license costs. Making money and getting work with opensource is easy compared to being forced to eat the crumbs of the big guys.
In fact it is a career path
Involvement with popular open source packages is very impressive. Being able to say to your employer "I added feature _______ to project ________" is one way to put something unique on your resume before you graduate college. It's worth double if the employer knows the product, and tripple if they use that feature.
IMHO that's important. It is a career path. It's not a career (except for a few lucky souls). There are a few who make a living off of it (Mozilla hackers for MoFo, IBM, SUN, Google, Novell), RedHat, etc. That is a career.
But to say it's not a career path... that's a boatload of BS. It's been a career path for many individuals.
Not to mention it's one of the greatest learning experiences. I think I've learned more from open source than any class. Much more.
Programming open source, releasing your code, is something you should do for your own enjoyment. There have been a number of cases of developers becoming disillusioned because their open source project failed to generate them any money, or got forked off into something else that became more popular. As disconcerting as that can be, it is a natural result of releasing your code under a license that allows such things. If you want control, if you want to be guaranteed money, then you should license your code accordingly.
Open source code is about scratching your own itch, doing what interests you (and potentially no one else), and the pleasures of problem solving associated with writing software. Yes, some open source projects have resulted in success for their developers because it turned out that what that person was interested in writing was somethign that a lot of people were interested in using. In the end though, almost all the really successful open source coders are people who did what they wanted to do for their own reasons. People who are passionate and interested in what they're coding (an advantage an open source coder has, being able to code whatever interests them) are far more likely to write good code than those disinterested in their projects, which has helped make some open source projects highly successful, but it is no guarantee of success or popularity.
The advantage of open source from the developers perspective is that they have the opportunity to do exactly what they want to do, exactly what interests them. The disadvantage is that what interests you may very well be of interest to very few others.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If your a unix geek and want to make money, write for Mac OS X.
Mac OS X: Unix with paying customers.
I agree that it's important to have open source programmers be people who really love the technology and want to innovate and contribute to the project. The thing about the article that confused me though was that it gives the impression that there are hoards of programmers jumping on the OSS bandwagon hoping to make a quick buck, but I don't really see that in my experience.
Still being in school, I see a LOT of people who went into computers just to make a quick buck, all of them are very strong microsoft advocates.
Are there people who go into OSS just to make a buck? from what I've seen, people who are primarily interested in money are also huge proprietary software supporters, sort of like if the only thing you care about is money, you can't imagine anyone else coding for the love of it, and therefore can't imagine F/OSS being any good at all.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
d) PROFIT!!
Wow. The next time someone rags on me for being a Steve Jobs fanboy I'm going to pass the buck to Linus Torvalds, the "Software Hippie."
Sheesh. Maybe Linus and Steve should work together?
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
In growing economies open source may be useful for getting you in the door after college. Once you're in the door or in a declining economy open source will cost you. Managers resent employees who are more visible than they are. Other programmers resent you for upstaging them in public. While everyone who programs free software in college can be considered doing it for the credentials, anyone still doing it after college
is probably doing it for themself.
...and by extension, business software is only as popular as it is easy to support. If it weren't for the people who don't code, the ones who just run the systems, and who do make some money at it, Open Source would not be as dominant in the server market.
So while I see his point, you're right -- it's from a narrow persective. Developers like Linus aren't the ones that get approached when the rubber hits the road, maintainers are. He may look at less famous developers than himself and see little chance of them making money off their work (or less chance of them developing something decent because they are expecting to), and he may be right. He's looking at the wrong group of people, though.
Someone had to do it.
Well, I used to be a graphics designer until the dot-bomb implosion. I was left with unemployment or entry-level in a new career. After a year and a half, I chose IT. My choices were Windows or Unix. I chose Unix/Linux because it seemed that there were too many MCSEs and A+ certifications flooding the market and I had been "playing" with Linux for a couple of years. I went back to school, got a Unix SysAdmin Certification.
Currently, I work for a commercial software company that creates Linux specific software. I make a good living, I enjoy my job and I sleep well at night.
The idea that choosing OSS or Linux as a career path has worked for me. If I didn't look at it that way and took the MS path, I would probably still be "playing" with Linux and have to spend all day removing spyware from Windows boxes. No thanks.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
What is with this samzenpus character? Using an RSS feed, Ive had many duplicate news items due to small corrections like a full stop after the article title. The spam article had 3 corrections = 3 news items, with nothing more changed than a couple punctuation marks.
sigh.
I.O.U One Sig.
An old man was fired from his janitorial government job of 30 years when a new hotshot manager discovered he could not read or write.
Walking home through the city after his last day, he really wanted a smoke, but could not find a place selling cigarettes. So, he took what little money he had and opened a small cigarette stand on that street.
People bought cigarettes from him. He opened another one. And he opened another one. Finally, he had too much money to keep under his mattress and went to the bank.
The banker was impressed at all the money he had earned considering he was not literate. The banker says to the old man "imagine where you could have been if you knew how to read and write." The old man replied, "I don't have to imagine, I would have still been a janitor."
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Sure, it's a great path, as long as you go in as a CONSULTANT ($$$). Otherwise, it will always remain as a part time job (unless you work at Sun or IBM though
Fundamentally complex fields demand workers who are interested in their work... at least on the macro level.
It strikes a sore spot in software people, because they know that they are competing with passionateless people for the same jobs, and being sized up as one and the same by their peers every day.
Open Source programming is also art which takes a special motivated individual to find a demand for their art.
Horsepuckey.
It all depends on what having an "Open Source Career" means to you.
I write database-driven weblications with Linux/Apache/PostgreSQL/PHP. I get plenty of opportunities to contribute to the OSS community, (and I do) typically by providing documentation.
I don't primarily make my living actually writing OSS code, but I frequently release libraries and codebases I consider "commodity". I help out other people.
I contribute to email lists, online forums, etc. and use Open Source software as a platform to provide services for small to mid-size organizations.
No career in OSS? PFFFT!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Anyway, there are other good reasons to do open source.
To avoid things like this.
Yes but the car pool will be safer and more fuel efficient benefitting the society in general more than it hurt the mechanics.
You point is valid though just too narrowly argued
Help fight continental drift.
I kinda always saw open source development as the coder's version of an internship to a real job. No way to find a job in the field these days unless you know someone...or you have prior experience...so how do you get experience if you need experience to get more experience...write code for free.
No. It's the career path.
Why Open Source Software is Bad for the Software Development Industry
Introduction
This paper will discuss Open Source Software (OSS) and its detrimental effect on the software industry. In particular, OSS devalues the software market and thus has a direct impact on the value of the individual software developer, the traditional software development vendor, and also reduces the innovation of the software development industry by limiting the amount of capital that can be spent on research and development.
