{"id":1284,"date":"2007-07-08T21:54:16","date_gmt":"2007-07-08T19:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/writing-free-software-is-even-better-than-dealing-crack\/"},"modified":"2007-07-08T21:54:16","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T19:54:16","slug":"writing-free-software-is-even-better-than-dealing-crack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/writing-free-software-is-even-better-than-dealing-crack\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Free Software is even better than dealing crack."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the way back from Glasgow to the Netherlands, a 13 hour trip (after a technical problem<br \/>\n    on the high-speed track between the Lille and Brussels even longer), I read<br \/>\n    quite a bit. Adriaan got a copy of &#8220;Freakonomics&#8221;, a book by Steven D. Levitt and Stepen J.<br \/>\n    Dubner, which I am now reading (he finished it while I was snoring 40m under the sea in the<br \/>\n    Chunnel).<\/p>\n<p \/>\n    One of the chapters deals with the question <em>&#8220;Why do drug dealers still live with their<br \/>\n    moms?&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\n    The answer to this question is that most drug-dealers can hardly make a living from their<br \/>\n    &#8220;earnings&#8221; and that their incentive to choose dealing crack as their profession is the<br \/>\n    perspective of becoming a top-notch drug dealer (small chance) and then earning a lot of<br \/>\n    money. Of course, the chance to die in the process is much higher than actually succeeding.<br \/>\n    (The chance to die while dealing crack is even considerably higher than the chance to die<br \/>\n    when you&#8217;re on death row in a texan prison.)<br \/>\n    The reason for choosing crack-dealer instead of &#8220;some other well-paid profession&#8221; is that<br \/>\n    succeeding in crack-dealing is quite visible in their environment, whereas famous writers<br \/>\n    (for example) have close to no visibility &#8212; hence more choose to get into the drugs<br \/>\n    business.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n    Now you wonder what this has to do with Free Software? I think there&#8217;s an analogy that also<br \/>\n    applies to<br \/>\n    what we&#8217;re doing. Having students see that you can become successful (in whatever way)<br \/>\n    by writing Free Software, so increasing the visibility of &#8220;Free Software developer&#8221; being<br \/>\n    a profession, rather than a hobby and a good way to make a living should &#8212; following this<br \/>\n    analogy &#8212; motivate folks to actually become Free Software developers.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n    Combine this with the situation that there&#8217;s actually a lack of Free Software<br \/>\n    developers (at least in the KDE ecosphere, I know quite some companies who are looking for<br \/>\n    competent Free Software developers they could hire).<br \/>\n    Working on KDE gives you a track record and shows that you&#8217;re actually able to write good<br \/>\n    code, work in a team, have technical understanding and a sense for accomplishing something.<br \/>\n    I even dare saying &#8220;If you&#8217;re working<br \/>\n    on KDE and are able to contribute in a meaningful way, you&#8217;ll almost certainly get a good<br \/>\n    job in this industry.&#8221;<br \/>\n    For some of us it might be obvious, lots of people have interesting and well-paid jobs in<br \/>\n    the Free Software industry. The key is communication. Communicating that actively solves<br \/>\n    various problems<br \/>\n    at once: new apprentices, a healthier job market and of course more people participating<br \/>\n    in Free Software projects. This is by the way also what I&#8217;m actively communicating to our<br \/>\n    <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codeyard.net\">CodeYard<\/a> students.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the way back from Glasgow to the Netherlands, a 13 hour trip (after a technical problem on the high-speed track between the Lille and Brussels even longer), I read quite a bit. Adriaan got a copy of &#8220;Freakonomics&#8221;, a book by Steven D. Levitt and Stepen J. Dubner, which I am now reading (he&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/writing-free-software-is-even-better-than-dealing-crack\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Writing Free Software is even better than dealing crack.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}