On Sun, 2004-06-06 at 21:19, David Guest wrote: > Thanks Mary. I was just wondering if people like Ken might get an > income from the closed license stream in much the same way as Sun gets > from Star Office.
My expectation is never from my code in FOSS to think otherwise is probably foolish. We all have the dream of a killer application that will change the world and make us comfortable. I realise that I am an backup type, I will never change the world but I hope to help someone who will :-) Regarding money: Indirectly I think that i may get a contract with a FOSS company or as a direct result of FOSS people I know for closed source jobs. I fully expect the FOSS job to come with a pay cut, an unfortunate reality. I also know that UTS value my FOSS involvement (I teach 1 night per week). In short I believe that my ability to find the next job has improved 100% as a direct involvement in Linux and Open Source. I will never make my fortune doing though. As a side benefit I get to read some really cool documents and know "stuff" that I would never have learned at work. I then get questions on odd ball stuff and I just know the answer. It really is a great way to expand your abilities and find out things. When you work for your employer you struggle through to a solution under time pressure for results. At home for FOSS you can study the right way to do 5 lines of code for hours. You can take a journey into the area of building stable ABI code and understand the issues. You would never learn this through work. They love you when you explain these things to them when they need it though :-) -- Thanks KenF OpenOffice.org developer -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html