[Techtalk] Techtalk Digest, Vol 77, Issue 4

Fri Jul 24 23:00:50 UTC 2009

Why would I write software for free or contribute to OSS?

Yeah, it sounds crazy but, pretty much, echoing what
Akkana and Sarah stated:

1. To me, one of the key reasons is to make a difference in some
part of a project that has a positive impact on other people.  Whether
it constitutes an optimization of an existing piece of software or
developing new ideas in a space that has not been tapped/become
"hot" yet.  Being the first on the scene is pretty exciting (and scary)
and drives a lot of developers.  It paves the way for (3).

2. Writing free software is a great way to foster entrepreneurial
habits and thought processes, particularly if developing new
applications.  After all, it is your "baby" and no-one knows it as
well as you do and no entity (read big company with big brother
attitudes) can truly obliterate the fact that you wrote it.  This
is unlike software that developers write at "work", which is
owned by and belongs to the company, no matter what. This also paves
the way for (3).

3. You meet a lot of really cool developers who know their stuff and
you can learn a tremendous amount by just offering your services to
help them solve a problem or add new features to an existing app.  Great
source to build a team and see first hand what personalities work for you.
Resume building aside, it adds some serious weight to any story that
one might be considering pitching to get funding (like to start your own
company). <--- Read *money* - this is what you need to live, survive,
enjoy, whatever floats your boat....

4. Other than paying a lot of money to take a tedious class and doing a
whole bunch of canned homework designed (and dictated) by the prof., you get
to work on something real-world and get "graded" by people who are your peer
group and not some prof in an ivory tower.  Oh yeah, and you don't have to
pay for it either.

Fyi, for Silicon Valley (Bay Area) female software developers:
Check out codechix dot org.

