I've been a professional writer for over 25 years now. And what is most striking about the last few years, besides the rise of open source and blogging, is the rise of forced amateurism.
I've written about this before regarding Fuat Kircaali. He has built a fortune on the backs of unpaid labor. (No, that's not Fuat to the right, it's St. Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, from iBiblio.com.)
He's not alone. Far from it, in fact. Three years into a supposed tech recovery and most of the offers I'm getting, still, are for "exposure" or "contacts," not dollars. Even those publishers who do profess to pay something, such as Newsfactor, in fact pay very little. Professional tech journalism, the field I've been part of for 20 years, is circling the drain.
The same is increasingly true of professional software development. The rise of open source disguises a disquieting fact. Many programmers today can't get work, and salaries are down. Most commentary is to the effect that programmers should "get over it." No wonder fewer want to be in the profession. I notice that CEO and sales pay rates in that industry aren't falling.
The fact is that trends designed to liberate this business, so far, are succeeding only in impoverishing the people in it. I've said this before, but the problem here is one of business models.
- The journalism model of superficial ads against superficial content no longer works.
- The programming model of paying for stuff not warrented to work no longer works.
There are new business models out there, models I've been writing about for many years. But publishers are doing quite well not paying writers, so they refuse to pursue them. And those software companies who sell services on top of free code, without helping pay the freight of people writing that code, are doing the same thing.
The solution is in our hands. Get me the funding and I'll prove it to you.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. James Cornell on May 30, 2005 01:31 PM writes...
Hello... good argument.
Redhat and friends have been "Getting Paid" for some time now. Although the ways they do this is questionable, any GPL-oriented developer can use the support system to their benefit. For the most part Open-Source is referred to the GPL, although you must remember that the BSD license is Open-Source also, and people like Apple have created a very competitive operating system which is 70% composed of open technologies. The GPL needs to be revised, we all know this... people are making a profit out of packaging other people's work. Just my opinion, but Redhat really has no advantages over any other distribution even with their "World Class" support offerings. Considering that the initial price of a Redhat server implementation costs more then that of a Windows Server 2003, they obviously arn't a viable solution. The difference between paying 2500 for Microsoft's server solution and 3500 for Redhat's is that Microsoft charges extra for overage support calls, and for licensing as well.
Permalink to Comment2. Horia on May 30, 2005 07:48 PM writes...
It is true that many companies package open-source code into their operating systems and into their programs. It is true that these companies offer support programs with which they rake in considerable revenue. It is also very true that these same companies do not usually pay the programmers who developed the open-source code used.
However, your article over-looks one key thing. As any and all companies cut higher profit margins, they automatically expand. As they expand, they hire more and more. What better people to hire than those who developed the open-source code in the beginning?
Open-source can, and is, used as a foothold. Take the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system for example. Not only does RHEL offer extensive support, they offer their own kernel version, their own portage system, their own drivers, their own GUI version, and a host of other packages which are developed exclusively by Red Hat, for Red Hat.
These packages were not developed by un-paid Joe's and released on the internet for free. These packages were developed by paid employees of the Red Hat corporation. Not only that, but many of these paid employees contributed their good share to the open-source (free of cost) software movement before being hired by Red Hat.
Red Hat is not the only company who has expanded in such a manner. Mandrake, SuSe, and, to a lesser extent, Linspire have evolved in a similar fashion.
It is true that this particular business model is significantly more brutal and provides cut-throaght competition for freshly arrived programmers. However, when considering the global trend in technology employment, this business model is no more and no less commonplace.
Semiconductor companies out-source the bulk of their 2nd and 3rd tier processes to cheap, hard-working, Asia. Why, then, should Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, and Linspire not out-source the bulk of their 2nd and 3rd tier processes to free, hard-working, open-source programmers?
Permalink to Comment3. Hagar on May 31, 2005 01:01 AM writes...
