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"[...] people working for free." OSS is "free" in the sense that anyone can consume the content. It's not free labor though. Most of the time, the people buil

by qudat 7y ago

"[...] people working for free." OSS is "free" in the sense that anyone can consume the content. It's not free labor though. Most of the time, the people building OSS are gaining clout and career progression as a result of their "free work." Companies end up paying for it.

eropple 7y ago
I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers. Like most things, the top couple of percent are being used to project an upside that does not apply to everyone else.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  But on the other hand, much of the long tail of contributions probably come from companies using open source software, finding some deficiency, and contributing their change so they don't have to maintain their own fork forever.
- tathougies 7y ago
  > I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers. Can you give an example of a very popular project whose maintainer is not employed in a related field?
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    Famously, the creator of Homebrew wasn't able to get hired at Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338 Not exactly fitting your question, but an interesting point.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      I mean, homebrew is completely inapplicable to what Google makes its money off of, so it's not particularly surprising. I would not be surprised if I wasn't able to be hired in anything but a junior role at a very niche medical technology company for example. Or a java desktop app shop (I have no java experience). For some reason people are under the impression that Google makes its money from 'doing computer science', and mistakenly think that anyone good at something that qualifies as computer science ought to be able to work there. Aside from the obvious (and oft-repeated) critique of rampant Google fetishism, it's important to note that Google does actually operate several businesses, and its goal when hiring engineering talent is to find talent that will help its business. Homebrew, a package manager for OS X (I don't think Google uses OS X for anything but consumer apps), is completely orthogonal to most of their business.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Being "employed" in a related field isn't the same thing, though. A moderately animate clothes rack can get a job as a software developer; it's just not that difficult. My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence (i.e., excluding potential improvements in skill and craftsmanship from writing it; you can get those through not writing open source software just the same). Even in hiring processes it's really rare to have an interviewer bother to so much as glance at your GitHub account or, like, your NPM account. I'm personally in an interesting spot, as part of why I got my current job is that I have demonstrated proficiency with various sets of tools through writing open-source software (even there it's not my open source work itself, just my understanding of the stuff I'm writing it against). But I'm also aware that I'm very much the exception on that one.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Software engineering is not one field. > My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence If you define 'open source project' as something that exists on GitHub, then the vast majority of open-source software is completely useless and unhelpful to a resume. On the other hand, if you have a popular piece of software, a community around it, and a demonstrated ability to manage tickets, contributors, etc, then you are going to have great chances of working in an environment where that skill is used.

by qudat 7y ago

eropple 7y ago

I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers. Like most things, the top couple of percent are being used to project an upside that does not apply to everyone else.

NoodleIncident 7y ago
But on the other hand, much of the long tail of contributions probably come from companies using open source software, finding some deficiency, and contributing their change so they don't have to maintain their own fork forever.
tathougies 7y ago
> I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of people building open source software, even very popular software, are not being paid for it and it offers little value for their careers. Can you give an example of a very popular project whose maintainer is not employed in a related field?
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Famously, the creator of Homebrew wasn't able to get hired at Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338 Not exactly fitting your question, but an interesting point.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    I mean, homebrew is completely inapplicable to what Google makes its money off of, so it's not particularly surprising. I would not be surprised if I wasn't able to be hired in anything but a junior role at a very niche medical technology company for example. Or a java desktop app shop (I have no java experience). For some reason people are under the impression that Google makes its money from 'doing computer science', and mistakenly think that anyone good at something that qualifies as computer science ought to be able to work there. Aside from the obvious (and oft-repeated) critique of rampant Google fetishism, it's important to note that Google does actually operate several businesses, and its goal when hiring engineering talent is to find talent that will help its business. Homebrew, a package manager for OS X (I don't think Google uses OS X for anything but consumer apps), is completely orthogonal to most of their business.
- eropple 7y ago
  Being "employed" in a related field isn't the same thing, though. A moderately animate clothes rack can get a job as a software developer; it's just not that difficult. My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence (i.e., excluding potential improvements in skill and craftsmanship from writing it; you can get those through not writing open source software just the same). Even in hiring processes it's really rare to have an interviewer bother to so much as glance at your GitHub account or, like, your NPM account. I'm personally in an interesting spot, as part of why I got my current job is that I have demonstrated proficiency with various sets of tools through writing open-source software (even there it's not my open source work itself, just my understanding of the stuff I'm writing it against). But I'm also aware that I'm very much the exception on that one.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Software engineering is not one field. > My assertion is that having those open source software projects is not materially impacting the careers most writers of open source software because of that software's existence If you define 'open source project' as something that exists on GitHub, then the vast majority of open-source software is completely useless and unhelpful to a resume. On the other hand, if you have a popular piece of software, a community around it, and a demonstrated ability to manage tickets, contributors, etc, then you are going to have great chances of working in an environment where that skill is used.