Linux Geeks To Take Over World

B'Trey writes "According to this story by Rob Enderle of TechNewsWorld, Linux geeks are one of the most powerful forces in the world and are set to become the next Mob. Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"

Comments

A story without much of a point

[Raindance]

The article tells a good story about how Linux is at the center of a massive nexus of script-kiddies who are eager to destroy anyone standing in their way. And how unions are powerful things.

I don't think, however, that this has much to do with IT unionization.

There will always be vandals. There will always be workers who would benefit from a union. The story failed to connect these ideas.

Meh.

Joking aside

[Dancin_Santa]

Let's look at the whole concept of an IT union. That's what the article is really trying to get at, though it seems to be unable to connect the dots.

Unions have historically been necessary in professions where the employees have been at a severe economic disadvantage to the employer. In such cases, the employee would suffer more greatly by being punished by the employer than by doing some odious task. A great example is the auto industry where thousands upon thousands of workers would be literally unable to support themselves if the factory left town. The management is able to use this knowledge and leverage it into forcing longer hours for worse pay upon the workers. It is only through unionization and the threat of collective/mass work stoppage that the management is kept in check.

In the modern age, unions have been a device to demand better treatment for worse productivity. They have ceased to be helpful guardians of employee rights and have become oppressive bureaucracies in their own right. This is not really a good direction, IMO.

If the primary goal of a union ought to be the protection of worker rights and the establishment of a partnership in which both management and the employees receive favorable outcomes. It should seek to balance the power of the employers with the needs of the employees.

However in the software world, the employees are not hamstrung by monetary concerns. Any Joe Programmer can pick up a cheap $200 bare bones PC and a copy of Linux and be programming the next great thing. He doesn't need management to do this.

So management, despite its seeming power, does not actually have very much leverage over any IT employee. It is not the case that if the company packs up and leaves town that the computer engineer is suddenly out on his ass. Rather, he still has the tools at his disposal to continue productive work on his own.

Because of this natural balance in the IT industry, it will never make sense to have an industry-wide union.

Re:Joking aside

[benjamindees]

There are great examples of useful unions for people who make more than the average salary, especially in highly technical jobs.

Aircraft mechanics, for instance, have fantastic unions. They guarantee their members have the necessary skills and training, as well as pay, that they need to perform their highly stressful jobs well. They know that, without a union, the money would not be spent on important aspects of their jobs, and that, when things went wrong, the mechanics would be the first ones to take the blame. So, they band together to say "If you fire the guy who cleans parts, or replace him with your retarded son-in-law, you fire all of us," and this makes sure the job is done correctly.

This sounds like the most useful aspect of a technical union, imho. Managers and PHBs will cut costs until wires are sparking and nobody is left working at the company who knows how to use whatever program the business is 90% dependent upon. Traditionally, consultants have filled this niche by providing a reliable supply (at inflated prices) of technical knowledge and fire-fighting services for when the cost-cutting goes a little too far and the last competent IT guy quits to become a BMX biker. Normally, at this point, a consultant would come in with the newest version of $BIG_BIG_SOFTWARE and switch the entire company, or at least provide transition services until new staff can be found and trained.

With Open Source, that model doesn't work as well. Yet, there is still a need for highly competent technical know-how of the types of things that only come up every couple of years. How does an Open Source shop guarantee that the boss doesn't fire the only guy who knows how to debug a kernel?

Re:Joking aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. I'm going to pick on part of what you said.

Before you or any other keep on going with the anti-union stance, let me tell you something. I've been in IT for 20+ years, contracting, consulting and working in corporate IT depts. before the Y2K meltdown. I think I've essentially seen it all, from the last days of punched card systems to the current M$ techno dead land (or desert, whatever. It's worse than the bad old days of "Snow white and the seven dwarfs", something the younger crowd here on /. will never know).

Anywho, I've ended up in my current position with less pay than what I was making back in '98, but unionized for the first time in my life. While I recognize that some unions are not much more than legalized mob (sorry for the extreme expression), not all are like that. For me and surprisingly many of my current colleagues, it means that we are now paid for our overtime for the first time in our lives, amongst other things.

And this comes from the fact that the union negotiated a collective agreement that governs how things happen and what benefits we get. It is something that a non-unionized workforce could never do, get all the rules put down on paper and all the "kitchenwork" defined to avoid any misunderstanding and abuse by any party.

So you might want to think about that. Some unions can actually do good.

AC

They have lost the keys of control

[rtb61]

This is nothing but a whiny article about how the media has lost the ability to control public thought, well at least with in a particular sector of society (netheads), not that the rest of society wont get here as well, we just got here first.

