Will young developers take on key open source software?(bbc.com)
bbc.com
Will young developers take on key open source software?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly7n2jm5m5o
20 comments
As sad as it might seem, this will be good reality check for companies of all sizes to start contributing to the open source ecosystem they take so much from. Either that or I foresee the rise of some stewarding group balancing the vampires with the contributors (ie. you gotta contribute a relative minimum to feed from the ecosystem). The current state of open source is not sustainable anyway judging by the stories of burn out contributors and most companies are just used to having so much free stuff available that they don't even consider paying back or where the free stuff comes from until vulnerabilities start to increase in abandoned packages with no alternatives beyond fronting an insane amount of dev time to write a replacement or fork the project
> “You've got a next generation who haven't engaged as a philanthropic community and volunteer community in the same way, at the same scale.”
That's basically a kind way of saying that they mock the crazy old guy who shakes his fists at the cloud, and mumbles something about Microsoft and Google.
That's basically a kind way of saying that they mock the crazy old guy who shakes his fists at the cloud, and mumbles something about Microsoft and Google.
At my university, I remember having obligatory "volunteer" hours. I remember doing my internship unpaid.
While I know that's how things simply are, I imagine in current climate it'd put off a lot of people away from anything that resembles volunteering. "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
While I know that's how things simply are, I imagine in current climate it'd put off a lot of people away from anything that resembles volunteering. "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
Actually it's that inflation and cost of living has squeezed people so much that volunteering and prestigious low paid internships/ unpaid internships are mostly done by people from affluent backgrounds where as back in the day the middle class was the rich of today.
Also, the volunteering stuff we had was mostly related to helping uni organise events and so on.
So we were unpaid labor.
So we were unpaid labor.
Yes, via FAANG jobs lol. That's one of the few realistic ways young people nowadays can afford to spend a considerable amount of time learning the ins and outs of very complex OSS
My impression is that a lot of younger people see working with open source projects in their spare time primarily as a way to do self promotion, in order to get good jobs and grow their networks.
Why would they. Majority of open source is just enabling the big players to produce software a little bit faster.
Young people are too busy with being blasted in the ass financially to focus on hobby side projects.
Boomers pulled up the ladder and now they're wondering why noone is climbing up.
Boomers pulled up the ladder and now they're wondering why noone is climbing up.
It’s true, open source doesn’t pay (usually) and millennials and younger are struggling to buy houses and just live.
Not only does it not pay but the impact is a lot lower. Can you make an editor anything like VSCode or a cache like Redis? The bar is sky high and for zero dollars it ain't worth it for most.
I don't think it needs to be sky high. The first story on here was one of a person who just basically wrapped a bunch of transfer protocols into one commend (yes, I'm severely underplaying the time and effort involved).
But I suppose it depends on what sort or magnitude of impact you want to make on the scene.
But I suppose it depends on what sort or magnitude of impact you want to make on the scene.
Well in many ways its a deceitfully clever way to extract slave labor of the disenfranchised.
Its an unpopular view but most of FOSS getting to the point of adoption that its at today was largely a reaction to monopolies, barriers of entry, and bad software alternatives whose cost was price gouging.
Build an OSS software suite as a company, solicit free labor, get bought out, take it private and reap the reward of money printing.
Knowing this cycle is a reality, as opposed to just someone saying it can theoretically happen, who would ever contribute when they aren't paid?
There are plenty of competent and skilled people today who are out of work, and can't feed themselves without government assistance.
Its an unpopular view but most of FOSS getting to the point of adoption that its at today was largely a reaction to monopolies, barriers of entry, and bad software alternatives whose cost was price gouging.
Build an OSS software suite as a company, solicit free labor, get bought out, take it private and reap the reward of money printing.
Knowing this cycle is a reality, as opposed to just someone saying it can theoretically happen, who would ever contribute when they aren't paid?
There are plenty of competent and skilled people today who are out of work, and can't feed themselves without government assistance.
> . Can you make an editor anything like VSCode or a cache like Redis?
No, but you can make a video player like MPlayer, a video library like ffmpeg, an image viewer like xv (not technically open source but close), a widget library like GTK1, an operating system, and so on and so forth. There is a lot of useful software which started as a one man show.
No, but you can make a video player like MPlayer, a video library like ffmpeg, an image viewer like xv (not technically open source but close), a widget library like GTK1, an operating system, and so on and so forth. There is a lot of useful software which started as a one man show.
Sad but true. I was planning to start trying to commit to some OS last year... but the lack of luck in the Job market put that to a pause.
I need to make sure I can pay off my debt before having a clear mind to focus on being a part of an effort bigger than myself.
I need to make sure I can pay off my debt before having a clear mind to focus on being a part of an effort bigger than myself.
lol Gen Z is wealthier at this point in their lives than every preceding generation was and not even by a small margin
A portion of GenZ is wealthier than any generation of upper class ever. This is the most unequal generation in terms of wealth and education(people who submit papers on additive number theory in high school while the others have a 4th grade reading comprehension and a few thousand followers on tiktok).
Do you have a source for the claim that poor GenZ are worse off than past generations?
I'm actually curious, I've only seen the numbers in aggregate.
I'm actually curious, I've only seen the numbers in aggregate.
What's worse, that inequality is not based in competency or meritocracy but in inheritance, corruption, money printing, and connections.
The poor reading comprehension is the purposeful product of decades of indoctrination, torture, and selective interference to breed out and reduce intelligence.
The poor reading comprehension is the purposeful product of decades of indoctrination, torture, and selective interference to breed out and reduce intelligence.
They have not lived through the days that pirated software was common, as most folks would not have income to pay for every single piece of software on their computers.
They have grown up with disposable computing devices, where OEMs have gone back to pre-PC revolution, where to get an OS upgrade one would get a new computer, and all peripherals were external, USB ports replacing parallel ports, as means to get those margins pre-clone wars back, using software with microtransactions.
Additionally people have realised that FOOS without income doesn't scale, and we're back to Shareware by another name, with incentives to turn them into VC sponsored unicorns, something that we didn't have back in the day, getting some money to get by was already good enough.
After my generation is gone, so are all FOSS founders, and like every movent in human history, it will be replaced by something else.