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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.