The Open Source Balancing Trick
Thought 1: There was a time when the man they called the “knife sharpener” would go from house to house with his cart, ringing his bell, collecting knives to be sharpened on his grinding wheel. It was an occupation that people valued, and were willing to pay for the service. It was actually quite a skilled craft, but the introduction of personal sharpening appliances, disposable and “ever sharp” tools has seen an end to this particular craft. Few people today (in the developed world) would even believe that such a craft existed.
Thought 2: There was a time when the person they called a “programmer” would work long and hard hours with a team of colleagues, and sometimes in solitude, to create wonders of logic that would guide a computing machine towards valuable goals. It was a valuable skill. Those with the skill received a fair wage and raised families with this wage. But today we can search the Web in seconds to find all manner of software solutions. We can see how these wonders are constructed, the intricacies that go into every step of its behaviour. Furthermore, without any expense, we can take these carefully crafted solutions and use them freely. In this way, the career programmer is no longer needed.
I am not really suggesting that programming as a career will disappear. If all the programmers disappear, who will write the free stuff we all download? I also don’t wish to get into the argument about what is free and what is open source. The difference is irrelevant if the final outcome is the end of programming as a career. It is unlikely to happen any time soon. Only a small percentage of programmers are working solely on open source development, and their work is usually sponsored by some benefactor or through donations from grateful users. This is just another way of recognising the value that these people contribute.
The majority of free and open source software comes from donations of effort, skill and experience from programmers themselves. Some of their time is done in company time (sometimes with permission, sometimes without) and a lot of it is done in their own time. Many of them use other free and open source solutions themselves. In a way, they are bartering their skills. For the rest of us, because it is easy to replicate the product of these people, we all benefit, even those who do not contribute anything towards their effort.
Let’s not forget that the skill of the software developer deserves to be recognised and valued. The career programmer may enjoy bartering newly crafted code for some other code, to share in the software benefits, but it’s hard to feed a family on free source code. Think of that the next time you download some free software. Effort deserves to be rewarded. Saying “thanks” is just not good enough.
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