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There's no way my body could take the rock star lifestyle of working as a Reg hack. The Foie Gras & champagne breakfasts, the dozen Tequila slammer lunches plus dinners with whiskey, port and cigars at private clubs after midnight. Not to mention the women (and quite a few men) calling at all hours pleading, nay begging, for a taste of the high life. Even James Bond would see it as an excessive lifestyle.
Imagine pushing a pair of exhausted supermodels off you at 5:30 am to force yourself to write 2,500 coherent words every single day. That's simply not cricket.
Perhaps he or she should also write how FOSS developers are being exploited by big corporations.
Many contributors don't get compensated for their work and at the same time those corporations that use the software report billions in "profits" (in quotation marks, because profits get turned into costs, so they are not subject to tax).
I would not consider that "exploitation" but rather 'participation'. FOSS development is usually voluntary, and I know I've volunteered here and there with various submissions, patches, etc.. [I think of it as 'giving back' or 'my license fee' for all of the FOSS stuff I use daily]. I'm sure that corporations also pay people to do the same thing for the same reasons, especially if they are staking some of their income on a particular project.
I think you may have an inaccurate perspective on the concepts of revenue, cost, profit, and loss. Perhaps a few years doing data analysis and reports for the accounting staff at a large company might help you get a better perspective (weekly internal financial reports, excess and obsolete inventory analyses, and ad-hoc cost reduction analyses, for example - how much DOES that engineering change cost and when is the best time to re-tool or switch out parts - that sort of thing).
However you call it, vast majority of developers who participate in FOSS don't get paid.
They pump a lot of money to manipulate developers into giving away their work for free by making various promises - for example, if you have FOSS contributions on your CV, you'll more likely to be hired or make you believe that you can feed your family from all the exposure you get as a contributor.
If you create a project with more restrictive license, chances are that nobody is going to use it, but there are always going to be developers who drank the kool-aid and will create a similar project that these corporations will be free to exploit.
Appropriating a mature open source project is always cheaper than writing it from scratch - company at least saves R&D costs and salaries. If they feel guilty enough about it, they might dedicate one of the teams to contribute some code back or hire one of the few select contributors and try to turn some good PR.
Developers are the most exploited group in the tech world after factory workers - sure, they get paid relatively well, but nowhere near the level of value they produce.
You also need to take into account that developers get paid once, but company profits for as long their code runs.
However you call it, vast majority of developers who participate in FOSS don't get paid. ......elsergiovolador
Which can result in them not being bought and selling out for thirty pieces of silver, elsergiovolador.
Exclusive elite proprietary systems find that sort of competition whenever overwhelmingly effective in opposition, hellish problematical and more than just a tad maddening.
(re: commentard's name 'Admiral Grace Hopper')
I actually saw (the original) Grace Hopper when she was a Captain, at the Orlando RTC [she was in charge of the recruit training base as they trained the women there and it made sense]. Didn't say hello but may have saluted her (can't recall exactly).
Thinking of commentards, El Reg _could_ review some of the better ones and see if any of those tend towards meeting their selection criteria. No doubt there are zillions of examples. Or maybe they did already and none were deemed 'worthy' enough for a job offer in an e-mail
I always thought it was
*emphasis*
/emphasis/
_emphasis_
with most authorities recommending not bothering for the most part.
When I was learning to set hot lead, my teacher recommended not using italics, bold or underline unless I had a damn good reason to do so[0]. English, when written properly, has no real need for such crutches (or so she claimed).
[0] Meaning unless somebody was paying me to produce it.
Hmm, sounds a lot like most of my previous roles:
Work to deadlines.
Daily reports, in depth monthly reports.
Cover a variety of technologies and give an in-depth report after investigation.
I think I'll stay where I am and retire in a few more years and leave this for a younger generation and continue to wonder what sort of masochist becomes a journalist. It makes the credo of alt.sysadmin.recovery look like a step up to easy street.
I know bugger all, I have a great imagination and can make up lots of bollocks. Being wrong has never stopped me having an opinion. And I can write plenty of irrelevant gibberish on all sorts of topics.
Not looking for a political writer are you? I think I'm appropriately qualified.
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