The production of nonsense on open source is a highly competitive field. However, I've just come across something that raises (lowers?) the bar: a post by an OpenLogic blogger entitled What's your time worth?
It's not a long piece, which is handy, as it makes it easier to deconstruct paragraph by paragraph. I'm focusing on enterprise Java, about which I can speak from experience.
The blogger gets to the point right away with a concise statement of why she doesn't understand open source in the enterprise:
Developers that work on open source software typically have day jobs that pay pretty well. So they work on open source software for free and write code during the day for big bucks.
Wow, I thought we'd got beyond this "hobbyist" idea years ago. Let me quote some statistics about Linux, from a 2004 article called
Linux is now a Corporate Beast. The emphasis is mine:
Dispelling the perception that Linux is cobbled together by a large cadre of lone hackers working in isolation, the individual in charge of managing the Linux kernel said that most Linux improvements now come from corporations. "People's stereotype [of the typical Linux developer] is of a male computer geek working in his basement writing code in his spare time, purely for the love of his craft. Such people were a significant force up until about five years ago,” said Andrew Morton, whose role is maintaining the Linux kernel in its stable form. Morton said contributions from such enthusiasts, "is waning." Instead, most code is generated by programmers punching the corporate time clock. About 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis, Morton said. Of those 1,000 developers, about 100 are paid to work on Linux by their employers. And those 100 have contributed about 37,000 of the last 38,000 changes made to the operating system.
That's 97% of commits coming from people paid to work on Linux. And that transformation has corresponded with the increasing penetration of Linux in the enterprise. Looking at the most successful complex projects in enterprise Java, such as Spring, Hibernate and JBoss, shows a similar picture. All of these are overwhelmingly written by developers who work for the companies behind them. Volunteerism plays little part. As a result, those products have exhibited rapid progress.
The post now moves onto economics--or, to be precise, an attempt to argue that the…
