3 ms·

"I want to know that I get 8 hours a week to work on opensource" You wouldn't work at a closed source company? edit: i read 8-hours-a-day -- sorry. that is so

"I want to know that I get 8 hours a week to work on opensource" You wouldn't work at a closed source company? edit: i read 8-hours-a-day -- sorry. that is somewhat reasonable. The unreasonable side comes from the inability to create hours. You can only add work. Side projects are always additive, unless you can stop work on a core project to do the side project. That's often bad for business, unless you're Guido. The solution is to just work more to make up the hours. Most people don't want to hear that though, because they like the idea of getting a gift of choice from a company.

cstejerean 18y ago
Any company that leverages open source software should make an effort to donate back to the community, even if the core of their software is closed source. Use Linux? Python? Emacs? Firefox? Allowing your employees to donate some time towards open source projects is probably a good way to attract talent. Advertising for "rockstar ninja" positions is not.
- wheels 18y ago
  While I agree that it's a much better way to attract talent, I'm going to say (as an OSS contributor myself) that unless it's already significantly into its funding cycle, a startup where you've got time to spend on random OSS stuff that doesn't directly benefit the company is probably focusing on the wrong things.
  - cstejerean 18y ago
    A startup where the co-founders have time to work on random OSS stuff is probably working on the wrong things. A startup where employees can spend 20% of their time hacking on OSS or side projects is likely doing just fine. I would be more worried about a startup that expects or demands that employees work 40+ hours. It either means that it's being run by suit monkeys that don't understand how programmers work or has poor project management that requires a constant crunch mode.
SwellJoe 18y ago
Umm...Do you only work 8 hours a week? Seems like he's saying he's passionate about Open Source and wants that to be part of his job, not that he won't work on anything else. There are lots of people in the world who've learned that working on proprietary code means you say "goodbye" to it when you leave the company, whether you like it or not, and want to make sure they don't have to do that in the future. They've also learned that wholly proprietary companies are sometimes bitches about contributing to Open Source software even outside of business hours and on your own time and equipment! If you're working for a company on Open Source software, you get to keep tabs on that code for the rest of your days, sending patches, if you like, etc. It's a major selling point for some of the best developers I've ever known--in fact, the very best developers I've known generally work on only Open Source software (so I'm excluding myself from this categorization of "very best", since I work on some proprietary software in addition to my predominantly Open Source work).
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  My mistake in reading his comment.
nostrademons 18y ago
Side projects don't have to be additive - they could be something that's on the critical path for your main product and yet not intricately tied to your proprietary code. The decision is not "Can employees spend 20% of their time working on open-source?", but "Can 20% of the code that we already have to write be open-sourced profitably." I suspect that for many companies, the brand-building benefits of open-source and its effect on attracting top developers more than makes up for the chance that someone will take your open-source code and build a competitor. (Particularly since the best candidates for open-sourcing are low-level commodity libraries that somebody will write anyway.)
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  You're right. My comment is directed only at true side projects, not real work that could be opens sourced.
  - cstejerean 18y ago
    Even for true side projects, the solution is to make sure your project schedule doesn't depend on everyone working a strict 40 hours. Having time set aside to do some OSS hacking every week is actually likely to lead to less time wasted with other, likely less productive activities. You also never know when one of those completely unrelated side projects will come in handy.

cstejerean 18y ago

Any company that leverages open source software should make an effort to donate back to the community, even if the core of their software is closed source. Use Linux? Python? Emacs? Firefox? Allowing your employees to donate some time towards open source projects is probably a good way to attract talent. Advertising for "rockstar ninja" positions is not.

wheels 18y ago
While I agree that it's a much better way to attract talent, I'm going to say (as an OSS contributor myself) that unless it's already significantly into its funding cycle, a startup where you've got time to spend on random OSS stuff that doesn't directly benefit the company is probably focusing on the wrong things.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  A startup where the co-founders have time to work on random OSS stuff is probably working on the wrong things. A startup where employees can spend 20% of their time hacking on OSS or side projects is likely doing just fine. I would be more worried about a startup that expects or demands that employees work 40+ hours. It either means that it's being run by suit monkeys that don't understand how programmers work or has poor project management that requires a constant crunch mode.

SwellJoe 18y ago

Umm...Do you only work 8 hours a week? Seems like he's saying he's passionate about Open Source and wants that to be part of his job, not that he won't work on anything else. There are lots of people in the world who've learned that working on proprietary code means you say "goodbye" to it when you leave the company, whether you like it or not, and want to make sure they don't have to do that in the future. They've also learned that wholly proprietary companies are sometimes bitches about contributing to Open Source software even outside of business hours and on your own time and equipment! If you're working for a company on Open Source software, you get to keep tabs on that code for the rest of your days, sending patches, if you like, etc. It's a major selling point for some of the best developers I've ever known--in fact, the very best developers I've known generally work on only Open Source software (so I'm excluding myself from this categorization of "very best", since I work on some proprietary software in addition to my predominantly Open Source work).

ivankirigin 18y ago
My mistake in reading his comment.

nostrademons 18y ago

Side projects don't have to be additive - they could be something that's on the critical path for your main product and yet not intricately tied to your proprietary code. The decision is not "Can employees spend 20% of their time working on open-source?", but "Can 20% of the code that we already have to write be open-sourced profitably." I suspect that for many companies, the brand-building benefits of open-source and its effect on attracting top developers more than makes up for the chance that someone will take your open-source code and build a competitor. (Particularly since the best candidates for open-sourcing are low-level commodity libraries that somebody will write anyway.)

ivankirigin 18y ago
You're right. My comment is directed only at true side projects, not real work that could be opens sourced.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  Even for true side projects, the solution is to make sure your project schedule doesn't depend on everyone working a strict 40 hours. Having time set aside to do some OSS hacking every week is actually likely to lead to less time wasted with other, likely less productive activities. You also never know when one of those completely unrelated side projects will come in handy.