Sun Offers Reward Program to Boost Open Source Effort

e5rebel writes to tell us that Sun Microsystems has announced they they will be creating a reward program in order to compensate open source programmers for their work in a hope to boost open source efforts. The program will involve communities like OpenSolaris, GlassFish, OpenJDK, OpenSPARC, NetBeans, and OpenOffice.org according to Simon Phipps, Sun's open source officer. "Phipps' post comes some months after Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, voiced skepticism over the open-source status quo, where developers who contribute to various efforts go uncompensated while corporations are enriched. 'It really is a worrisome social artifact,' Green said at the time. 'I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.'"

Comments

Re:Please don't

[ShieldW0lf]

The answer, of course, is that corporations should not be permitted to make a profit. That was the intention behind establishing corporations in the first place, that they be a limited liability group that makes no profit and whose sole justification for existence is that they perform a public good.

Re:Monetization of labor

[FredDC]

one who is forced to post AC lest my employer learn of my hobby

Too late, we all know you've been taking ballet lessons after hours!

Re:Please don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now.

Little bags of green shrinkwrapped to dvd's with slogans such as "Sun. Don't you want to get nicely toasted?" or "Sparc it up!"

Re:Please don't

[morgan_greywolf]

Thank you, but please don't poison what is being done by good will with your money. Speak for yourself!

Please pay me,

--an open source author.

Re:Most open source will come from India???

[morgan_greywolf]

On reading the article the main thing that jumped out at me was the assumption that Sun, or at least Simon Phipps, believes that most open source programming will be done in India. Shit! First they outsource our paying jobs to India, now they want to outsource our hobbies there, too?!

Does anyone know where can I contribute money to help revitalize Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?

Re:Great news!

[morgan_greywolf]

Can they start on the divers, please? There are open source divers?! Is Linux water resistant to 300 meters?

Re:Outsource Opensource?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "I'm announcing it in India because that's where I expect the greatest open-source community growth to come from in the near future. ... If we can play a part in catalyzing the emergence of India as a key international open source power-house, the effect on the software industry will be huge."

Great, now open source software will go downhill due to bad programming and bad UIs :cry:

Don't worry, we'll still have fast & reliable tech-support... oh wait.