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Vendor Pays OSS Developers for Enterprise Support
Anonymous Coward writes "eWeek is reporting that a company called OpenLogic is paying qualified experts in the open-source community to provide enterprise support for projects they are intimately familiar with. OpenLogic calls its new initiative its Expert Community program."
the article is incorrect. they DO NOT PAY.
QUOTE :
OpenLogic is looking for the best and brightest open source developers to join the OpenLogic Expert Community. As a thank you for their time, Open Logic Expert Community members can earn points redeemable for rewards in the OpenLogic Rewards program. Learn more about the OpenLogic Expert Community and the OpenLogic Rewards program.
Depends how mush you get paid really doesnt it. This sounds more adhoc than full time support.
Also does it not rebutt the myth that if you have the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From the OpenLogic Community FAQ:
From their website:
In other words, no, you're not going to get paid for helping. You will receive 10 Bazooka Joe comics for each Apache installation, and 5 Chuck E. Cheese tickets per debugged line of code.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
I'd imagine there is some sort of exchange rate between OpenLogic Rewards points and US dollars, something that could easily be figured out by posting some for sale on Ebay.
Would it be worth it? Probably not. But they are being 'paid' in the form of goods.
does it not rebutt the myth that if you have the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself?
No more than the existence of Dell, eMachines, and other PC manufacturers rebuts the "myth" that if you have access to computer components, you can easily build and upgrade a computer yourself.
The press release says in fact:and:And (slightly offtopic, but put more elequontly & humorously then the usual 'blah blah, oss has noone to sue'):You sir, are a shill from one of the proprietary companies, trembling in their boots about new business models.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Nobody has said that they're making any money, or will make any money in the future. This is just a press-release (paid?) for a service that they may provide in the future. Very little money has been made with OSS across the entire industry up to this point, and the failure rate has been phenomenal. As of yet, this is still an unproven "model".
This article goes on to say that even though the developers ARE NOT BEING PAID , when the suport was outsourced offshore , then it ended up being cheaper TO PAY the offshore developers THAN TO NOT PAY the American developers.
The reason for this is the "time cost" of having to "talk" to American developers, whereas for offshore support, nothing you say is understood, so you bypass the "communication" or "talking" aspect of things.
U send me ur non paying outsourced job plz.
Full time support personnel are mostly employees.
This ad hoc approach seems to fit in well with the whole open source approach,
for areas where a smaller amount of expert support is required. It seems to be
a welcome addition to the employee or consultant roles.
The myth that you can easily maintain the code is rebutted very quickly in
the mind of anyone actually trying to do it.
Improving or adapting code can often be done, particularly on the smaller projects,
depending on the architecture of the code base you are trying to do it to,
and quite frequently if an improvement is made it can be offered to and adopted
by the main project.
Look a bit further through their website. You'll also find the FAQ which states that these "points" can be redeemed for cash. 100+ points/incident, 1 point = $1. So if you want the cash, that's $100/incident.
Sorry I'm still pissing myself laughing at your original 'how could I possibly be more wrong' post to respond properly to your lack of understanding of economics.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yes, sir!
Once Chuck E. Cheese starts stocking computer parts, I'll be debugging like crazy.
>help solve issues and win an Xbox 360.
Wow. So they charge big bucks an hour, and we get a shiny xbox!
What idiot accepted this article?
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
from the summary and comments, it's obvious that there is a business case for open source: open source pays and doesn't pay, possibly giving points which could be redeemable for cash, to american or offshore programmers. or not.
I had another sig before, but this one is better
Yes, the parent company will make money supporting OS software. This is nothing new. The only difference here is the OS developers and community managers have a chance to earn 'points' that they can redeam on prizes. So if you are an OS developer and willing to live off of cracker jacks, then yes, you can get paid this way.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
3. Compensation. Unless otherwise covered in a separate written Addendum to this Agreement, your compensation for completing an assignment will be listed on the Committed Community website when you apply for the assignment. Compensation is subject to change by OpenLogic and any changes shall be effective when posted to the Committed Community website or provided to you via email. You are responsible for any and all taxes due on any compensation received from OpenLogic.
Wow, why didn't anyone think of this before? A compensation program that is subject to change at will... I only need to usually make my house payment anyway.
http://www.coderoshi.com/
Employer: Wahoo Docks Division: Information Technology Job Title: Software Programmer Description: This position will work with our existing IT professional to supplement the development of our in-house developed MIS system, develop new software to be used with our operations, and to monitor, expand and build on our existing Web Sites. In short, we need additional support with our software as we are continually developing new products and require faster lead times on changes. General aptitude with a variety of software packages, general intellect and personality fit with existing staff are the most imnportant criteria we will use to identify candidate. Software we currently use includes MS Access, C++, MySQL, VBA, CAD, Basic, HTML, PHP, among others. We work hard at our firm and have a good sense of excellence at what we do - we expect the candidate to be accretive to the overall group. We provide a very work hard/play hard atmosphere and are looking for someone who is enthused by this atmosphere. Location: Atlanta Position Type: Full Time Desired Major(s): All Liberal Arts/Computer Science, All Business/Computer Information Systems Desired Class Level(s): Senior, 1st Year alumni, Alumni Work Authorization: US Citizen, Permanent Resident Salary Range: $30,000 - $40,000
That fucking job should be paying at least $75k. Disagree? Fucking applying! And don't cry to me when you're at the office for 80+ hours a week!
