Without Jobs, Will Open Source Suffer?

darthcamaro writes in with an interview with Markus Rex, Novell's top Linux exec and the former CTO of the Linux Foundation. While some open source vendors see the current economy as a boon to open source, the interview concludes with Rex's speculation on the contrary possibility. "The other thing is in both Europe and the US the rise of the unemployment rate is something that is rather unprecedented... The open source community to a certain degree is dependent on the willingness of people to contribute. We see no indication that anything might change there, but who knows? People need something to live off." Have you thought about scaling back open source work as the economy continues to contract?

Comments

Not Steve

[Mr Z]

Heh... was I the only one who misread this as something to do with Steve Jobs? (And subsequently went "Murrrrrh?")

Re:Not Steve

[LingNoi]

lol, like we'd ever need him..

Re:Not Steve

[thered2001]

Nope, not the only one. He really should change his name during these times of high unemployment. Maybe 'Jobbes'? Or he can try to get the English word changed...he might just be able to pull that off.

Re:Not Steve

[RCL]

If you make something that is significant, people will always find a way to support you, even if the mechanisms by which they generally give that support are lacking.

Not really. There's quite a few historical examples of inventors who did not profit from the significant things they invented.

It's not enough to create something "significant", it has to be also useful for people. And frankly speaking, OSS projects way too often pursue the goals of their creators, not their users (take KDE4 as an example).

Re:Not Steve

[morgauo]

iJobs?

Re:Not Steve

[skeeto]

Then it could be Calvin and Jobbes!

Ridiculous

[Dun Malg]

People need something to live off

This is utterly ridiculous. It's not like work on an open source project is comparable to giving away money, or hand-built widgets. Nobody is going to say "gee, I would normally contribute this code to that open source project, but I'm unemployed, so I'll sell it to buy groceries instead."

Re:Ridiculous

[geminidomino]

This is utterly ridiculous. It's not like work on an open source project is comparable to giving away money, or hand-built widgets. Nobody is going to say "gee, I would normally contribute this code to that open source project, but I'm unemployed, so I'll sell it to buy groceries instead."

No, but they might say "Gee, I would normally write a patch to fix Xorg's gonkulator, but dammit, I have to go search for a job instead."

Re:Ridiculous

[SanityInAnarchy]

Except that contributions to open source projects are both good resume-fodder and a good way to get noticed by potential employers.

I know a job search is hard work, but I'm not sure it's going to take as much time as a fulltime job... meaning that much more time to play with Xorg, or whatever else.

Re:Ridiculous

[Kozz]

No, but they might say "Gee, I would normally write a patch to fix Xorg's gonkulator, but dammit, I have to go search for a job instead."

I'll have you know that the behavior of Xorg's gonkulator is functioning exactly as intended. Marking this entry as RESOLVED: WONTFIX.

Re:Ridiculous

[Dun Malg]

No, but they might say "Gee, I would normally write a patch to fix Xorg's gonkulator, but dammit, I have to go search for a job instead."

That's the same crap argument that always gets thrown out. Searching for a job isn't something you can reasonably do 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. It takes no appreciably greater amount of the day to look for work than it does to go to work. After you've gone to 3 interviews and sent of 20 more resumes, what are you going to do after 6pm, when most offices are closed? Sit at home for 3 hours and obsessively tune your resume? After every day? Un-fucking-likely.

Re:Ridiculous

[Kjella]

I know a job search is hard work, but I'm not sure it's going to take as much time as a fulltime job

If times are tough, you've been through all the job boards and applied for anything relevant, shaked down all your friends and contacts asking if they know of any job offers, gone to every interview you've been invited to then yes. Keeping up with the daily new offers isn't really that much work, it's not a day's worth of work. "Hitting the pavement" is only good if you want to get a job as burger flipper or shop assistant, anything more serious than and you'll find the application on the web boards. If you got commitments (wife and kids, family, friends, wife's job, home with mortgage) then you can't just go across the country for whatever job might be there.