Open Source Software
Open Source Software (OSS) is defined as a software product where access to the full source code is available to anyone, and includes the right to modify and redistribute the source code. OSS has had a long history in the software industry, however has been mostly limited to software to service the technical community. Recently, OSS has made inroads in the commercial, non-technical areas. Today, Open Source variants of common software packages such as word processors, web browsers, databases, and graphics toolsets are available from a variety of sources.
The Negative Impact of OSS
The impact of OSS is felt throughout the software development industry. Such software is widely distributed via the Internet and is usually made available for zero, or near zero, cost to the end user. The net result is a devaluation of software in financial terms and a loss of valuable revenue streams which drive research and development and innovation in the software development industry.
Many OSS packages are simply designed to be "drop-in" replacements of the corresponding closed source applications and simply copy the "look and feel" and the interface elements of the closed source equivalents. Although these replacement packages do not typically offer the feature set of their closed source counterparts, they usually are regarded as "good enough" by most end-users due to their low acquisition costs. This low (usually zero) cost simply drives down the market value of all applications in that class. This seems to be a good thing for the end user, as it reduces the near term capital outlay to acquire functional software packages, however it has a much more dire effect on the long-term viability of the software industry.
OSS alternatives usually appear after a successful commercial package appears on the market. These OSS copies will leverage the results of the large R&D investments made by the closed source vendors, and eliminates or severely reduces the need for the OSS producers to make similar investments in R&D. Even if the OSS copy does not provide the full functionality of the closed source offering, it will typically offer "good enough" value to the end user with low-end needs. This serves to eliminate any revenue potential for that segment of the market. You can see the effect of this most prominently in the web server area. Since there is at least one OSS web server package freely available, most users can choose to deploy an OSS variant of the software instead of choosing a closed source shrink-wrapped software package. This has served to eliminate many commercial closed source companies from the web server market. Those few that remain either have very deep funding from some other source, or serve very specialized segments of the market where an OSS alternative has not appeared yet. The long-term effect of this pressure on the low end of the market is to severely reduce the revenue necessary to produce new innovative products. Since these OSS offerings are also typically direct copies of the closed source product, no new innovation occurs and the segment will stagnate. This effect has already been seen in the database and web server areas where OSS has made significant inroads. In particular, the OSS "Apache" web server has captured majority share of both the low-end and high-end of the market segment. This has resulted in very little innovation in the web server market, as start-up companies are unable to enter the market.
Conclusion
I
Don't do anything as a career path. Do something that you enjoy doing. Those people that get into high tech just for the money still won't be as happy maying $100,000 a year, as someone who is doing something they actually enjoy making $30,000 a year. I took Software engineering in university because I enjoy it. But from what I have seen, I would have to say that 50% of engineering students hate what they are doing, and only doing it because it is a career path. Oh well. At least I'm happy.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm not objecting the the article, but to the fact that yet again, the submitter plaigiarized the article. You can write 'Larry Greenmeier reports' or 'according to the InformationWeek Weblog' then quote to your heart's content. When the submitter simply copies and pastes the article and includes no attribution, it implies that the submitter wrote that paragraph. That's plagiarism. Editors, get it together - this is unacceptable.
Linus is really talking about OS developers, and people who tikner with the source code. Not so much the sys admins and sales people. I think it's a fair enough comment. Only those with a passion for coding will motivate themselves to excel at it.
In my experience, all the money motivated people that got into IT want to desperately jump on the Microsoft bandwagon. They saw how software licencing could be a total money rort (thanks to the MS experience) they wanted a piece of the pie.
When they failed to get into MS, they turned into IT sales managers.
I've met good sales managers, and bad ones of course. The difference is that good sales managers do their job PRIMARILY because they gain satisfaction from helping people.
The bad sales managers are only motivated to sell the product as fast as they can and wrangle as much money as they can in the deal. And they're also a pain to be around.
I won't ask "who makes more money?" because the answer is misleading. I will ask "Who enjoys their job more, has a happier less stressful life, and plenty of friends?" and the answer is quite clear.
Who sleeps better at night? Bill or Linus?
That's the real question.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Utter horseshit. While not everyone can get to work for a Cygwin or OSDL, a savy OSS programmer will eventually pick up the skills needed to participate in large, complex projects. This is resume fodder of the highest order. Those who are project initiators or maintainers will get to apply for jobs like "Architect" and be taken seriously. It's a way of ganing experience without having any experience... and experience means more money and seniority when landing a new job.
SoupIsGood Food
Dear Slashdot,
My name is Rob, I'm 24 and I'm a professional open source programmer. I like my job, and I'm paid comparably to other programmers in my field. The difference between me and most, however, is that I'm a researcher and I'm funded by a grant. Our software is developed to be used by the research and academic community. Now I'm not saying I'm typical, but certainly I see jobs similar to mine forming. Its no longer okay to just submit a paper and call that research. People are beginning to demand the code to go along with the paper and granting bodies understand this.
The market is changing everyday. Companies like IBM are proving that software is a service and not a product, and competition from other countries is turning many software jobs to commodity jobs. Everyone in software reinvents themself. My father has reinvented himself about 6 times during his career and will retire within the next 10 years doing a job completely different from his post graduate training.
I'm not going to sit and preach, but in two paragraphs I was able to give plenty of personal basis to reconsider the crux of the argument.
Food for thought
"Great hackers think of it [coding] as something they do for fun, and which they're delighted to find people will pay them for."
The other part of it is pointing out that choosing to go into open source like you'd choose to work in a supermarket at uni, really wont work. In the open source world it gets you almost nowhere because being a good coder is something you can't fake. If you're doing it for the bullet point on your resume then it'll all seem like too much work the first time somebody rips on your code.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
seriously, what is up lately that the people submitting articles can't even bother to write their own summary? i can't even think of how many articles on slashdot in the last two weeks have been just a copy/paste of the first paragraph of the page they were linking to.
Not that this is a new phonomenon or anything, but it seems to have gotten way out of hand lately.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
"In open source, you have to be a better communicator and to be able to defend yourself," Behlendorf said. He added that a thick skin also is a requirement when laying bare one's work for all the world to see and criticize."
No shit. You mean there are actually people take exception to your existence if you disagree with them?
I was told by a friend of mine about a science conference where the speaker was openly and harshly challenged in public by his critics about his conclusions and interpretations. Taking the brunt of that abuse is sometimes rather personal and can be enraging. But that isn't the half of it. Wait until they attack your credibility as well as impune your reputation - for money! (as well as the occasional principled attack)
The nice thing about the whole exercise is when you develop the ability to be right more often than you are wrong. Whatever I may feel about the people I have been challenged by personally, I am a stronger person - and better scientist - for having weathered the criticism. These confrontations sharpen your debating skills by sharpening your thinking.
