Re: Open Source's effects on programmer jobs

["Robert G. (Doc) Savage" <dsavage@peaknet.net>]

On Sat, 2004-04-24 at 15:05, jlawler@siu.edu wrote:
> OK, so I've been the quintessential open source (zealot|proponent) in my group
> of friends for some time now.  One of my friends makes the point that if the
> whole world operated under an open-source model, the amount of redundant code
> that would be written would go down dramatically.  
> 
> The end result of less reduntant work would be less programmer jobs.  I was
> curious if:
> 
> A)  Anyone had read/seen/found any articles that addressed this (yes I googled
> for a bit) 
> or 
> B)  Anyone has any experience with this (either way)

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - S.Clemons

I don't recall seeing any articles in the trade press about this. In my
25 years of machine ownership I've seen programming evolve from Fortran
and Cobol thru Pascal, Smalltalk, Ada, C, and Java. There was also a
side road full of folks doing CP/M and DOS assembler.

>From that perspective I would tend to doubt that open source would
create a surplus of programming jobs. If anything, I would think the
availability of open source would improve the quality of code that
programmers produce because they wouldn't have to keep re-inventing the
wheel.

Sir Isaac Newton once said generations of scientists stand on the
shoulders of the giants who came before them. The open source model is
very similar to the scientific publishing model. I can't imagine what
would happen to the academic research community if all new ideas were
patented and commercialized.

--Doc


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