Also, employers don't want employees way outside their current skillset and normal pay grade. They know as well as you know that this is a stopgap because times are rough and come better times you'll be off to a more relevant position, most likely at another company. The more desperate you get, the less any employer is likely to hire you on those far-out applications. Of course you shouldn't just hit the couch but sometimes just waiting a little bit for reasonable jobs to show up is the right answer. Of course that all depends on what situation you're in, if you don't have a nest egg and need that job NOW, well you do what you gotta do. Even under current circumstances people aren't that desperate though.

Re:Ridiculous

[pleappleappleap]

If anything, I usually write more open source code when I'm out of work. Even when you're putting a lot of effort into finding a job, when you're out of work, you have a lot of extra time on your hands.

Boredom is worse than poverty

[NReitzel]

Were I unemployed, I would still contribute to open source projects. The only thing I think would be worse than being jobless and broke would be being bored, jobless, and broke.

Re:Boredom is worse than poverty

[Main MAn]

What you mean bored? Go watch some TV. If nothing else there is always some infomercials going on!

Re:Boredom is worse than poverty

[drinkypoo]

Idk about you, but if I were unemployed - I'd try to work.

Being able to point to your devblog and say "this is the code I've been writing over the last six months of unemployment" looks a lot better than "I've done nothing but write resumes for six months and I'll spend my first month trying to remember what an IDE looks like".

It should flourish.

[Lumpy]

If all those programmers that are unemployed want to keep their skills sharp they better find a project or two to join and keep on coding.

Honestly sitting on the couch for 3 months eating cheetos and playing the Xbox does not make you a useful coder when you finally get another gig. Laid off? go to sourceforge and find something you would like to contribute to, contact the team, and get cracking. Keeps you sharp and you will get spoiled by the no deadline freedom.

Re:It should flourish.

[Aladrin]

I agree. For the reason you stated, and that I was bored, I did a lot more open source coding when I was jobless than I do now.

And it -did- help me get a good job as well.

Plus, it's a great resume item

[Dr. Manhattan]

I know I got my current job because I had some code in the Linux kernel. Being able to show your code to prospective employers is good advertising.

Re:Plus, it's a great resume item

[MikeBabcock]

And by the same token, bragging that you wrote a bunch of good code that you /can't/ show off because its proprietary isn't nearly as useful as it sounds.

OSS contributions are very valuable because of the open licensing.

Getting code merged into the kernel also shows some specific technical skills and inter-personal work dynamics with other programmers, something worth pointing out at least :-).

Dubious assumptions?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Stories like these seem to assume two rather dubious things: (1) that programmers always have a choice between work-for-nothing and work-for-something and (2) that all OSS is produced by volunteers for no money.

The second, we know is partially true, if altruism didn't exist OSS wouldn't work nearly as well; but definitely not wholly true, anybody can rattle off the list of big serious commercial players paying people to build OSS.

The first, though, seems a really weird assumption to make when talking about OMG Depression! conditions. For anybody who primarily works for a living(as opposed to primarily owning or investing) the more or less defining characteristic of bad economic times is low prices or no buyers for your labor. It isn't: "Well, times are hard, so I'm going to start selling the labor I used to give away.", it is "Times are hard, people aren't interested in buying the labor I want to sell."

There will probably be some cases where people who used to work relatively short hours at high wages will now work longer hours at lower wages, thus decreasing their OSS contribution; but I strongly suspect that, for most programmers(and people generally) the whole point of "depression" is that you can't just go and sell the labor you used to give away. If things get really dreadful, fall of the USSR style dreadful, we'll probably see less OSS and more subsistence farming and wood chopping; but garden variety economic slowdown would seem to have the opposite effect.

Unless I can't pay for internet

[internerdj]

FOSS sounds like a great way to keep my skills relevant and honed. It will also help fill in those blank time periods which employers hate. I see you haven't been employed for the last six months. Oh well, I've been searching for a job and working for (this particular) project. Check out some of my work if you'd like, here is the URL...

Opposite effect?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I would think that sacked software engineers would actually be more likely to start contributing to OSS ...

• to build a portfolio
• to keep their skills sharp
• because they have the free time and it's enjoyable and/or civilly virtuous

[I can't RTFA because of content filtering where I'm at right now. So I'm guessing about its contents.]