If you are just starting out, take the initial attacks as tuition toward a better future. If you engage them back in a personal manner you will never work as a respected professional again.
"There's not a lot of room for prima donnas."
He must not work in academia.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
But what about the rest of us that don't want to suck at the government's teat?
Look, any field you get into is going to say "don't do it for the money, do it because you like it!"
Computer geeks say it about IT.
Lawyers say it about law.
Doctors say it about medicine.
But what about the fields NOBODY likes? Did you ever hear Joe Toiletscrubber say "don't clean toilets for the money, do it because you like it!"? Highly doubtful.
The truth is, people do go into fields for the money -- including the computer geeks, the lawyers (especially corporate and IP lawyers), the doctors, and so forth. People take up jobs as garbage collectors, NOT because they're passionate about it, but because it's a job few other people are willing to do -- and it pays well because of that fact. Garbage collectors do it for the money.
So do strippers. And prostitutes (indeed, prostitutes in Nevada have been known to work for about 3-4 years, then retire for life with over $1 million in income for their time in bed).
There are people who get PhD's in the natural sciences NOT because they enjoy their academic field of study, but because they know they will make more money with a PhD than a lesser degree.
Telling people to "do it because you love it" is a nice ideal. But ultimately, all things revolve around money, and people will work in IT because there is decent money to be made there (yes, even now with the offshoring and the lack of dot-bombs to leech from, IT is still a relatively well-paying career path).
Be honest: are YOU passionate about processing business reports? How about maintaining 25 year-old COBOL apps? I sure as hell am not (though the theoretical side of "computer science" does interest me).
Are you even passionate about writing code for other people in general when the project is not one of your choice or even really particularly interesting? I'm not -- but I do it anyway, because there are far worse jobs (waiting tables, shoveling shit in Louisiana) that pay far-less too, and I can find ways to trick myself into liking the work I'm not interested in.
Anybody who says "do it for the love of the work" probably enjoys their work so much that they're at the top of the pack -- and Torvalds is probably the best example in the world. If you love your labor, more power to you.
The rest of us, however, will work at what we do because we're competent enough to get paid for it and we enjoy it just enough not to do something else we enjoy more instead -- but we're mentally-balanced enough not to revolve our lives around our work.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
I object! What about small/medium size businesses that have little legacy development? Open source has a few things going for it.
-Open Standards: Open source many times means open standards for file formats and API's. When you leave the company they can cut and paste in a worker that is trained on the proprietary version with little hastle.
-Productivity: Ruby/MySQL/apache or C#/oracle/Windows Server?
-Portability: Mac, Windows, linux, Solaris... no OS lockin.
-Outsourcing: Say you have a shop in China. Why mess with procucts that have little internationalization. Open source apps are used around the world so many have been ported to a wide range of languages. Also, if VIA comes out with a new cut-rate chip that they are only selling to the asian market you don't have to pay the vender $100,000 to port the application.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
I think that Linus is really trying to say that he really agrees more with the Free Software Foundation's GNU Philosophy more than the Open Source Initiative's, though he continues to use the term "Open Source." This is where some of the confusion comes from.
I think the OSI has effected great positive change in making business aware of the benefits of Free/Open Source software, but I think they were pretty arrogant and short-sighted to try to 'dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with "free software"'. The idea that freedom is important for its own sake may be confrontational to a lot of businessmen, but that doesn't make it any less true.
I think a lot of conflict could be avoided if RMS would admit that business cases are important for Free Software and ESR would admit that freedom of Open Source software is important in its own right.
I'm suprised she didn't divorce him. She probably didn't think she could do better. Maybe divorcees have trouble getting married in Japan (i.e., divorcees are good to have affairs with, but not good enough to marry).
My other first post is car post.
Hi. I work for one of the major Linux vendors. I got good marks at high school, but I never went to uni as I felt I'd learn more and be more successful in the real world.
I started properly the year I left school, in 1999. Over the couse of six years I've gone from being The Windows Guy at a Unix shop (I got an MCSE out of high school), to a Linux sysadmin working short-length contracts doing everything under the sun, to a relatively well known Linux journalist as the Linux columnist for PC Authority (and then, briefly, APC), co-author of the Third and Advanced Linux Pocketbooks for Australian Consolidated Press. I wrote most of a Linux training course, and then got poached by Red Hat to train their courses here.
I make more money than my brother, who's two years older, went to uni and joined a law firm. When he finally gets to be a senior partner, I think I'll still have made more money.
I'm not a programmer, but I've made the odd contribution to Open Source - Accudoc, a little script that autogenerates OpenOffice doco for servers (made my last job easier), I rewrote man resolv.conf for the first time in fifteen years (if you're using Red Hat or Fedora) because it gave me nightmares, and spoke at quite a few LUG meetings and then Unix conferences showing off different techology that turned me on (VMWare, QEmu, Samba 3, etc).
None of these contributions (apart from a Webmin theme I learnt a little Perl for that used the Crystal icons) were required by my workplaces. But they were done for the same reasons I was able to make a career out of Open Source: I find it interesting and this I'm very, very motivated.
A lot of my motivated friends got jobs too - some were interested in fixing X, and ended up being paid to do so. Coders I know found places to code that used Open Source. I ran into Andrew Clausen, the PartEd guy, a few years back and he worked for Red Hat for a while too.
For the non-motivated (or perhaps the easily contented), it often hasn't worked out. These guys like administering systems, and coding, but not enough to learn to deal with customers, a skill which they need to do the interesting work. They usually end up working crappy jobs fixing broken things (not troubleshooting, just running commands to fi the same damn thing over and over). Apologies if you're working said crappy job.
So yeah, Open Source is a career path for a lot of people I know. But it isn't a magic bullet (though Linux is growing right now, it won't forever), and you do need the motivation to do the interesting stuff.
The people who contribute a lot tend to have that motivation though.
Everybody's a reak geeks here
I think a lot of people are missing the point... He's not saying you can't make money writing or especially using open source software. Of course you can, what do you think he gets paid for?
I think he's saying if you want to make great contributions to great (open source) software then your motivation probably isn't financial or career oriented. You are motivated by the software being written This is part of what makes open source software of such high caliber. The people working on it are only working on it because they want a great [webserver/kernel/GUI/etc] not because their boss looked at some marketing research and told them to write a [webserver/kernel/GUI/etc]. Money cannot buy that kind of motivation.
Open source software has nothing to do w/ the price of the software, just that the source is open.
I've been down an interesting path; car mechanic, cable puller, network admin, roofer, long haul wireless installations, trailer park manager. and what i've learned is passion doesnt have a damn thing to do with it. i work to survive and fund my hobbies (building custom harley,s (yes i'm a "biker") current job is one of 4 guys running a 30000 customer isp. pays well and lets me enjoy the wife and kids and my hobby. i would happily shovel sh*t for the right pay as long as the missus smiles when i come home at the end of the day! having said that its just a job take pride in it and YOURSELF and get on with it. if you want to write cool software do it as a startup or perhaps work for google? i write code to be 'lazy' ie. a script that lets me send the bean counter current sign up stats daily by e-mail rather than have to babysit him for an hour every time i get asked where to put another modem bank. not 'cool' but it gets me home on time so i can play! think about it?
