The Key
January 13, 2009 at 5:54 pm | Posted in community, History | 15 CommentsTags: corporate, free software, gnu manifesto, hackers, MNC, OpenSource, Programming, software
I was wandering on #freebsd and #openbsd some days ago and was pretty much amazed when people did not like GNU way. Then I read FreeBSd and OpenBSD FAQs and foud that BSD folks are very keen on replacing any GPLed code in their system with newly written BSD licensed code. OpenBSD even says that GPL is acceptable as last resource.
what the heck ?
I was very much interested in installing OpenBSD and using it as my daily OS but after this I was literally hurt. I decided not to spend any time on BSD, rather using that time to understand the GNU software. The current situation of software demands proper attention, commitment and dedication to copyleft ideals, otherwise proprietary software companies will keep on getting stronger and stronger and will keep on eating the society in the name of business and it will affect the Free Software community as whole, whether BSD or whether GPL or whether Apache people. It will affect all of us, after all we make together free software community). Free Software is about our responsibility to help society grow better , to make technical innovations that will help removing misery and pain from this planet while proprietary software people are totally committed the other way, make money on the cost of society. Earth is the place where out kids grow, where our loves ones and friends live, and where we see people like us trying to help each other, proprietary software supporters, intentionally and indirectly do not want, they want control of economy and by writing BSD code BSD people help them in gaining control over society and hence themselves (Windows has some BSD code), BSD license is like giving someone a sharp knife, telling him that he can use it to cut vegetables and fruit so that he can make his health better but that person uses that knife to stab you , in the face…
What people like me do, we don’t give such people the knife, we give them GPL, they can’t attack us back. Whose responsibility this society is ? Who wants to stand for his country, for people need to grow out of misery and pain and lower level of poor life to get better education, better health and a better future. if software is the tool then who will accomplish this ? If software is the key in creating a society of liberated, educated and technical people who can take leadership and responsibilities in their own hands then what will you do ? .. Now don’t say “Oh.. please, we write software, don’t include politics here”..
Well, why Niels Bohr (if you have read Science then must be knowing him), a great scientist was flown in a small and risky 2 seat airplane from, IIRC, Denmark to Britain. He literally stopped breathing because of some of technical problem in the plane. British people have to revive him when the airplane landed. It was one of the operation of World War 2. Now why a non-violent scientist came under the World War 2 plan. Its because he was extremely technical when it comes atomic science. If Hitler could have him then Atomic Bombs would have fallen on USA and UK, not Nagasaki and Hiroshima and your people, your friends, your loved ones will be saying “Heil Hitler” instead of “this time I’m free“. Niels Bohr has the tool to a Free Society and same way in year 2009, the Free Software is the key to a free society where no one is judged on the basis of his religion, his race, his color or his cast. In the world of free software we judge people based on their programming skills and we believe that Information needs to be free for society needs to grow and remove the pain and misery from the lives of their fellow people.
I think writing BSD licensed code means helping the greedy business to establish the control over us. Don’ do that, if you love your freedom. I Love the Hacker’s ideals and from experience I can say that Hackers can become great politicians, and great Leaders who can turn the direction from where human lives are heading today to a better and prosperous future where the government will support people to help themselves and then will get out of their way to let them grow. Its the Free Society, where anyone can assume his responsibility for his countrymen then he will lead, GPL is the key in doing that, if you loose it, you loose the quality. you loose the peace that a man wants in his entire life. Accept the truth and truth will set you free.
Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are
Open Source, Salary & Society
September 12, 2008 at 5:53 pm | Posted in Patterns, Programming | 2 CommentsTags: corporate, free software, jobs, open source, OpenSource, programmers, salary, software
Very Recently I read an article titled Franchise by Russ Nelson. I was quite impressed by the man’s talents. He says that even if we have Free Software running on all across the world, the salaries of programmers will still be on a higher scale and he concludes by disagreeing with the Richard Stallman. I was very happy th at he disagrees on such a point on technical basis rather than biased opinions. On the basis of my very small amount of experience in software and my experience in analyzing the general life, business aspects and experience by the habit penetrating deep into the economics I can very strongly state an opinion which is very different both from Russ Nelson and Richard Stallman. When Russ Nelson said In a free market, over time, competition in the production of a commodity product will eliminate all profits, he was right and he was talking about the business owners, the lords of the companies. He is not talking about programmers. At such point, after such threshold, the salaries of programmers will become independent no matter whether the programmer will be working in company creating proprietary softwares or in a company creating free softwares.
One more thing I am sure of that will happen is the reduction in the number of poor programmers getting high-paying jobs and that will relieve Joel Spolsky of his worries a bit about poor quality software 
. Since at that point humanity will be liberated from poor thoughts, businessmen will come to one in contact with quality programmers and in conflict with poor ones. Either you make quality bread or you shut down your bread house, which a business man will not. He will simply fire the poor bread maker and hire a good one who can practically make good breads, not theoretically. Myself, personally, I really hate it when I see good, quality programmers earning 20% of the salaries than poor ones who with years of experience still use void main() and solve problems using arrays all the time in C++.
Now the only question remains is salary will be on a higher side or on lower plane. I am sure both salaries of programmers and software coming out of the hands of programmers in such an open market, will get better. I don’t think programmers will get way much higher. I repeat both softwares coming out of the hands of the programmers and salaries of those programmers will be better than what we are getting in today’s proprietary, closed and non-cooperative corporate culture. I think good programmers in such an era will not be poor like what we have the situation now.
That trend has to go, good programmers need to be paid good and poor programmers need to be fired. In fact poor programmers must be capsuled in a spaceship and need to be sent away to the Saturn at minimum, so that they will no loner be able to pollute and handicap our society’s intellectual humans and our kids. This time is still years ahead, it may take a decade before it happens but who knows, after all software is field which is totally different and unusual of all the professions exist today. I am glad to be a Computer Programmer.
Copyright © 2008, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.
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