I don't see why the support can't get offshored. If Red Hat has such a superior offer - why not create a business model based on Chinese or Indian (or Russian...) specialists fixing Linux and other OSS bugs, creating new features to it and providing the solutions for 50% of the RH-price? If RH is big business then it is easy to force it out of business that way and do even a better one. This, of course, is another reason why RH will never successfully expand internationally. Why buy expensive RH service if you can buy it, say, in Poland?
If the open source idea is so cool and strong and getting support by giants like IBM: why is DB/2 not free? The answer is this: Big Blue is trying to re-establish its domination that was crushed by M$. They hope the OSS will hurt M$ so much that they will be the only serious player on the market: "open hardware" won't ever come to existence, and it will need IT-services (which, of course, will be provided by IBM solely). IBM has decided to abuse OSS to hurt it's competitors, and it does nothing to do with "freedom" and "openess" - IBM has *never* been "free" or "opened", why the change? You are not trying to tell me that IBM has become a freedom loving, democratic society?
Think. IBM think, too. First the source code is open and "free", then the services for it will be. At least the customers will expect it to be very cheap. Much cheaper than you think. It might hurt you badly, too.
Permalink to Comment4. John F. Kohler on May 31, 2005 02:26 AM writes...
I wouldn't recognize a line of source code if it hit me in the face. In fact, I am CLI challenged. I would be happy to pay anyone a modest fee for a few minutes of Linux CLI instruction. What few CLI commands that I **can** enter on my own, I have found much more powerful than those pretty GNOME icons that I can click with my mouse. As users multiply, I'll bet there will be more like me than there will of the informed users
Permalink to Comment5. Norbert van Nobelen on May 31, 2005 03:22 AM writes...
What you seem to be experiencing is contra what market research says: The major part of OSS development is done by companies. There is in fact little amateurism left.
Permalink to CommentThis even has been described as the biggest threat to OSS.
As a journalist you should do your research a bit more extensive so that your claims can be verified better.
6. Jay Woods on May 31, 2005 09:01 AM writes...
What Norbert van Nobelen writes "What you seem to be experiencing is contra what market research says: The major part of OSS development is done by companies." reflects also on what you are experiencing. Perhaps the problem is that fresh sources of information need to be developed. As the transition occurs of OSS being used by corporations, perhaps they use internal sources of support based on problems that are unique to them. If you can find and document such a change, not from the work of someone else but from your own investigative reporting, then you should attract the support you richly deserve.
Permalink to Comment7. Jay on May 31, 2005 10:23 PM writes...
I'm not in the market for custom software, so I can't speak to that point. Still, for the point about tech journalism, the fact remains that I have access to far more of the stuff than I can read, for free. It seems that some varieties of journalism are not scarce in the economic sense. That means, in a nutshell, that all demands are satisfied at a price point of zero.
Under this situation, it's obvious that a producer would wish to artificially impose scarity to make money. Similarly, any businessman would love to figure out how to make a profit selling air. There's no obvious benefit to society at large if either succeeds.
To a writer, that probably hurts. You have my sympathies, but that doesn't make it less true.
Permalink to Comment8. Burk on May 31, 2005 11:26 PM writes...
Sorry, but given a choice between a article by someone by that doesn't know what they are talking about - and says it well, and someone that knows what they talking and says it poorly ... I pick the latter.
Amateurism? - I don't get it. Since when aren't there about a thousand people than can do what you can do, and better, and not get paid for it?
As far as OS is concerned (and a lot of other things ... none computer related) some people like to contribute ... nothing wrong with that ... not everything has to have a price tag associated with it.
Permalink to Comment9. Richard Steven Hack on June 1, 2005 02:30 AM writes...
When people stop being peons working for others and learn to work for themselves, these problems will go away.
Programmers needs to get together with other programmers, write some OSS stuff, then make money installing, customizing and training people in its use. Of course, the better the software, the less of all of that the customers will need. But there will always be customization needs, at the very least.
Also, corporations are sick of buying enterprise-level software that doesn't do the job, while they still can't afford to devote their in-house staff to do it all. This is an opportunity for OSS programmers to take the OSS middleware and other tools and work WITH corporations - for money - to build the apps the clients want - customized to their needs (even if the finished app is considered a competitive edge and is NOT OSS).