When you find yourself tossing/turning at night cuz some crazy notion won't leave you alone until you get it down on a hard drive somewhere, *then* you stand a shot at an OSS career. Of course, you also stand a shot at personal financial ruin, emotional estrangement, and physical disability. But at least its outta your head.
And for the record: Just cuz you use OSS, doesn't mean you've "chosen open source as a career path". Whipping up a little website with PHP and Postgres ain't the same as creating a new piece of F/OSS software from scratch.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
I think this attitude is a major hindrance for the Open Source Community. Sure the community needs the passionate and the dedicated, that's what its built upon.
But, for example, the OSI was created with the hope of moving open source into the business world. For open source to be taken seriously in the business world it needs to find a way of saying "hey, there's money to made here, if you're good and you're dedicated" Unfortunately in todays world passion and commitment will only get you so far. Beyond that you need money.
In general, the PhD is the entry level degree into the field (low level technician jobs notwithstanding since I'd say they're on the periphery of the fields). On top of that, your typical newly minted PhD doesn't make much ($40-50k/yr) as a postdoc. You can quite easily get that with just a bachelor's degree (possibly even a bullshit associate's or certificate of some sort). Even as a tenure track professor most don't earn all that much, especially when you consider the education and hours that have been put in.
In fact, I can't think of one PhD, working off of a single source of income in academia, that is making much money. Sure, taking your PhD to Wall Street to be a quant will get you decent cash, but that isn't really academia anymore. There are others, who have additional sources of income (consulting, books, companies, patents).
I think that the stories of the retiring hookers are a bit exaggerated, as I'm sure most of them do not really save/invest well. Some do, of course, but I'd think they're in the minority. Besides that, $1million is really a pretty bare minimum for retirement (throwing off only $50k/yr in interest).
In reality, getting into a field for a love of it is a luxury few can afford, and (I think) pretty much only simpletons can enjoy. Anyone who is doing any IT support/administration (like some people here), and claims to love it, must have some mild form of retardation. I do what many people would consider interesting stuff, and I even release some open source software (funded by NIH grants). And, although I get some job satisfaction, I could be doing more interesting things with my time.
I think that people who have lots of job satisfaction are the same ones easily amused by shiny objects. It's for that reason that I love to be served by retarded people at fast food restaurants. They love their job, and are proud of it, and actually put in some effort to get your order right. Meanwhile, the teenagers or dirty skins hate you and would love to shit in your food. The point being, in general (there are some exceptions to this rule), you need to be rather simple to be amused by a job (otherwise it wouldn't be a job).
I have long contended that the happiest people in the world are the retards, with the caveat that they fall into the right level of retardedness (functional, but not smart enough to realize how fucked they are).
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
The idea that the happiest people are those who have a passion for their profession is nothing new. Linus is just restating that old truism in the context of working with Free software. But in reality it applies just as much to the proprietary coder too and just as much to an advertising exec and even to a call-girl, or (dare I say it) lawyers (there are A LOT of unhappy lawyers out there).
Linus's statement seems to have brought out the latent belief in a lot of people that "you can't make money writing Free software." This belief is a falsehood and it only takes a few seconds of rational thought to discover that.
1) Redhat makes money, the employees of Redhat make money. Redhat works with 100% Free software, thus working with Free software CAN and IS profitable.
2) Last I read, IBM currently has over 600 engineers employed working on Free software, maybe even just Linux alone. Those guys are getting paid and IBM ain't doing it for charity, they are doing it to add value to the services and products that they sell their customers.
The way you personally can make money from Free software is not by selling identical shrink wrapped copies, that only works for old-school, copyright-cartel, value-sucking companies. Instead, you make money by ADDING value to Free software. In other words, custom development. This works for the 1-man contract developer as well as huge consulting organizations like IBM's Global Services. Take currently existing Free software and build on it to solve a specific customer's specific requirements. You get paid for that work and, depending on the contract, the effort either stays within the client company or is shared back to the rest of the world. The GPL is designed specifically for that kind of situation and it is no surprise given that RMS often worked on contract tweaking GNU software for individual clients.
So forget all this baloney that Free software "takes away jobs" and the like because it doesn't. Instead, Free software is about not having to re-invent the wheel so that business that USE software can do more for less and are thus even more efficient in the long run. That efficiency helps the ENTIRE economy, not just a select few members of the copyright cartel.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I think you have to care about the quality of your work ... but don't necessarily have to find software interesting. I would say it helps a lot, though.
... ideally, the person best suited to the job (and hopefully the person who *cares* about doing a good job) gets it. In reality, the person whose political and ass-kissing skills have been improved in preference to their job skills frequently gets it. It's true in many areas beyond software.
As for the competition side of things
I just don't see software as special in this regard.
How many lawyers do you know practicing law do you know doing it just because their "competent enough to get paid"? Granted, it would be a peachy keen world if everyone could do what they loved for a living, but there are plenty of fields with a much higher entry barrier than toilet scrubbing.
Usually the people that do sucseed in said fields do so not only from a monetary motivation, but because it's something they actually want to do as well, and often are better at it than the next schmuck as a result.
After the crash I have met plenty of IT people who got into it just for the money out of work, but few of the ones I know who were in the field because they liked it had problems getting a new job or keeping what they had. I think the whole point of Linus's statement could be applied to almost all of IT in that it is starting to demand real quality, and that Joe toiletscrubber can't just go attend a short class to get an a++ cert & upgrade careers to get a new lexus as a result. (that could probably be worded much better, hopefully that makes a little bit of sense at least though)
I wish he would have told us this earlier. I guess we should stop dropping $10Ks on that open source computing cluster support contract, and get Windows installed on all those machines.
Nobody in the FOSS community is advocating software communism, e.g. all software is free and nobody gets paid, that's senseless. The nature of the industry is driven by development - the cutting-edge software of today, as buggy as it may be, gets reincarnated tomorrow as bullet-proof, well-designed open source software.
Now, before I start getting flamed for the last sentence, let me explain with an example. I hated vi when I first was exposed, thinking, "why on EARTH would anyone use this crap?" Then I saw someone use it to do something in 10 seconds that would've taken me 10 minutes in Visual Studio or Notepad. Then I was hooked, and now I have vi hot-keyed in Visual Studio.
