What kind of world have we created where we encourage people to sacrifice their free time, their families and and friends in the name of creating software? This world we live in is, let’s be honest here, fucking deranged, and its values twisted up beyond recognition. We value software for software’s sake, and ignore the human costs—and worse, we encourage the very creators to themselves devalue their own labor, to the point that they find themselves wallowing in poverty. By any rational notion, whether you subscribe to Scalon's contractualist ethics or not, this situation is morally repugnant.
That's a characteristic of artists, not open source developers. Most open source maintainers and contributors either do it as a hobby, do it as part of a payed job, or have a business model to earn money from it. Cases like Neece are rare - and even there, these guys are highly employable and could easily find a job if they see it doesn't work out.
Learned Fortran on an old TI-99; forgot Fortran; learned to draw, paint, sculpt, and play violin; learned how to merge code and art, turned it into my UX/Front-end dev Frankenthing.
It's nice you have such faith in those who have worked on Open Source projects, but getting hired isn't always so easy as all that. There is nothing about Open Source that guarantees future employment, any more than there is a guarantee that a Resume will automatically land you a job instantly. What you call 'highly employable' is nowhere near the same thing as actually becoming employed.
I've been writing code for over a decade, and wrote a bit of Open Source code, myself. Even so, the only place I could get hired was in a grocery store stocking groceries for minimum wage. I've tried getting into a job coding for years, but I still have never been hired at a traditional job involving code (other than produce codes, and that hardly counts) and the only freelance work I managed to get paid a grand total of $100 over a 4-year time period. And I'm not talking the dollar-equivalent I earned in some impoverished third-world country; I'm talking actual dollars in the US.
Never assume companies are falling over themselves looking to pay writers of Open Source code when currently, they can still get it all for free.
Buster Neece is not highly employable because he worked on an open source project - he is highly employable because he worked as a programmer in Bravely Blue Media before "retiring" to work full time on open source.
The thing about this profession, is that it's hard to get your first job, but once you're in - everyone will want to hire you. Neece was in, and even if currently he is technically "out" - potential employers will still want to hire him if he ever decides he wants to code for a salary again.
Learned Fortran on an old TI-99; forgot Fortran; learned to draw, paint, sculpt, and play violin; learned how to merge code and art, turned it into my UX/Front-end dev Frankenthing.
That's just it, isn't it? If all you have is Open Source as something you can show an employer, but you still have a decade or more of rejections from employers and still no initial job.
Again, the current incentive for companies is 'take what you want for free, because actually paying for free code cuts into profits and shareholders don't like that sort of thing'.
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
Wait, I have a bit of a sticky with "If all you have is Open Source as something you can show an employer".
Open source is all you can show an employer. Everything else is hearsay. You can say, "I worked on the doohickey that tamped down vibrations in the flux capacitor" if you want, but unless you have permission to show your work, it's just words. Sure, you can back it up in an interview, but you can do the same if it was open source.
Having open source software you can show people is always of benefit to the company looking to recruit you. Of course, if it's crap then you're not going to get far, but...
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That's a characteristic of artists, not open source developers. Most open source maintainers and contributors either do it as a hobby, do it as part of a payed job, or have a business model to earn money from it. Cases like Neece are rare - and even there, these guys are highly employable and could easily find a job if they see it doesn't work out.
It's nice you have such faith in those who have worked on Open Source projects, but getting hired isn't always so easy as all that. There is nothing about Open Source that guarantees future employment, any more than there is a guarantee that a Resume will automatically land you a job instantly. What you call 'highly employable' is nowhere near the same thing as actually becoming employed.
I've been writing code for over a decade, and wrote a bit of Open Source code, myself. Even so, the only place I could get hired was in a grocery store stocking groceries for minimum wage. I've tried getting into a job coding for years, but I still have never been hired at a traditional job involving code (other than produce codes, and that hardly counts) and the only freelance work I managed to get paid a grand total of $100 over a 4-year time period. And I'm not talking the dollar-equivalent I earned in some impoverished third-world country; I'm talking actual dollars in the US.
Never assume companies are falling over themselves looking to pay writers of Open Source code when currently, they can still get it all for free.
Buster Neece is not highly employable because he worked on an open source project - he is highly employable because he worked as a programmer in Bravely Blue Media before "retiring" to work full time on open source.
The thing about this profession, is that it's hard to get your first job, but once you're in - everyone will want to hire you. Neece was in, and even if currently he is technically "out" - potential employers will still want to hire him if he ever decides he wants to code for a salary again.
That's just it, isn't it? If all you have is Open Source as something you can show an employer, but you still have a decade or more of rejections from employers and still no initial job.
Again, the current incentive for companies is 'take what you want for free, because actually paying for free code cuts into profits and shareholders don't like that sort of thing'.
Employable =/= employed
I have a bit of a long reply for that, so I wrote it as another direct comment to the main post - dev.to/idanarye/comment/gck9
Wait, I have a bit of a sticky with "If all you have is Open Source as something you can show an employer".
Open source is all you can show an employer. Everything else is hearsay. You can say, "I worked on the doohickey that tamped down vibrations in the flux capacitor" if you want, but unless you have permission to show your work, it's just words. Sure, you can back it up in an interview, but you can do the same if it was open source.
Having open source software you can show people is always of benefit to the company looking to recruit you. Of course, if it's crap then you're not going to get far, but...