- Rupa

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 5:00 AM, <techtalk-request at linuxchix.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: ssh (Chris Wilson)
>   2. Re: ssh (Chris Wilson)
>   3. opinions wanted again! why would anyone code for free?
>      (Carla Schroder)
>   4. Re: opinions wanted again! why would anyone code  for     free?
>      (Akkana Peck)
>   5. Re: opinions wanted again! why would anyone code for      free?
>      (Sarah Newman)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:03:46 +0100 (BST)
> From: Chris Wilson <chris+linuxchix at aptivate.org<chris%2Blinuxchix at aptivate.org>
> >
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] ssh
> To: Wolf Rising <wolfrising at gmail.com>
> Cc: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Message-ID:
>        <alpine.DEB.1.00.0907231302550.25047 at fen-ndiyo3.fen.aptivate.org>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Hi Wolf,
>
> On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, Wolf Rising wrote:
>
> > Would anyone happen to know if ssh keys can be used for access control
> > to svn repositories? Or even something like mediawiki?
>
> SSH RSA keys are just RSA keys. You can use them to sign a certificate and
> grant access to any web service based on that certificate, including
> subversion and mediawiki.
>
> Cheers, Chris.
> --
> Aptivate | http://www.aptivate.org | Phone: +44 1223 760887
> The Humanitarian Centre, Fenner's, Gresham Road, Cambridge CB1 2ES
>
> Aptivate is a not-for-profit company registered in England and Wales
> with company number 04980791.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:45:45 +0100 (BST)
> From: Chris Wilson <chris+linuxchix at aptivate.org<chris%2Blinuxchix at aptivate.org>
> >
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] ssh
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Message-ID:
>        <alpine.DEB.1.00.0907231344590.25047 at fen-ndiyo3.fen.aptivate.org>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Hi Wolf,
>
> Please, let's stay on the list so that others can benefit.
>
> On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, Wolf Rising wrote:
>
> > Thank you so much for the response, would you happen to be aware of any
> > online sites where I could find information on how to set this up?
> >
> > It seems the most secure way to go about things, or at least much better
> > than the one we currently have in place :-)
>
> Just follow the usual instructions for setting up a CA and generating
> client certificates, but instead of generating a new RSA key, use the
> existing one in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.
>
> Some sample instructions are at [http://www.garex.net/apache/], but I
> haven't tested them.
>
> Convert each (client certificate and key) pair into a PKCS12 file, using
> openssl pkcs12, and import it into the browser on that client.
>
> Configure Apache to require certificate authentication for connecting to
> those services that you want to protect, and place any necessary
> restrictions on the DN of the certificate, as described on that site.
>
> Cheers, Chris.
> --
> Aptivate | http://www.aptivate.org | Phone: +44 1223 760887
> The Humanitarian Centre, Fenner's, Gresham Road, Cambridge CB1 2ES
>
> Aptivate is a not-for-profit company registered in England and Wales
> with company number 04980791.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:48:39 -0700
> From: Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com>
> Subject: [Techtalk] opinions wanted again! why would anyone code for
>        free?
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Message-ID: <200907232148.39713.carla at bratgrrl.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"
>
> Even though I can do "Hello world!" in 12 different languages I'm hardly
> qualified to comment on developer issues, so I'm hoping some Chix have a
> bit
> of time to answer this question:
>
> How can a dev make a living writing Free software?
>
> Or:
>
> Why should anyone code for free? Especially when they're seasoned
> professionals, and not noobs looking for experience?
>
> Or:
>
> What does a person get out of writing Free software?
>
> I'm collecting answers from real-life real devs, and rolling it all into a
> LinuxPlanet.com article. These seem to be the #1 questions from devs in the
> proprietary software world who are thinking about exploring FOSS, and who
> can
> blame them for worrying about how to feed their families? Or even their own
> selves.
>
> thanks much!
> Carla
>
> --
> ======================
> check out my books!
> Linux Cookbook
> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006402/
> Linux Networking Cookbook
> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102487/
> ======================
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:31:53 -0700
> From: Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com>
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] opinions wanted again! why would anyone code
>        for     free?
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Message-ID: <20090724053153.GC5117 at shallowsky.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Carla Schroder writes:
> > How can a dev make a living writing Free software?
>
> By working for a company that pays people to develop free software.
> There are lots of such companies for kernel developers, especially
> those who specialize in network and storage, but there are also
> companies paying people to develop other open source products --
> Mozilla, Canonical, Redhat, Novell, Oracle and a number of lesser-
> known companies. And there are a lot of university people writing
> open source software as part (probably not all) of their jobs.
> I'd like to see government jobs doing that as well, but there
> don't seem to be many, at least in the US.
>
> > Why should anyone code for free? Especially when they're seasoned
> > professionals, and not noobs looking for experience?
>
> - Scratch an itch: create programs that do something you need,
>  the way you wish they'd do them.
> - Chance to write the sort of code YOU want to write, not
>  what your boss wants you to write or some committee says
>  you should write.
> - Chance to learn new technologies, either because you find
>  them exciting or as resume-building material you can't
>  get through your job.
> - Chance to use a language you like better than the one they
>  use at work.
> - Fame and glory. Okay, that's flippant, but it really is a
>  chance to get your name on something that's useful to a lot
>  of people, which a lot of programmers don't get from work
>  (a lot of programming jobs involve writing little one-off
>  stuff few people will ever see, internal websites, business
>  apps, etc.)
> - Chance to get known in a community as a good developer, so you
>  can eventually get paid for working on that or similar projects.
>
> That last one is especially important for anyone trying to break
> into programming jobs: students, career changers, people with the
> wrong sort of connections who got stuck in a dead-end job instead
> of real programming.
>
>        ...Akkana
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:30:43 -0700
> From: Sarah Newman <newmans at sonic.net>
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] opinions wanted again! why would anyone code
>        for     free?
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Message-ID: <4A695513.6050709 at sonic.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
>
> Carla Schroder wrote:
> > Even though I can do "Hello world!" in 12 different languages I'm hardly
> > qualified to comment on developer issues, so I'm hoping some Chix have a
> bit
> > of time to answer this question:
> >
> > How can a dev make a living writing Free software?
>
> One way is so that other people can sell hardware.
>
> If you have some computer component, and you want other people to be
> able to use it with linux, you need a driver. Open sourced drivers are
> easier to maintain as the kernel changes.
>
> Yeah, other people might write a driver for you, but it doesn't hurt to
> make it easy for people to incorporate your hardware.  Look through who
> wrote the drivers and you'll see a lot of hardware companies.
>
> Or for more consumer oriented devices: cell phones via android, my
> beloved Nokia internet tablet, routers - see the wrt54g, etc....
>
> Another way to do free software is to write something that a lot of
> people want and then people pay you to customize it or write add-ons.
> I hear freeside is like that? And possibly asterisk.
>
> And linux is a cheap OS to use when you want to pay someone to develop /
> brand your gui.  My HP netbook and some other netbooks come with some
> weird customized version of ubuntu.
>
> You can even sell open sourced hardware, see beagleboard and arduino.
>
> >
> > Or:
> >
> > Why should anyone code for free? Especially when they're seasoned
> > professionals, and not noobs looking for experience?
> >
> > Or:
> >
> > What does a person get out of writing Free software?
>
> In addition to what Akkana said, all of which I agree with:
>
> Because it's cool or fun.  Kind of the maker mentality I guess you could
> say.  Not something that you need, but something that amuses you. Ever
> wanted to implement http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2324.html ?
>
> And part of the fun is showing other people what you've done. Granted
> that doesn't mean it has to be open sourced, but why not?  Then you can
> see where other people go with it.
>
> --Sarah
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of Techtalk Digest, Vol 77, Issue 4
> ***************************************
>