This is how the open-source software movement works - little-by-little, people start realizing that better tools exist. In the case of vi, it's probably not something that the general public will appreciate, but in the case of, say, Linux, there's another thing that happens, where someone says, "I like it, but it needs some work before I can install it on Grandma's computer." What this means for the industry isn't about undercutting your co-worker, it's about competition and capitalism. Do you want the easy, expensive solution or the tricky, free solution?
As software and hardware become more complex, we will see the open source software become (even more so) the trusted foundation upon which all the commercial software is built. For instance, consider Linux + Apache + MySQL - how much of the Web is run by this combo? Just because Jim Bob Luser doesn't want to use FOSS doesn't mean that FOSS is a wart on the software industry.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I work in a major South African Bank. my focus: Open Source. I have to add, I get paid rather well for that as well - without any certification.
It is possible, but yet I think the oppertunities are not that many yet.
Cheers
Need an ISP in South Africa?
If he comes here to fix my roof, and let's say that he used 14 hours over 2 days to do it. He goes home, sits at his computer to makes an invoice. For this he uses a program that I have made. I have to pay him for his time, about 600$, but he does not have to pay for my time.
"If you do that you are stupid!" he said.
We both love our line of work. So why is it that I have to pay him for his time, but he does not have to pay for my time? I am not talking about getting very rich, but sooner or later my roof will need to get fixed. And I have to have the money to get it done, and fame and respect in the OOS community will not pay for my roof.
Instead of getting an MBA, I would recommend technical folk learn all the can about business in whatever place they end up in, then start your own company.
An MBA is a tool explicitly designed to land you square in middle management. I'm not sure I'd advocate anyone shoot for that goal, no matter what they are good at. I do not think an MBA prepares you really to lead, to have vision, or how to leverage technology in any kind of intelligent way.
Why would you want to learn to communicate with a group of people that in the end are saying nothing, and keep changing which nothing they are talking about every few days?
Some much better ways to spend your time include taking specific classes in the mechanisms that run a business, like accounting or law or economics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How about someone who likes doing it AND wants to make a career of it?
I write hobby code less and less, because to be honest, I need money. And I am passionate about coding.
This philanthropical bull-carp guise for open-source is really sad. Think about the children! Think about the starving people of Africa!
Sad.
I guess Open Source is a religion now.
OSS certainly puts a cap on how much the proprietary software vendors can charge for a product. It's not a coincidence that the most overpriced products were the first to see OSS drop-in replacements. Also let's consider the latest trend in customer support: the Bangalore script reader. If that is how support is going to be done, people will soon discover that searching Google Groups is easier, faster, and more effective. As the quality of vendor support goes down the toilet, so does the logic that justifies buying commercial products over OSS.
I will even take your "OSS is bad" argument one step further: Once the ball gets rolling, companies who adopt OSS the fastest will reap the benefits of lower cost vs. competitors who still buy proprietary products. At some point, companies will be adopting OSS products simply because they can't afford not to. Example: As soon as one of the major airlines eliminated food service, they ALL had to go pretzels-only. Otherwise they operate at a cost disadvantage in a market that won't support higher fares. When was the last time you had more than 1 oz. of starch when flying coach?
On the other hand, there is nothing about artifically high prices that helps the software industry in the long run. Granted, certain companies could keep tighter control of their market share without OSS, but it would be a smaller market. No one in the software industry can expect to survive for long in a stagnant environment. Without a constantly growing market, nobody can achieve the year-over-year revenue growth that investors require.
I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for companies who are losing market share to OSS. Let's face it: that which can be done by OSS will be done. At the same time, IT work that can be moved to India will be (even if OSS did not exist). Companies have to deal with the OSS competitive reality, just as IT workers have to deal with competition from India. The irony is that the companies who were the first to get on the India outsourcing bandwagon are some of the same companies who are getting undercut by OSS -- some of which is developed by the very same people who lost their jobs to offshore outsourcing in the first place! Karma, indeed!
For the sake of argument, I'll even buy the theory that many OSS products are merely "good enough" replacements. IF that is true, then the weakest, most poorly supported, overpriced commercial products are vulnerable. Again, I see no problem here. If you make the job loss argument, I counter that most of the development jobs were moving offshore anyway. By the way, we gain plenty of jobs by making more use of hardware and software because the cost is either zero for OSS or reduced because of the OSS competitive threat. In fact, some of those jobs are more difficult to move offshore and therefore more useful to have in the first place.
Consider the market evolution of PCs replacing mainframes (think of all the wildy-overpriced mainfame software that got cloned onto PCs). The price of software fell through the floor but the market expanded 100-fold. OSS is just the next step in the evolutionary cycle. The alternative is to pay exhorbitant prices, suffer with obnoxious licensing terms, for crappy products with lousy support. No thanks.
you find that the closed shop of Apple is a good old boys network that Just Ain't gonna Happen for you. And the world of Microsoft is a world of evil Evil EVIL!!!!
So you focus a lot of time and brain cells on open source, and GUESS WHAT?
There's no money in it...
Soooo, what do you do?
Bill Gates: "Roll up your arm and bend over - how do you want it? Regular or Premium?"
Depending on the kindness of strangers is not a wise method for making highly complex objects. I'm not certain there is a solution, but I do know that if you can't put food on the table for what you're spending you're time doing, you're either doing something that matters to you, a lot, or your expectations are excessively out of line with reality - like blowing $80k on a BS in Linux programming...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
granted my exposure to corporate computing is virtually nil, but if Linus et al. keep building better mousetraps, someone still has to improve them, maintain them and repair them, if open source is to be the wave of the future (or the present). The bottleneck for businesses seems to be lack (or potential lack in the future) of qualified people.
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Don't worry, it's turning around. When was the last time you used a GPL program that wasn't crap compared to the commercial equivalent?
GPL just can't keep up, and it is not surprising at all. Who wants to work for free?
Did your English teachers in school buy that argument? If so, congratulations, but I'm sorry to have to tell you that you're completely incorrect. Otherwise, as a native speaker of English I could tell you that "froopsixac"[*] is an English word, regardless of whether anyone else has ever heard of it or whether anyone else ever uses it again. It doesn't work that way.
[*] froopsixac - the act of disillusioning one who holds an unlikely, albeit amusing, belief.
"See another reply I did. What I meant was getting into it for the money and a hot career backfired on those without the real love for it. I know people working help desk that love the work they do. Those are the geeks."
And as an EA executive. I applaud each and every one of them. We wouldn't have done as well as we did without them.
Those who are doing it merely for the money, don't last long in our industry. Hopefully with the recent influx of all those who have a passion for the profession. We here at EA games, with the recent opening of our new development center will continue to deliver value to our customers.
Sincerely CEO Larry Probst
A URL (Uniform Resource Location) is a specific type of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). Two other types of URIs are URNs (Uniform Resource Names), and URCs (Uniform Resource Citations). More information at this URI.
