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(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Are key open source developers volunteer developers ?

Key people in Linux development are paid developers.  Actually this was the reason why Linux became most popular GNU-based kernel -- distributors hired most of open source developers and convert them into paid developers.  Some developers became cofounders of Linux companies, some highly paid employees of this companies. In reality Linux companies staff listings look like a roster of open source developers. That means that considerable part of open source software  is not "donated", but "taxpayer-funded" (university-funded) or "commercially funded" (current versions of Linux).

Even Linus Torvalds cannot be called volunteer after probably just first two years of kernel development: after that his "hobby" was financed by the University of Helsinki (which allowed Linus to do development on his university job), then Transmeta picked the bills.

Later IPO stock gold rush remunerated him quite nicely, probably on the level the few leading commercial Unix  developers enjoy. I would say that Linus Torvalds probably belongs to the first dozen of most highly paid developers in the Unix word.  Without commercial developers and support of  development by commercial distributors Linux in its present form would be impossible. Most significant open source products are now developed by mixture of people with a rather high percentage of paid developers (staff of Linux companies) and in this respect are not that different from commercial products. It's just new commercial software development paradigm that in my second paper I called complexity-level based commercialization.  Actually FSF from the beginning used paid developers to develop software  and Linus Torvalds after the initial two years or so became a paid (by the University if Helsinki) professional developer. That means that CatB's claim that Linus Torvalds is a volunteer developer contradicts Linus Torvalds biography. For example it looks like the decision to include SMP into the kernel was commercially dictated, including so called "valuable considerations". In the paper Lawyers Guns and Money - KDE and Corel Working in the Real World  by Dennis E. Powell described this phenomenon in the following way:

The dominant view is that this is generally a good thing.

And it can be. But it can also become a bad thing, and unless some lines are drawn, it's a sure bet that it will.

... ...

Even uglier, one could imagine--and this example is entirely hypothetical--a situation where the top people in a development effort accepted what lawyers call "valuable considerations" in exchange for looking the other way as a project got steered in a way that benefits a particular company. Nothing illegal about it.

Less sinister but troublesome nonetheless is the simple culture clash when open source meets commercial software. Corporations play it close to the vest, open source does anything but. The place where they meet can be awkward and frictional--it's hard to imagine them being otherwise. The potential for abuse is real as well. Indeed, Jon "Maddog" Hall of Linux International has done and is doing much to educate corporations about a crucial reality: they don't own the system and they cannot mandate changes in it. He has helped many companies understand the differences between closed, proprietary software and open source.

... ...

The leading voice of open source is Eric S. Raymond, again one of the few in the Linux community recognized just by his initials. ESR is watching more and more corporations become involved; his philosophy embraces the idea that closed development is old and creaky, while open source development is young and robust. A company will do it the new way or die:

"I'm not worried. What I see is corporations realizing that if they want our results, they have to buy into our process--and if they don't, they'll be eaten by a competitor who does."

... ... ...

I don't know of any lawyers who would be eager to try to defend the GPL if offense came to judge and jury. Commercial software companies have over the last decade tended to give the best parking spaces not to programmers but to lawyers. It would take some heavy-duty mobilization to take on a big software company and not die of attrition before a dispute ever came to trial. I think there will be offenses, as surely as there will be another VBX macro virus.

It's frightening, the idea that Linux and its applications could fall victim to its own success. But wherever there's money, big money as there is now in Linux, there is someone very clever who will try to take it away.

Corporations and open-source development are for the most part diametrically opposed as to organization and goals. Neither is bad; indeed, neither is better and both can be abused. But when the two come together, it's oil and vinegar--it needs a little shaking up before it can go onto the salad. And these are indeed the salad days of Linux.

It's not difficult at all, though, to imagine the companies that make commercial software for other platforms looking upon Linux as some kind of odd little brother. And, with a smile, saying, "I'm very idealistic. I want to make the world a better place for me to live in."

The paper also contains a very nice quote from old Peanuts cartoon that catch the essence of the problem "I'm very idealistic. I want to make the world a better place for me to live in."

There is another confirmation of my point point of view. Below is the quote from The New Linux Myth Dispeller/ Development Myths that (independenently for this document) came to the conclusion that "... project teams have a mix of programmer types. And surprisingly, many of them turn out to be regular employees of regular companies, in short, "professional programmers". ":

The very term "Freeware" conjures up images of amateur teenage programmers, inexperienced university students and pony-tailed, rebel "hackers". These people are expected to be nerdy, and not very much bothered about polished interfaces, ease of use, documentation and other niceties that are found in commercial software. Come to think of it, free software isn't even expected to be of good quality. There's no accountability, after all. These guys are just writing this stuff for themselves. You really can't expect very much out of it. On the other hand, a commercial organisation that makes a living out of a software product is accountable, and is bound to be quality-conscious because it is a matter of business survival.

So it never ceases to amaze when free software products like Perl, Apache and Linux work so well, in many cases better than any commercial equivalent. Surely it's got to be a fluke

Well, the one big change in recent times has been the Internet. Before the Internet became a phenomenon that touched everyone's life, the only decent free software was from the GNU project. This was a small group of highly talented programmers, in some ways an exception to the rule. Most PC-based freeware and even shareware was buggy and unpolished. These programs established a reputation that even today gives free software a bad name.

The Internet changed everything because it was now possible for programmers around the world to work on the same project and share files almost as if they were in the same room. All of a sudden, project teams sprang up that just happened to be geographically scattered. Programmers with similar interests could seek out and find one another. In very short order, the Internet enabled a new, distributed method of software development. Free software isn't written just by college students and amateurs. Rather, project teams have a mix of programmer types. And surprisingly, many of them turn out to be regular employees of regular companies, in short, "professional programmers". Many free software products that are born of the Internet have been written by professional programmers in their spare time, which puts quite a different slant on it. These guys know what they're doing. They've been trained in formal processes. They're not cowboys or amateurs.

Paradoxically as I already mentioned Linus Torvalds is one of the most highly paid professional programmer in the Unix world, a multimillionaire actually.


Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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