From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,afb4d45672b1e262 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.megapath.net!news.megapath.net.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:24:27 -0500 From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <7NOdne-iYtWmIafZnZ2dnUVZ_tWdnZ2d@megapath.net> <292bf$443bb4e4$45491254$20549@KNOLOGY.NET> <0tSdnezhf44L9KDZRVn-vA@megapath.net> <5Qc0g.12757$b06.5026@trnddc08> Subject: Re: Making money on open source, if not by selling _support_, then how? Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:24:32 -0500 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Message-ID: <_Oydnco-uMsmrNnZRVn-pg@megapath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.32.209.38 X-Trace: sv3-s2u+jzTJPC+vlC9Sd0WpsBWew2+csjvyrUP8AtyQEC3DVXUQFLbA3Se1+iXn6SZ42lThCS646qF5iVT!3FyUYNm2evg4k/1/T9s4MApIn1uY5R/9qsBVtg8ODAqUCDEP/gq5Hzmzqfq5nNi+51RnrdTy4vdo X-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3848 Date: 2006-04-17T19:24:32-05:00 List-Id: "Justin Gombos" wrote in message news:5Qc0g.12757$b06.5026@trnddc08... > On 2006-04-12, Randy Brukardt wrote: > > "Justin Gombos" wrote in message > > news:nT7%f.4699$7Z6.366@trnddc06... > > ... > >> > Which means no creations at all. > >> > >> You can't conclude that. If that were a true statement, we would > >> not have the rich library of GNU software that exists today. Why? > >> Because there's nothing to stop a GNU developer from having a day > >> job. I suspect most self supporting GNU developers have day jobs. > > > > But that's my point. Taken to it's limit, there could be no > > well-paying "day jobs" for those GNU developers. After all, most of > > them are employed at companies that get some benefit from the GNU > > software. In the limit, where software was worth $0, there would be > > no "day jobs" in fields that are even remotely related. > > How could there be no day job available for GNU developers? Whatever > your answer, it must be purely hypothetical, Of course, I said "taken to the limit": that is, a world where there is only open source software (but is otherwise essentially the same as today - that's an assumption, but not much of one - there has been little change in the overall economic picture in the last hundred year - industries and governments come and go, but the basic drivers have remained the same). > because GNU developers > *do* have day jobs. If they didn't, you'd have to explain how all the > GNU developers have been surviving for the past 20+ years. It's irrelevant, because most software has been developed by non-GNU developers in the past. If there were *only* GNU developers, all of those other "day jobs" at non-GNU developers would disappear. > And what prevents such day jobs from being well paying? Because almost all new jobs created are menial and minimum wage; the jobs that require skill and thus are well-paying are disappearing. (At least for those with engineering skills. Hardly anybody is truly great at more than one thing, and you need to be great to make great software.) > > If the day job is unrelated (or even only weakly related), then the > > developers are either not developing great software, or are > > short-changing someone (their employers, their families, themselves, > > etc.) Great software requires at least some of the developers > > putting a large amount of mental energy into the design and the > > vision (and keeping to that design and vision). That's incompatible > > with a "day job" that requires significant mental energy, which is > > the vast majority of them. > > It seems you're making a lot of assumptions here, which in the end > probably boils down to a very small group. You're assuming a Henry > Ford 40 hour work week, or greater. I'm assuming that employment conditions remain similar to thosse of today. In the US, IT people work an average of 48 hours a week. The average American takes only 7 days of vacation. Those figures are getting worse, not better. > You're assuming these are mentally exhausting day jobs, All jobs are mentally exhausting; if not for the work, for the boredom or the office politics. Especially when you have to do them 10 hours a day. > and you're assuming that the subject is easily fatigable. You're also > assuming that the mental energy > required at work is the same type of mental energy that the subject > would use in their GNU development (a lot of commercial software > effort involves what I call metawork - administrative overhead and > meetings talking about the work itself). There is only one kind of mental energy, and it's a limited resource. I realize that 20-somethings have more of it than 40-somethings like me, but there are limits -- I hit them regularly when RRS was founded, and I still hit them regularly. ... > > You can cheat your employer, of course, but that's not a recipe for > > a sustanable model. Nor is "work, program, sleep" a model for > > healthy living. > > Healthy living is a different issue entirely. Not at all; no system is sustainable if it is chewing up and spitting out the workers. Quality software (quality anything) is not created with slave labor, or people working 22 hour days -- no matter whether that is a labor of love or a labor of money. Randy.