You don't have to go unpaid, but more importantly there's no reason he has to demand payment.
Open Source might not exactly be a "career path." But it is, imho, an enabler - something that you can use to launch a business and, hopefully, profit from.
here is what I had to say in response to one comment somebody else made, regarding making money / feeding the family, and open-source.
This IT Managers Journal article, or this book: Innovation Happens Elsewhere : Open Source as Business Strategy are also of interest on this topic, I think.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Replace the words "open source" with "playing rock music", or "acting", or "joining the circus", then you'd get the idea. Linus is trying to play "mom". Mom told us all those things, but lucky for us guys like Paul McCartney and Marlon Brando did not listen to their moms.
Sun and Fun
Excellent analogy. I wish more people understood this point.
Seeing as I like to look at everything from an economist's eyes, I look at the OSS movement, and what I see are idealistic college students and Europeans whose welfare states enable them to live in meager homes with meager food and no job so they may sit at home and write code. As with any hierarchical structure (in this case, of recognition), a few get paid well (the Linus Torvalds' of the world, who can afford to live on the California coast and drive a BMW), but the rest get little, if anything.
As a hobbyist economist, I look for other fields in which the same sort of suicidal tendencies occur. Music? Arguably this is the best analogy. Musicians often play for free, in order to gain recognition (fans), and once they gain enough recognition, they begin charging for their work (to see live shows, buy CDs, etc.). Perhaps they even sign a record deal (analogous to joining Novell or Sun or IBM on your OSS recognition), and then get paid a decent living. But relative to the number of other musicians attempting the same thing, the number who succed in that venture is small.
So it will be with the open-source world: a few highly-skilled coders get paid while the rest find other work and code in their spare time, receiving only recognition to boost their ego and cock size as payment.
Musicians do this too. And they're (in)famously-poor...
I love OSS as much as anybody else and have happily been using Linux and FreeBSD and their associated apps for years, because it doesn't cost me anything, the code is generally of fast, usable, stable quality, and I can change the source if need be (which I've done in some cases to make a particular app compile). Insofar as I have the freedom to do almost anything I want with it and obtain it legally at no charge, it's wonderful. And anybody who is not a developer feels the same way: it's great feeling like you're getting "something for nothing."
But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; you can't get your "money for nothin and your chicks for free." Nor is software really ever "free" as in economically-free. But leave it to the leftists of the software world to fail to realize this...
Open-source developers are collectively coding their way out of paying jobs, and unless it becomes as common as the GPL to use a license which does one or more of the following:
* charges money for the source
* charges money for the binaries
* requires a support contract for a fee
* prevents all for-profit and governmental use (thereby legally requiring the various businesses and governments to pony up for the software, even while allowing private individuals to use it for free)
-- I don't see how OSS developers will survive unless they get into another career and code in their spare time, unless they wish to live like musicians...
The OSS community really needs to look farther down the road and realize that OSS is a *development* model, not a *business* model. And anybody without a business model (even if your "business" is simply selling your time to some employer for 40 hours/week) becomes poor...
What we really need is a license that simultaneously allows and enforces a means of openly-available source to which all may contribute and work on, but which also charges a fee. I could almost see a system of micropayments coming into play here (e.g. developers get paid in micropayments based on how much work they're doing in accordance with the revenues of the software sold to non-developers)... Almost.
(Actually, might that be doable? e.g. by limiting developer access (and payment, obviously) only to those signed up as employees of the project? But then you'd get the problem of people signing up to be developers who would never develop anything but instead download and compile the code themselves, then release the binaries to "average" people. I suppose that could be included in the developer license though...)
The best co
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
It's too bad true altruism and talent like Torvalds' was squandered on Unix. Unix was great for the 1970s but there was so much more potential by the time he developed the kernel code for the 386 that its tragic he didn't find the right people to develop the higher levels of his OS.
Seastead this.
"Well sorry, software development isn't a summer training course. You need to actually feel some passion for the subject. I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer when I was 7 years old. I learnt to program in assembler when I was 9. That's the kind of drive you should have for your work, otherwise go do an MBA and become a manager."
WOW! Evolution has brought us the programmer gene. Wonder what advantage this gives the species? Guess we need to tame the wild and dangerous "personal computer", making it safe for the MBA's to use.
"You point is valid though just too narrowly argued"
Well the effects of open source aren't so confined. It's not just the mechanics, but the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Just like the effects of outsourcing aren't confined to just those losing their jobs. The effects of open source aren't so confined.
"it is impossible for a native speaker to incorrectly use their own language." No, it is impossible for a native speaker to use his own language incorrectly. Please, get it right.
Linus is talking about open source software development as a career path, not system administration or help desks or other standard IT functions. Open source development is special and different from proprietary software development. Administration or support are not (there is just a little less of it).
There is nothing wrong with working help desk in general; it's an important job. But there is something wrong with working help desk in your 30's from your own point of view if you got into the field with visions of making billions instantly with only minimal knowledge of computers. The elitism here is the elitism of the people who chose a career in computers without the right preparation.
" If your a unix geek and want to make money, write for Mac OS X."
I wanted to take this opportunity to make an observation. You'll note that when asked the question "How do I make money off OSS?". The answer always involves selling something to businesses. Never individuals, always businesses. Well first of all, there's nothing inherent in businesses that demands that they have to purchase anything from you, that's not present in individuals. Second I believe that such an answer is given because of simple "that's the way it's always been".
"The other part of it is pointing out that choosing to go into open source like you'd choose to work in a supermarket at uni, really wont work. In the open source world it gets you almost nowhere because being a good coder is something you can't fake. If you're doing it for the bullet point on your resume then it'll all seem like too much work the first time somebody rips on your code."
How do you know this? Since everyone one of you, to a T are claiming to not be one of those individuals? How are you able to argue how the other side will think, and feel, especially when presented with a particular situation? Sounds like you all are making arguments that are outside your sphere of experience. Maybe you all should let those "doing it for the money", and "passionless souls" argue your side of the case, since you all have no problem arguing theirs.
I was toying with doing a PhD in diffusion of innovations. I know I like research and writing and there are many aspects of an academic career that appeal to me. However, when I tried to talk to professors about career prospects, they kept repeating the "do it because you love it" line. I found this terribly frustrating. There are many things I enjoy doing. When you're a 30-something with financial and family obligations, what you love may exist in many forms. For me, it's important to know that I can feed, clothe, house and care for my family. I would never choose a career path just for the money, but I might choose one over the other for the money. And doing a PhD would entail a few years of financial sacrifice -- maybe more, if there are no jobs or reasonable salaries. As someone who grew up in a family with little money (and parents who worked at jobs they didn't like), I know most of my options are more attractive than those available to other people. Nevertheless, "doing what I love" boils down to more than just how I spend eight hours a day. And I get frustrated by people who discount my need to provide for my family and myself. As a result, I haven't gone any further with the PhD, because I couldn't get a solid answer about career (and financial) prospects.