Without jobs, Open Source will flourish!

[larry bagina]

Every time I've been between jobs, I didn't sit around drinking 40s, eating doritos, and watching tv -- I worked on my own projects (websites and software) and some open source software. But when I spend all day working then come home and deal with dinner, running errands, other life stuf... that doesn't leave much time for working on open source software.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Companies Need Software

[curmudgeon99]

Speaking as a developer who uses lots of FOSS, I think as long as there are jobs there will be a demand for open-source software. I would be worried if I worked for IBM or BEA or any of the other vendors who sell expensive stuff. My company believes in open source and when we propose to use that sort of technology, our business customers don't bat an eye.

If you want an employer perspective

[HangingChad]

If I'm looking at fairly equally qualified candidates and one of them spent their off time contributing to an open source project, I would tend to see that as a very big point in their favor. To me that says they really enjoy what they do and have concerns that go beyond the bottom line. And that they care enough about their skills to keep them sharp while they were off.

Community service always looks good, even if that community is virtual. And that can make those of you coming out of college stand out from your peers. An open source project can give you very marketable experience.

Who Are You Gonna Hire?

[s31523]

Engineer A who was laid off and did nothing for 3 months except take his unemployment check..

OR

Engineer B who was laid off and did some work on an open source project where he/she learned some new things and kept their skills sharp?

I think the exact opposite would occur, No jobs equals more people who now have the time to jump in.

Re:Cut their own throats, so to speak

[pla]

This, I think, is the reason why OSS is generally of poor quality (generally speaking) compared to closed source competition.

Did you mean that as a troll, or do you sincerely believe that?

Let's move past the "Windows vs Linux" argument first of all, as they each appeal to different types of people, and both have merits and downsides.

First, at the ultra-low-end, where you have Joe Sixpack dependant on one-click do-everything apps, I will agree that closed source has the edge, and for an obvious (IMO) reason - The same people interested in FOSS tend to want more control than such software provides.

At the ultra-techie end, you pretty much have your choices dictated by platform. For serious Windows development, you use Visual Studio (and I write that as someone who does prefer MinGW to Visual Studio, but I won't play dumb); For web development, Adobe has pretty much a hard monopoly (and again, I say that as someone who will not use Adobe dev tools). For the unixy and embedded markets, you either have FOSS or WindRiver (and in that case, FOSS has such a huge edge that WindRiver gave up on their own garbage and now just repackages FOSS tools).

So, let's consider the middle-to-advanced users, those who know they have a choice, but don't necessarily care about ideology, just results. I would of course point out FireFox and ThunderBird as crown jewels of open source; For DRM-unencumbered media players, you only have Open Source choices; For rippers (that don't impose their own DRM), again, pretty much all open source with the notable exception of SlySoft (which only has an edge at the moment because they beat us to the punch on BluRay ripping). For image editing, GIMP has a complicated interface with a steep learning curve - But so does Photoshop. For DAW, I honestly know more engineers using Audacity than Sonar/DP/GB/etc, with the exception that if you need custom hardware or realtime support, you don't have many choices there. For those who know the difference between word processing and text editing, the FOSS Notepad++ has pretty much crushed the competition for the text editor crown. For secure terminal sessions and most tunneling, everyone (in the Windows world) uses PuTTY; For (non-one-click) video format conversion, VirtualDub counts as pretty much the only choice...


So... I don't know that I'd call FOSS better than commercial apps, but in some cases yes, and in most cases comparable.

Title case vs. sentence case

[Z-MaxX]

After giving it some thought, I have decided that "Sentence case" is superior to "Title Case" from the viewpoint of precision. By capitalizing words in headings and titles of publications (of which there are many different ways to do it!), information is lost as to whether a particular word was a proper noun or not.

Furthermore, there are words (capitonyms) that completely change meaning and possibly pronunciation depending on the capitalization. For instance, "polish your shoes" vs. "eat a Polish sausage", or "measure the mass" vs. "go to Mass".

Using title case is a lossy operation.