On Fri, 2008-01-11 at 14:01 +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > Then, there's this consistent pressure to earn, earn, earn .. join Cognizant, > get married, have kids, settle down into a comfortable middle class lifestyle > - that kind of gets in the way too.
indians aren't the only people in the world who need to earn, get married etc. but there is a problem of relative earning capacities. indians joining software companies as soon as they finish studying (and studying for a short time, compared to people in many other parts of the world) can earn several times what their parents earned. that's not the case in the US, where the earning differential between open source community participation and corporate life is smaller. indeed, i argue that one reason germany is so strong in open source development is the long student life, which gives people quite some time to participate in the developer community, so that by the time they succumb to earning pressures they are often able to earn a good living out of open source.
