I think this topic would be a great birds-of-the-same-feather discussion in the next local open source conference.. -- Rants aside, I think we have forgotten why people got into open source in the first place...first of all there has to be the PASSION, here is a recent example: How did Bram Cohen get to writing Bittorrent.... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technology/circuits/12shar.html?ex=1391922000&en=da75cefbee224928&ei=5007&partner=Wikipedia --------- "For Mr. Cohen, BitTorrent was always about exercising his brain rather than trying to fatten his wallet. Unlike many other file-sharing programs, BitTorrent is both free and open-source, which means that those with enough technical know-how can incorporate Mr. Cohen's code into their own programs." --- "While writing the software, "I lived on savings for a while and then I lived off credit cards, you know, using those zero percent introductory rates to use one credit card to pay off the previous card," Mr. Cohen said." ---
Please note the above paragraph and the words "I lived on savings for a while and then I lived off credit cards".... I wish I can do this but no way with 2 kids and with the current Philippine economy. Plus the fact that the economics have structured the jobs so higher pay is with sales and/or management jobs...not with creation of new ideas/code. . -- -- Second, a less recent yet significant example, and perhaps the reason why FOSS started in the first place.... http://archive.salon.com/tech/fsp/2000/09/12/chapter_7_part_one/index1.html --- "I personally have spent many evenings and weekends working on this project, without pay, for just the glory of it," wrote Vepstas. "Although I cannot speak for others, others have also invested their time. I am not happy; I take IBM's actions to be a personal affront." ----- Please read the whole article in Salon and try to put yourself back to 1999 and why people wanted to get into Open Source...and that is for the GLORY. We want to prove that we create/setup something better than Microsoft/IBM/Tanenbaum etc. Perhaps this is also the reason why Google is the 2006 Fortune's most admired company and why Microsoft wants to have the H1B visa limits removed ... the best wants to work for Google, nobody wants to work for Microsoft. to be continued.. Ambrosio I think programmers need to understand their customers too. They have to become the entrepeneurs themselves. Thats the only sustainable way to start an IT business in the Philippines that i know of. A friend of mine created a gps product out of his own pocket. He made the hardware and software for less than 100k php for three years and he can undercut imported products by 75 %. I figure that its possible to do that with a linux laptop too. -- Lay low and nourish in obscurity _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph --------------------------------- Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.
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