Argh Me Hearties, It's All About Freedom and Software.

[tcpip]

With my new role as President of Linux Users of Victoria, I attended the two Richard Stallman talks this week at the University of Melbourne and RMIT distributing leaflets for LUV and Software Freedom Day, both attended by around four hundred people each. In the former presentation, Stallman discussed the core principles in the free software movement and in the second presentation he discussed more the role of copyrights in history and why their current misuse is damaging. In both presentations Stallman was very persuasive, arguing in a manner not unlike Benjamin Franklin - that is you surrender a freedom for convenience, you'll end up with neither. Essentially he is arguing that software is not just about functionality, but also has a moral component and the rights which are allocated to software comes with serious long-term effects. Stallman also gave a very good argument on why Linux, whilst capturing the public imagination, is really GNU Linux, that is, the Linux kernel plus the GNU utilities (one could also refer to Android Linux and GNU Hurd).

Yesterday was Softare Freedom Day which was hosted at the State Library in Melbourne. With the usual combination of distributions, local organisations, commercial groups and a great collection of talks and events. Yes, IT's favourite federal member of parliament, Senator Kate Lundy, was there as well. I was particularly taken by the gaming area and received a thorough introduction to Glest, a very attractive Age of Empires-like game which I had hitherto completely missed. Finally, to end a very strange week, today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, which perhaps not so strangely, does have a strong crossover with the free software movement. Maybe it's something about "piracy"?

Comments

[reddragdiva]

The answer is that, like almost all programmers who work for a living now, they'd be doing in-house and bespoke stuff.

Of the programmers you know who program for a living, how many work on selling proprietary software, how many work on selling support for GPL and how many work doing in-house and bespoke stuff?

[zey.livejournal.com]

Of the programmers you know who program for a living, how many work on selling proprietary software

None, thankfully. Sales... now there's a horror job for a programmer.

Of the programmers you know who program for a living, how many work on [...] proprietary software

A small majority.

This sort of question is always going to be self-selecting though. It's like asking how many of the people you know drink VB and watch the footy.

how many work on selling support for GPL

A big fat zero, AFAIK. That's always really been a problem with that option: if your software's any good, it won't need much in the way of technical support.

how many work doing in-house

A declining number. Managers are increasingly prefering "off the shelf" solutions rather than investing in "risky" in-house development. Cloud computing, if it succeeds, will exacerbate this.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A big fat zero, AFAIK.

Well certainly in the area where I work it's almost everyone. And that's not because there's anything wrong with the software, it's just that it's complicated. In other words, it's the reverse of what you've suggested. Rather than programming skills become worthless, the demand actually increases because one has more adaptability... if one has the source.