-- SYS 64738 --
He may look at less famous developers than himself and see little chance of them making money off their work (or less chance of them developing something decent because they are expecting to), and he may be right. He's looking at the wrong group of people, though.
So what you're saying is that OSS devs are kicking themselves in the balls by having this self-deprecating software career. Write stuff for free and thats bread that I'll never see. I totally agree with you.
it's true, thinking that OSS will bring in the dough would probably get you ended up holding a blanky and sucking your thumb... don't think it'll be like... uh, Linus I guess.
Not that all pure sciences get the funding they need, but if you compare OSS core developers to academic and non-applied research scientists, there are many similarities -- and one difference. There are a lot less of them that manage to get funding for their "pure" research.
The parallels between scientists who pay the bills and get their toys by developing applied science to OS core devs that get hired on by companies for research work are pretty strong, and in that case, I'd say the playing field is a little more equal, though I doubt it is fair.
I picture the heavy OS developers as sort of floating in between the two mostly -- what they want to develop has more of an applied nature, so they don't get the respect pure scientists do (when they do), but at the same time, the spirit of the developer is more aligned with that of the pure scientist -- they want to explore things on their own terms.
If software was truly considered an "engineering" discipline, rather than "computer science" then maybe that would make a home for developers as research fellows at engineering colleges. But even that third category (which I must fess up to belonging to) doesn't consider it really to be "hard core" enough to qualify for their accolades.
Someone had to do it.
While I agree what Linus says in theory, I think one of the best possible career paths one can make is building open source programs in college (or contributing some source to a high profile one).
Gives you something substantive to talk at your first job interview. A couple no name open source projects helped me breeze through my first job interview, even though I never had any paid experience.
Have you seen one barrier-busting, run-the-competition-out-of-business application from the OSS crowd yet? Me neither. If MySQL and Postgres are so good, why aren't Informix and Sybase out of business, nevermind Oracle?
What's more, most software development consists of one-off applications engineered for a specific purpose, either for in-house IT projects, or developed by a consulting firm for the IT projects of companies who don't want to carew and feed their own code monkies.
That kinda work ain't going away in a hurry.
SoupIsGood Food
...is worth doing for money. The daily struggle to be in the workplace and earn my living has made me more skilled than if I was simply living at home with Mom and perhaps being an idealistic programmer only. The contraints and realities of the work world sometimes force you to explore and to endure things you never would have otherwise. Sometimes these things make you a better person. Why wouldn't OSS programming be worthy of people looking to put bread on the table? Perhaps some people have visions of driving a BMW, but I envision people who earn an honest paycheck and find the self confidence with the realization that they can make a living in this crazy world using their mind. How could that motivation be bad for OSS?
Remember the scene in the bar when the genius contemplates what it would mean if nobody went after the girl?
As far as I'm concerned, if you want to make the world a better place, pursue your interests. Do not pursue a position, power, fame, money, or even a living. As long as you pursue what you truly love, the rest will take care of itself. This is not spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Only the most jaded and closed-minded of folks lambaste the FOSS movement as a 'software industry destroyer' and ask superficial questions like "But how do you make a living writing free software?".
Do what you love. Do what you are passionate about. The money will take care of itself.
I value your insight into the matter - from looking into it myself I really feel like only small portions of an MBA program would be of any use above practical expierence I've already had.
Thanks for the informative response, hopefully a mod will see it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's why everything that comes from M$ looks and feels so ... ugly? ... loveless? It's got no soul, it's not sexy!
Au contraire, a smiling Mac Plus, a "Have a lot of fun!" on login, and you know the tool you've got in front of you has been built with love.
The same with Open Source: Coders having fun on their job will make better software.
Has it really been that long since the X-Files was on? You seem to have forgotten that the truth *is* out there.
So what? So does Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy,...
The good programmers from MS will use the money they've made and have lots of fun open sourcing. The "not so good" programmers who never really liked programming will go around forums saying that open source is bad for business.
Google, and IBM, and Apple, and Novell, and Red Hat, and.. uh.. even Microsoft(!) (Yes, ever heard of Microsoft's BSD Socket implementation? How about kerberos?)
Who moved my sig?
The implication of "Linux =/= career path" because Linux requires you to be passionate is that "career path =/= passion"
Sigh,
How many people just like to read the things they want to read instead of actually try to understand it.
If you want to understand Linus' reasoning i suggest you get your hands on a copy of Pekka Himanen's "The Hacker Ethic".
I consider myself "old skool" IT. I became an IT because i love the technology and it's possibilities. Around me i hear other reasons.. "the job opportunities were good and i saw a chance to get rich quickly" or "well.. i didn't know what to do so i chose this". Linus just asks people to question their reasons. Are you an IT worker who is just in it for the fun or are you one who wan't to make a big career but don't care in what? The first does not exclude the latter and in fact history has shown that the first often leads to the latter. However, of late, new FOSS developers became FOSS developers because they are looking for a career instead of having fun and/or creating art.
They don't care about FOSS, they only care about their career which happens to involve FOSS right now but that can easily be replaced by the "next big thing" come opportunity and chance. They have no real love for FOSS or it's possibilities.
You can have a career in FOSS. A good one in fact.. but please.. do it for the love it. If you create something in FOSS, be prepared to support and or develop it for a long time. Do not abbandon it when you decide to get a career change.
Some clarification, i'm not a software developer. All i know is out of what i experience and read about. Wish i had the drive and passion for software developing.. but simply put.. i'm scared of it... sometimes i'm just glad i can get a piece of software installed (be it on windows or Linux, doesn't matter).
In my country, we call people who do things for free yet magically expect to be paid somehow anyway idiots.
That's not to say that I'm against open source in any way -- I'm an open source developer myself, and it's really fulfilling making software that people enjoy. The thing is, I don't misrepresent what I do; If I wanted to make money, it wouldn't be giving away my work for free.
-Insert identifier here
Unfortunately, this article appears to inarticulately express the following piece of advise:
"Do not become an OSS developer purely to make a career. Rather, become an OSS developer to further the cause of OSS as well as a software development career."
However, it comes across sounding like:
"Don't write OSS as your day job, you'll go bankrupt."
Not the same at all, and the second is blatantly untrue. I think that the real meaning trying to get across is that if you don't have a passion for your work in OSS, don't expect it to make a rewarding career. This is largely true of most IT jobs. If you are doing it just because you think that's where the big bucks are, you'll never make anything from it because those passionate about the cause will exceed you in every way.
Idiots like whoever made the "open source is not a career path" comment have it 100% backwards. Open source is not a movement nor is it an ideology. It's not a social club nor is it a training ground for showing elite skillz.