This individual is just twisting his loss of power as a journalist versus the power the public has gained to share and express their own thoughts and form their own opinions. When we as individuals now agree on a subject we are no longer isolated with the only public opinion being the one paid for by vested interests.

Yes, the public landscape has changed, freespeak is gaining influence and it is FREE becuase no individual, religion, group, union, government, corporation or media empire controls it. We are all just individuals with a equal voice and this is what they fear the most not becuase of what we gain but because it diminishes their voice regardless of how much money they have.

Re:You still won't get a date on Friday.

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Well how about this: a mailing list to inform members of when it is time to write e-mails to their bosses, and when it is time to strike. Otherwise, it doesn't do anything.

Basically when IBM decides that it's time to take pensions away, the mailing list activates, and all employees send an e-mail to Sam Palmisano at the same time, threatening to strike if the pensions are taken away.

It's just coordination, that's all. If just one guy sends the e-mail to Sam, he gets fired. If everyone sends an e-mail at the same time, nobody gets fired.

Re:IT does not fit into unions (please MOD UP)

[benjamindees]

I once worked at a place as a contractor (non-union) *snip* my expirences in dealing with the Union were not pleasent.

Of course they weren't. You were a competitor. Did the union hire you? If not, it was management making an end-run around the union. I wouldn't expect a union to *let* you do their work, let alone *help* you.

I was not allowed to open a server case

I wouldn't let an outside contractor (let alone a competitor) touch my servers either. But, then again, I'm competent to fix my own problems. Dunno about this "union" in question.

I could not pull my network cable from the back of my PC

Ditto. Of course, I merely advise people not to go unplugging things instead of prohibiting them. But I still get to laugh at them and clean up the mess when something explodes. I've seen people plug telephones into network cards, network cables into telephones, fuck-up all the little pins on the monitor when plugging it in, and, (really this is the best), try to swap monitors without changing the scan rate, letting out the magic smoke in the process. The best way to avoid all that is to just mandate that only competent people can work on computers, period.

Of course, the other good way is to take the "dentist" approach to professional services: belittle people when they fuck things up. Think about it: if you told your dentist "I tried to do my own root-canal and chipped a tooth" he would call you an idiot to your face, and proceed to hurt you even more than usual while fixing it. Even if you just tell him you haven't been brushing, you can probably expect a mild chiding. If you told him "I went to Larry the dentist instead of you last time, because he charges less. But he fucked up my gums, so, could you fix them?" you'd be lucky to wake up from the laughing gas.

Re:This is WAR!

[jdepons]

Enderle seems to have picked his side

Is there a question?

The guy gave a keynote speach at SCO forum titled "Free Software and the Idiots Who Buy it". He states that "Steve Ballmer invested a great deal in our company on my word"

You can change seems to is.

Hot Mob Flashes

[Doc Ruby]

Enderle is a clown, with powertrip fantasies only a nerd could muster. Linux geeks can't even all agree on how to pronounce "Linux", let alone the kind of organization he talks about. Most of the effects of this "organization" (of what, exactly?) on his chosen example, SCO, were perpetrated by IBM's lawyers, or SCO itself. The DDos attacks pale in comparison to the spambot zombie waves across the Net every day, and the rest of it is a joke, too. Linux geeks are a vast, arguing herd of cats, and the "power vacuum" he describes in the leadership is likely to remain more like a quantum foam than an office into which someone ever moves.

Re:You still won't get a date on Friday.

[Crazy Eight]

You know, when I noticed this man's name in the summary I felt an instinctive, atypical desire to submit a slanderous post about him without even reading the article. It's amazing how intuition can save time. I don't know who this guy is or why I remember him as a total asshole, but the two sentences you've quoted reassure my faith in my own foggy notions. Dear Lord, what a shithead.

Re:You still won't get a date on Friday.

[Xiaran]

I have a question for you? Do you actually know any Indian developers that live and work in India and other places in the world?

Re:You still won't get a date on Friday.

[PHP Addict]

Why do americans look down on unions?

Speaking for myself, my hatred of these things comes not from a blind prejudice, but from experience. Like many things, the idea of The Union is a great one, in theory, but when I (a co-op/intern, getting my first "real-world" experience) has to teach the union laborers how to do their jobs, or worse do it for them because they're lazy/don't care, and have undo job security, one tends to see the light.

Unions provide a security blanket that allows people to get by with a minimalist attitude. In the environmental department of a power plant, that is most definitely a bad thing.

Next, unions give bargaining power to laborers; I'm all for that. When the workers abuse this power to force unfair conditions on the business/plant/etc, however, it's the same abuse of power that existed before unions, only in the opposite direction.

I'm fully aware that my exerience is limited, but it's easy to find more than a few instances where such abuse of power exists/has existed.