You Say You Want a Revolution?
September 8, 1999
6:42 a.m.
Made some progress this morning. Which is good. (well, duh, right?). with any luck things will get back to a reasonable level of crazy here real soon. I really am trying to keep this thing focused on writing, because that's what Daily Persistence is meant to be about. Writing. But, I just can't help it here. Yesterday, I read an article that made me stand up and go, "huh..." with that scrunched up face you get when things just don't quite match up. Yes, I guess I understand the underlying motivation behind some of these statements, but I just can't believe the gall of some people. For those who don't want to read the article, its about a group of legal and labor "experts" who are advocates against volunteerism as it relates to developing software. Deep in there somewhere, someone actually says that you should not be allowed to volunteer your time to someone who is going to make money off your efforts. Geeze. Get a life, folks. Yeah, I understand about greed corporations--belive me, I do. But where do people get off telling me what I can volunteer to do with my time and what I can't? Heck, the entire "gift" society that's been building much of the code the Internet (and hence, now, the world) runs on has been operating on volunteerism. It's created a meritocracy, a place where your reputation is as good as the work you've done--and in this day of lowered standards across other areas of the world, is it coincidence that the Net (home of the most active meritocracy I know of) has been growing in leaps and bounds. Yeah, I see the burn-out, too. Nothing's perfect. Never will be. But the Net life will change, too. Revolutionary moments in time tend to suck a lot out of those that pioneer it. Check out your history books if you don't believe me (that is, unless those books have bene so watered down that they aren't useless). And, yes, I know people are making good money on the efforts of some people. But, folks, these developers aren't doing it for the money. And if they are, they're messed up, anyway. They know going in that there is no money involved in open source development, or in content posting. They know going in that they aren't going to get rich. And no one is pointing a gun at them and forcing them to code for these companies. Some people, though, apparently don't have enough to do.   Hmm...when did I become an activist?  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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