The bottom line: stop expecting people to pay you as an employee and start demanding they pay you as a peer! Like Rodney Dangerfield, employees "don't get no respect!"
Permalink to Comment10. ammoQ on June 1, 2005 06:18 AM writes...
When it comes to boxed software, there is never a guarantee you will be paid for your work. This is because boxed software is written in advance and nobody can say whether or not it will sell. Even if it is good, a competitor's product which is both cheaper and better may arrive on the market. Hell, if you are unlucky MS decides to take the market and integrates a competing product into the next version of MS Office. Remember that software can easily and cheaple be duplicated, so the winner can "take it all" - in contrast to markets for physical goods, where supplies, production capacities and logistics limit the market share a vendor can possibly gain.
Most open-source-software we talk about competes with proprietary boxed software. It's cheap, even free, but it does not compete with Joe Average. Linux competes with Windows (which is preinstalled on most PCs, anyway). Before Linux, there was for a long time hardly a chance for anyone to compete with Windows. Firefox competes with IE, which is also free (as in beer), so it's anyway hard to get paid for developing a browser. And so on. Which of these open source products is responsible for the decline of Joe Averages salary?
Customized software (even if it is derived from open source software) will always required individual work, in almost all cases paid work done by professionals.
So, in my opinion, it's the business modell of "boxed software" that is the source of the problems currently experienced. Another trend is to use "standard software" like SAP instead of ERP systems written by small companies or software written by the company's own EDP department. OSS is not to blame for that; in contrast, whenever a OSS product is accepted as "standard", there is a chance for smaller companies to deliver support and customization.
Permalink to Comment11. Don Campbell on June 1, 2005 12:22 PM writes...
In my opinion you are being overly narrow in your interpretation of a larger set of social and economic changes.
It is not clear that the decline in programming jobs in the US reflects a decline world-wide. I would guess that world-wide programming employment is and has been rising. The outsourcing of software coding is a reality in the proprietary software world. Pinning that decline in US employment on the rise of open source is going to be mighty hard to support with real numbers. I think it is likely that the rise of open source software is a minor contributor to the forces involved compared to such important but indirect influences like the rapid rise in U.S. health care costs and their impact on the cost of paying for talent. More direct influences may be things like a decline in the output of highly trained engineers in the US compared to the large number of highly trained engineers ready for hiring in Asia.
Journalism overall has been undergoing major changes over the past 25 years. One might have argued ahead of time that the rise of cable news would have made for a booming market in television journalists. Instead, the broadcast networks have scaled way back to cut costs. There are virtually no foreign correspondents at the networks and most news outlets are making heavy use of local stringers to cover the majority of stories outside of Washington and New York.
Print journalism has been in steady decline over that period of time. Newspapers by the hundreds have failed or merged and the number of eyeballs reading them is steadily decreasing. Is the decline in high-paying journalism jobs due to open source or blogging? Somehow I doubt it. I think it is a far more complex cultural change than that simplistic analysis suggests.
My guess is that like many of us, you are experiencing a shift in the overall job market that will require a permanent adjustment in career goals rather than simply waiting for the slump to be replaced by a recovery. The expectation that anyone's employment gig can go on forever is gone. Adjust or fail is the new mantra.
Permalink to Comment12. fedd on June 2, 2005 03:38 PM writes...
Well, my opinion is very simple...
If you compete for a project and your final price is just the sum of many hours of "local programers" and just that; I assure you that you will be the best option ever!
Your competition will have to add license fees for Operating System, Data Base, and Desktop software.
Yes, Free Software forces me to open my application?...Off course, who wouldnt like to be famous for a succesfull implementation of a big solution based on Free Software?...
Let´s see my client:
.Get a solution at a resonable price,
.Based on local human resourses,
.Customized,
.Source code included.
What any other potencial client would do?
1. download my FS app, or
2. call me to give him the same successfull solution?
I guess the second.
Permalink to CommentFedd.