Hey, I would like too comment on your not very much thought through artikel with the titel:OSS & Future of Software Development.

Ok, these traditional professionals like doctors, etc. you mentioned had to take big loans to help you out with your problems. The study, the many books they had to study must have been payed for.

And you did pay for the medical research by the means of taxes, just for your information. You even pay money for all those atom-bombs in the world. So, in fact you're paying for that technique.

All the money and time invested has to be paid, one way or an other. They all have to update for new knowledge, and the people who invented it and use it paid for that knowledge in time(and thus money) and money.
It is that the intellectual property like books and magazines are meant to be read. So, yes that is open-source, when you compare it with software. But if that was not the case, these properties would not be there to read for everyone.
Software is also much more different. An invention made by a company made open-source can be copied by an compatitor. And then you get price-wars. And then you can not pay for the people who invent those tools. And then those tools wouldn't be invented that fast anymore. Then the economy drops, and the next thing that happens is that you can not afford your car anymore.
It's not a technique, but a tool if you know what I mean. The things microsoft/oracle/etc. invents are tools and not techniques. They use the base-computing techniques everybody can learn if you have the brains.

Ok, think about IT.

PS: The builder of LINUX was not a smart boy. He could have made some serious money. But that's not important offcource. He has a lot of friends now, who make money becouse of him. Now, who is smarter.

HAVE FUN :)

The comment from W Molenaar was originally posted on July 22nd, 2003 to a different post. At the time comments were not enabled on this post. I've reposted it here and deleted it from the other location.

And now my long overdue reply. I'm specifically interested in the question of how programmers get paid in a world full of open-source. Ultimately, we geeks have to eat and need a roof, hardware, software, electricity, and internet access in order to do what we do.

I meant something rather specific when I said "you're not paying for the law itself." To be sure taxpayers ultimately pay the salaries of the legislature who write the laws. And taxes pay for judges and courtrooms and clerks and so on. Taxes pay for the police who enforce the laws too. I completely agree that money changes hands somewhere to pay for law. But the money which changes hands between a client and a lawyer is about that lawyer's knowledge and expertise and that client's specific legal needs. The lawyer provides a service to the customer.

It isn't a perfect metaphor, but no metaphor is. Architecture and Law and Medicine differ in profound ways. But they are also similar. The ways in which they are similar is where I think programming is going.

People are going to be able to download free software, just as you can go find common legal documents on the 'Net. But without a certain amount of technical expertise it will become increasingly hard to determine which free software best fits the problem. Not unlike the challenge of understanding which laws apply to a particular situation, or which medical research best fits a given medical condition.

Geeks can provide their clients the service of fitting the best open source tools to the client's particular problem. In the more complex cases we can integrate many open source components into a coherent solution. There's room for programming to join the traditional professions in providing services that require specialized knowledge.