OSS unfortunately "came of age" in such trappings, but the truth is that it's far too important an idea to be any of those things. Put another way, OSS is too important to be held hostage by zealots who tie their own political and philosophical nonsense to it.
If you are a genius that can make billions writing OSS, go for it. If that happened, this would be a win-win for the world: the world would get something open and useful and you'd get paid.
even the passionate need to eat.
Coding is such a easy thing that it should be left for teenagers.
Thats it really.
BTW, if you know Python and Zope really well, and are willing to move to Fredericksburg, Virginia, there are several jobs here: http://www.zope.com/Corporate/Careers.html.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
If you read the Microsoft recruiting rhetoric you would find that they are looking for people passionate about creating Microsoft products. My personal opinion is that you should be passionate about whatever you do but sometime passion needs to be set aside for the practicalities.
BTW, I realize that I compared Microsoft to Open Soure Development but this is not intended to be flamebait.
Enjoy.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein
If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career path
Open Source, proprietary -- these are just tools that you need to be fluent in. Your career path should be do the best work you can in your profession. There is always room for top notch developers no matter how crowded the field is. Why place limitations on your capabilities by selecting one system over another? Your customer is almost always looking for good solutions to their problems, regardless of the tools you use. The best time to promote Open Source is when the customer has a serious budget constraint. Eliminating startup costs and recurring licensing fees for this customer solves his main problem. This money can then be allocated to better hardware which, in turn, improves user response time for your application.
I'm 45 and got into IT from the factory floor 15 yrs ago, just as the web was starting and unemployment from manufacturing lay-offs was at its peak. I was always a closet geek and started with a second hand apple 2E that drove my Ex nuts. Someone told me you could make money from it. I decided to do a BSc part time, the nylon factory was not interested in my plans even though they ran a mainframe and leased time to other bussinesses. After using night shift to complete a year of corrospondence maths, I quit. I bought an Acer 256k XT with my severence pay and became a full time uni student and part time taxi driver.
The first thing I noticed about white collar jobs was the boss says please and thank you when you are just doing your job.
I cleaned toilets when I was sixteen, not as much fun as the floor polisher, worked as a brikies labourer, farm hand, fishing trawler, sawmill, nylon mill and a few others by time I was 30. I also had 2 kids during all this. EVERY job I have ever had has it's good and bad bits. If you don't rationalise the bad bits as delayed reward you will be seen as a snotty kid that nobody wants to work with.
I have been in IT for 15 years and was very well paid a few years back. Now my wage has dropped but is still well above the national average. I don't often write code for fun anymore, my latest thing is digital cameras and telescopes simply because I have the cash for the toys. The only way you can possibly endure working a drill press 12hrs a day is to practice the rythym, ignore the clock and travel somewhere else in your head. Incidently that is also how you loose fingers and thus the "foolproof" saftey gaurds.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Just like certain other careers, particularly artistic careers, you have to pursue open source development because you love it. If you are good enough, and your project is popular enough, you might make a living at it.
But there are a lot of related careers. I've been using open source tools for many years. I've contributed occasional patches, numerous bug reports and lots of advice on mailing lists and newsgroups. I don't get paid to develop open source tools. I get paid to use them.
Modern linguists take a so-called "descriptive" rather "prescriptive" approach. In other words, they merely describe and document how native speakers speak, and how the language changes over time. (In the old days we had a "prescriptive" approach where 'right' and 'wrong' were prescribed by 'experts', but it didn't stop language from evolving rapidly, although it can help in standardisation e.g. the Spanish Royal Academy still prescribes standard Spanish.)
Thus you are perfectly entitled to use your word froopsixac as much as you like, and if enough people like it, it will catch on, and soon it will be a "valid" English word that will be in the dictionary. So yes, you are perfectly "allowed" and able to change English in that way, and so the GP is 100% correct. You'll probably need to come up with more a catchy word than 'froopsixac' though.
While no one is going to pay you to develop open source, you can make a living at maintaining and adding business value with it. IF you really have the skills a good living is possible.
So this story is tainted.
> You need to price it high as hell
If you do that, you will lose most of your customers. Only big business will want to pay high prices (say a couple of hundred dollars) for any software, and when you reduce your target from everyone (1 billion people) to big businesses (10000?) it's a big deal. Also, you usually need a lot of pull to even get through the door at a company like that, and pull is not something most nerds will have.
but plenty of money in plumbing services, water treatment facility design, premium bottled water...
Elitist? At Slashdot? Never! I dont believe you!
You might want to consider different friends. I know carpenters who love their work. They willingly come over on weekends to help my fix my roof. In return I go to their house once in a while and fix their computer. We joke in our family, Thanksgiving is at my uncles house and I fix the computer. Then Christmas at my house and he (my uncle) fixes my water softener.
We help each other out, and charge nothing for it, other than parts.
I'm fully aware of the descriptive linguistics issue, but the point is that any single person who makes an error doesn't make that error correct. The OP claimed "I'm a native speaker of english, *I* define what is valid and correct usage of the language", but that is completely incorrect. He only helps to define English usage along with millions of other native speakers. Re froopsixac, if you reread my post, you'll see that I said that by the OP's logic, it is a valid English word *even if no-one ever uses it again*. That is all I was disagreeing with.
Certainly, all natural languages morph as people make it up, which is why linguistics is mainly treated as descriptive these days. However, that doesn't mean that any single English speaker gets to define what is correct usage, as the OP claimed. If you still don't understand that distinction, read this post.
The reason we have dictionaries is to document the consensus about correct language. The descriptive/prescriptive distinction is not as binary as you seem to think. Dictionaries and grammar texts are created using descriptive techniques, but nevertheless end up serving a largely prescriptive purpose, precisely because they document a broad-based consensus. If you violate the consensus which they document, most people are much more likely to think you are in error, because you are not using language in the way that other people use it.
Depending on exactly how you violate the consensus, what you say or write may not be considered to be correct English, even by a descriptive linguist. The point is that it's not you as an individual that gets to define the language, it's groups of people, and rather large groups at that. That's why what you wrote earlier, that as a native speaker you define English, is not correct, even in a descriptive context.
I see where you're coming from now.
No, the only reason to get into this is if you believe in providing people with software freedom.
Unfortunately, by identify with Open Source more than Free Software, Linus is one of the people who seems to NOT get it. Pot calling the kettle black.
*kicks all computers in my space bubble*
you good for nothing pieces of peanut/carrot turds >:(
Actualy:
* requires a support contract for a fee
if you have the right product and customers:
See http://www.adacore.com
Dosn't look like OpenSource?
Then look here http://libre.act-europe.fr
Martin
This looks like open source literature... The old story was THE VERGER by W. Somerset Maugham klicken Sie hier http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/7695/VERGE R.HTM
pergamentum init, exit pergamentum