I’ve recently subscribed to Zed Shaw’s twitter feed and it’s been very illuminating. Just yesterday he posted a new [blog|article|rant] at his site about why he (A/L)GPL’s his code after his experience with Mongrel. Personally, I appreciate his stance, which (from the linked post) boils down to:
Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.
Specifically, I appreciate honesty like this, and Zed has an excellent point that many corporations accrue many ducats using open source code and libs without ever giving back to those same projects. The good ol’ boy, ‘no-one-ever-got-fired-for-buying-IBM’ effect is still strong at large companies; they either want to be able to discreetly pay nothing for software or be able to brag that they bought a $40 million Oracle system. So, allow OSS projects to use your stuff free, and charge those corporations up the wazoo for using the sweat-of-your-brow to get rich. If your stuff really is that good, they’ll pay.
I feel like Zed’s latest post dovetails interestingly (though likely not his intention) with a talk he gave that I raved about on twitter awhile back.
Zed Shaw – The ACL is Dead from CUSEC on Vimeo.
This is a really good talk not only about a specific solution to a specific problem (ACLs in the banking industry, and how to build a better mousetrap) but later in the talk he also gets into some stuff that any software developers/engineer/programmer/whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself should at least have an opinion on.
Zed favors constantly improving yourself by writing code. Learn new languages, new frameworks, new technologies. Invent things. Useful things. Most importantly: do not give these useful inventive things to your miserable employer unless your compensation and respect is commensurate with them. If your employer treats you fantastic, then hack away on the nights and weekends to deliver an improved build of Library X! If you’re little more than a code slave, then do your job competently, go home, and create open source Library X for the good of mankind; or hell, create your own company and sell Library X back to your original employer.
The reason that the monkeyfucks at slashdot don’t get this view is because it’s nuanced. He’s not saying “Fuck your employer! Dog it at work! raggahaggharrwr!” As he explains quite well in the video (starting at the 42:00 minute mark), you have your work coding, and you have your home coding. If your company treats you really well, then let them in on the secret nuggets you’ve been doing at home! If not, then be professional, do your assigned tasks, be polite, write really good code, but don’t let them have your ideas and inventions!
I like his views on a philosophical level, which contributes to my irritation when said views are dismissed because “I’ve never heard of him or his supposedly awesome projects.” Jesus, if commercial (or apache/mozilla-level in the oss world) success were a prerequisite for an opinion, the slashdot comment boards would have goddamned tumbleweeds rolling through.
All of which is to say: I don’t agree with everything dude says, but then again I don’t have to. He’s written some damn fucking fine code in his day, he’s orders of magnitude smarter than me, and I appreciate his views on Coding For A Living. Also, you really should watch that video above– it’s got lots of good stuff in it.
And please let me be an example: don’t ever, ever, EVER read the comments at slashdot; they’ll melt your brain.
Post a Comment