From: Alex F. Bokov (alexboko@umich.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2001 - 12:50:17 MDT
On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Robert Coyote wrote:
> I ask the simplest question
> How does one finance ones life as a programmer when you give away all your
> creativity and work for free?
Wrong. You do not give away all your creativity and work for free. Here's
a concrete example from my own life. It's long and technical, but it
answers your question. I don't expect anybody else to read this, unless
of course they are interested in intelligently discussing open
content rather than blindly repeating the oligopolistic FUD that
debates of this sort seem to be full of.
I'm saving up for my move to grad school by working my old job at a
large IT department (600+ users). Part of my job is to maintain an
database-backed website where we track the status of user requests,
and who from my team is taking care of them. I did this by downloading
a program called WebReq, which was written by someone at another large
IT department. I've made a number of customizations and improvements
to his code and wrote two completely original modules for it (one that
extracts the database files to an Excel-readable format and one that
automatically text-pages people when the requests they've taken on
become overdue). I'd estimate that 15-20% of the code is now 'mine'.
My version now suits my team better than a proprietary solution that
management attempted (and failed, for technical reasons) to implement
organization-wide. There has been some talk about offering my WebReq
implementation as a for-fee service to other departments. I have no
complaints about my paycheck, though I do feel sorry for my supervisor
b/c she might suffer from nightmares that I'll get an even better
offer elswhere.
Before I leave town, I'm planning to clean up the code I wrote, make
some diffs, and submit them to the original author for incorporation
into the canonical version. This benefits me and my successor because
we won't have to patch future revisions because they will already
contain our enhancements. It benefits the user/developer community
as a whole for obvious reasons. It benefits me as an individual
because of course I will be credited for the contributions I've
made. If I ever decide to return to this industry, and a manager at
anyplace with half a clue is interviewing me, I'll be able to score
a few points by citing this useful program as an example of my skill.
My employer is not in the business of selling software, so there is
no reason for them to prevent me from freely distributing our code
(plus, it would be illegal to do so, since it's a derivative work
of a GPL-ed produce). Nor is there any reason for the original
author's employer to prevent him (Yunliang Yu) from releasing it under
GPL in the first place.
Other examples-- as a side-project, I'm evaluating various Wiki-like
systems for use in an internal documentation/policy site. Am I looking
at a multi-thousand $$$ commercial solution that won't even give us
access to the source? Yeah, bloody right. I'm looking at things like
Everything, tWiki, and Zope. Our organization relies heavily on
the following other open-source software, to which we (though not I
as an individual) also contribute: Apache, Kerberos, NetATalk, NetBSD,
Perl, and Linux. Last summer I worked for a software startup (and am
still out there if there's anything you need, guys ;-) ) that is
planning to release the source of the Linux version of their product
for free in order to speed early adoption, capture the rapid evolution
benefits of open content, and influence industry standards in their
area before anybody else does.
> what is this "external funding" ?
Dunno what the context was.
> How do you buy a House by programing in Opensource?
By being good at what you do, so customers want to hire you. Just
like any other profession.
-- SF Park on Meter IRS Why are the above words in my signature? Check out: http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net
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