You will get paid! For any issue you resolve successfully, you will get paid. We track how much you'll get paid in points. You can trade in the points for cash or for things like XBoxes. (This is in addition to the XBoxes being given to the first members to join on successfully resolving their first issue.) The reason we added the point system was because some people would rather have prizes like XBoxes than cash. (I was told by SEVERAL people that they'd rather get things like XBoxes because if they got cash their wives would never let them by XBoxes.) But you can trade in your points directly for dollars. Or you can save them up for XBoxes. Or you can donate them to open source software organizations.
... where jobs will be posted in open forums/sites, and people will take them on and get paid, be it contract jobs, be it support for open source software - a truly open world we are going towards ?
Read radical news here
I used to get $120K for that work.
You get paid "points" which can be redeemed for "cash and prizes" ...
... but I don't expect to make a living there"
Another posted put it best "like tickets at an arcade
This is a great way to get enterprise support...if your idea of "enterprise support" is a couple of high-schoolers with a couple months of Linux experience on their two-box networks telling you what to do. (Plus, "I migrated EDS from Cleveland to San Antonio and all I got was this lousy XBox?")
I wonder if OpenLogic takes coupons and IOUs as payment in lieu of cash? (Don't laugh too hard; many class-action suits end with the plantiffs getting coupons.)
Also does it not rebutt the myth that if you have the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself?
It proves the truth that if you have access to the code you can easily maintain and improve it yourself by paying someone to do it for you. Or did you think that simply having the code automatically makes everyone a programmer? Or (more likely) are you deliberately misinterpreting this "myth" to make some snarky straw-man point? In any case, your comment made me laugh my ass off and now I need to "rebutt" myself.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
1. Stock price has little to nothing to do with the profitability of a company.
2. The question was about OSS and making money, which is still argely unproven. Whether or not OSS provides better advancement in software in general is a point that can be argued, but whether or not it can make money can't be argued at this point: By and large, OSS does NOT make money.
Legal Agreement:Please review the OpenLogic Expert Community Agreement If you are accepted to the OpenLogic Expert Community, you will be asked to read and accept the agreement.
'Assignments may be bugs, errors, problems or other issues associated with open source projects. OpenLogic will post assignments on the Committed Community website located at www.________.com '
(their underscores, not mine)
'If you develop any source code or other material as part of any assignment, you agree that you will provide a copy of the source code or other materials to OpenLogic.You also agree to assign to OpenLogic joint ownership in any and all worldwide copyrights, moral rights and other proprietary and intellectual property rights you have in the source code or other materials'
http://milkshake.dexy.org
In addition, as an introductory offer, if you are one of the first 75 people to join the OpenLogic Expert Community, you will receive an Xbox 360 once you resolve your first issue.
Which part of their market research made them think I'd want a Microsoft TOY as a reward for my expertise?
the drugs wore off, more-than-needed computer skills graduated from college, outsourcing started to work, and...
so what was your point? You and the parent post are longing for the "good ol' days"?!
So when I'm doing a phat Typo3 Project Kaspar Skarhoj is the best choice for advice?
Yes.
If I wanna do some Real Time 3D thing I need Ton Roosendaal and the Blender Crew?
Right.
Do I need this company?
No.
To me it just looks like some shop trying to feed of the OSS community. This might be attrative for someone who's good at coding but can't market himself. But from what I can tell all those people at project leads are doing perfectly well in doing business all by themselves.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Straw man or not, it's the myth I bought into before I was a programmer.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Look at the scammy behaviour prompted by google's adsense money or yahoo and overtures' click bounties and "alliances" promoting spyware spammers and ad farms and search engine abuse. I even just got a spam of a monster.com job offer; apparently due to some kind of reward which is motivating people to spam their job postings around. "work at home" scams and reward systems like this seem to be the modern corporate way of doing things in unethical ways while maintaining plausible deniability.
I suppose stuff like this has always happened in the real world and I was just isolated from it in the open source world where most folks fix bugs and help each other and explain things for free. I just wish we could keep the real world out for a couple more decades. :)
It is extremely difficult to effectively sell OSS software. True. Anything given away is difficult to sell. That is far away from meaning that OSS does not make money. You should refine your statement so as to specify what "model" you are talking about. There has been limited success with the sale and support of specific linux distros (but at the same time others have done exceedingly well in this arena). But software developers are software developers and administrators are administrators. You can hire someone to work with proprietary code and foot the whole bill, or hire somebody to work with an open source project and foot part of the bill but share with others. Independent software developers have existed for a long time now. OSS doesn't change that aspect at all. If anything it provides another avenue to consider. Additionally, businesses, mine included, benefit GREATLY off open source software. We would not operate nearly as efficiently if we were more dependant on proprietary software. By far open source software has provided us the most flexible, easiest to adapt, and cheapest to maintain solutions. Anyways, I guess I'm just trying to say: OSS can make you money using it, but making money off OSS sales itself is relegated to a select few monsters like the Red Hats and Novells. IMO
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
"I wish you all had one neck, and my hands were around it." -- Carl Panzram
"Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!" (I wish the Roman people had one throat) -- Caligula