[KLUG Members] Open Source is Not a Career Path

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> The lead sentence of an article... 
> > "If you're getting into open source because you see it as a career
> > path, you're doing something wrong."
> That's a quote from Linus Torvalds.
> Here is the link:  http://blog.informationweek.com/002186.html
> I think that is open to debate.

Well, anyone going into technology because they think it is a 'career
path' is a bit confused, IMHO.  I do what I do because I enjoy it,  and
the fact I can make some money in the process is cool;  lots of people
hate what they do,  and I'd hate doing lots of things other people do
for money.  Basically I think the whole 'career path' concept is crap.

> > The future of open-source software depends upon bright, motivated
> > programmers filled with ideas and initiative rather than programmers
> > promoting their own, or their employer's, self interests.
> Great!  Slam the door hard in the face of prospective allies because
> of what, a survival instinct or a profit motive?  Well, there really
> is a bogey man after all kiddies.  Lock your doors, shutter the
> windows, and huddle under the covers.

I think you're missing something implied in Linus' philosophy (I think
from other things I've read, and I agree with him if I'm correct) -
"filled with ideas and initiative" is an opposing concept to "promoting
their own ... self interests";  they are not two constructs that cannot
coexist.  It is the difference between an artisan (in the old classical
sense, not the modern 'artist' sense) verses a 'professional' [ I code
because people in a tower somewhere pay me to ].  Professionals don't
invent, push the envelope, or discover; they are in it to get paid - and
are thus risk-averse, short-term, and about efficiency;  an artisan is
in it because he/she has a complusion to be,  and they'll waste lots of
time an resources running down potentials that lead nowhere - but they
occasionally get really really 'lucky'.  Any business needs both,  Open
Source needs artisans.

> Look, idealsim is almost as great as love.

I'm not sure how I feel about this statement.  Love is a good,  idealism
can be a nightmare (particularly if you are the idealist's non-ideal).

>   Yet the bills still got to be paid.  So knock off the hypocrisy.  

There is no hypocrisy here.  I'd code [ or hack, whatever... ] even if I
got paid to do something else,  that I get paid TO CODE is just a *RARE*
instance of the Powers-That-Be and my own desires meshing.

> > a thick skin also is a requirement

A think skin is a requirement in order to become neither a sociopath or
just another frequently inebriated fixture in the soft gray hell of
suburbia.

> What say you all?

See above.