17
Mar
I recently watched A Knight's Tale for the Nth time, which got me thinking about improbable dreams...
Like many open source developers, my fondest wish is to be able to sit at the computer all day and all night hacking KDE and other free code -- no punishing deadlines, no extraneous worries, just me pushing my limits doing what I love best... and getting paid for it.
Alas, reality dictates that I have to work for a living, make the most out of whatever little time is left over for free software development, and squash that dream down to a vague buzzing at the back of my head.
Vague, but still disconcerting.
I live in the so-called Third World, and I sometimes wonder... Would corporate Open Source supporters be willing to retain, at a minimal expense, some skilled developers from these parts expressly for free software development?
A "normal" year's salary of US$60k or so would likely fund up to 20,000 hours of open source development -- with happy developers probably voluntarily coding during nights, weekends, and holidays as well, throughout the year. No, I'm not smoking crack. ;)
Twenty thousand hours a year just working on free software is a lot of fixed bugs, new features, enhancements, and fresh code. Imagine what could be done with twice or thrice that...
Anyone care to change the stars?
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I must be a star changer
It is certainly interesting the difference in the cost of living in different places. I saw an application called Kallery a few years ago and entered into a discussion which led to my contracting with Andras to work on Quanta+. He was living in Finland which is quite expensive and moved back to Romania which is very inexpensive. It was not easy to come up with the money to pay him every month but over time I found people would financially support our project. Now I'm in talks with another developer I met because I really liked his application.
Maybe the moral of the story is write an application that gets somebody's attention. Then again it could be to bug me so I remember you when I have more resources from my business or contributions. ;-)
You certainly have one point. At the cost of sponsoring a developer in many parts of the world more people should be working on open source full time. Think about it... a dozen or two dozen people could get together and for the money they would have spent on an application they can sponsor development for a year. If I had the money I'd sponsor several more developers. The simple reason is that no matter how good you are you are several times better when you are immersed in something full time. A first rate programmer is easily buried by a lesser programmer working full time.
If you are wanting to find someone to sponsor you find out who does that. I do. Get on my list. Maybe your stars can change. In fact I will tell you that I believe that it will only get easier to find such opportunities because they are too compelling. If you want to program KDE full time first believe it is possible and next seek out the opportunity.
Math
20k hours/year is about 10 developers.
Do you mean that for about 6K US$/year you'd work for free software projects?
Math's good :)
Personally, not as full time. But I do know several good developers who would gladly accept that figure.
Average sallary for a programmer
In Brazil it's about US$ 500 a month. So it does come up to 6K a year ( a little more, maybe).
In Argentina (where I live) it's a bit more. Maybe US$600.
And I don't mean entry level programmers, I mean reasonably experienced, not too bad programmers.
Sure, a really good one will cost US$1200 maybe, or more, but for free software projects, they can probably take a paycut.
completely agree
$1200 USD a month would probably cut my current salary in half, but i'd definately be giving that figure a very very serious thought if I could hack on KDE 24/7/365. Eric, are you listening? I'm a big Wil Wheaton fan (if that helps) ;).