Why so few Python jobs? (and licenses)

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 02:57  PM, Paul Rubin wrote:

> Cliff Wells <logiplexsoftware at earthlink.net> writes:
>> I have to admit I hadn't thought of that.... :( Still, to be honest,
>> I consider GPL'd/open source stuff to be a matter of goodwill, and
>> if I submitted a patch to a GPL'd author that means that I am
>> obviously using his code to a significant degree and the patch is
>> just my small thanks for that.  If the author later profits from
>> that it's all the better, as far as I'm concerned, as this will
>> undoubtedly encourage him/her to develop more code (and maybe even
>> let him eat, if he needs to).  People who resent that sort of thing
>> are perhaps missing the larger picture.
>
> I mostly agree with this sentiment--it does depend somewhat on the
> situation though.  If I correct some typos in the manual at my
> leisure, sure, that's a gesture of goodwill.  If I spend $5000 worth
> of development time writing and releasing a feature for GIMP that I
> could have had instead by paying $500 for a retail copy of Photoshop,
> the GIMP author has (at least monetarily) benefitted from my effort
> more than I've benefitted from his.  (Note: that GIMP example is made
> up, not something that really happened to me).

I'm an author of [l]GPL software that (unfortunately, I'll admit) 
requires copyright consignment, and I think that in any case it's an 
statement of goodwill.  I don't think any developer I work with would 
willingly consign copyright if they didn't trust my vision for the 
project and common sense.  I also don't think you'd submit patches to 
the GIMP authors if you thought that the GIMP was dead; consider how 
much you would've benefitted from receiving a complete royalty-free 
paint program that you *can* write patches for, relative to how much 
value you would have been "giving away" to the GIMP developers by 
resubmitting your patch.

I know I wouldn't even *use* Python if I didn't fundamentally trust 
Guido's stewardship of it, license or no license.

>> (who, as I said earlier, are already benefitting from the existence
>> of that project - probably more than enough to compensate for their
>> small contribution).
>
> OK, though one should not underestimate the value of "small"
> contributions, especially considering that some may have been made at
> "gunpoint".  E.g. I mentioned in another post I once spent a frantic
> all-nighter finding an Apache module bug that was crashing my
> employer's web site.  The result was a two-line fix (it was a malloc
> error).  If I did emergency repairs of someone else's software for a
> paying client, I'd charge at least 2x-3x my normal consulting rate per
> hour.  By that reckoning, the two-line fix was worth enough to my
> employer to pay for several copies of a commercial server, because of
> the time spent in a critical situation.  (Of course the commercial
> server would have had its own bugs...)

This comparison seems nonsensical.  You're comparing purchase cost of a 
proprietary webserver with the TCO of free software (and forgetting 
about its development cost).  If you compare apples with apples, you get 
a chart which looks more like this:

license      | purchase price | total cost of ownership
-------------+----------------+-------------------------
open source  | zero           | not too much, distributed among many
proprietary  | not too much   | tons of money, all your responsibility

So, price the labor for that two-line fix that you've made against all 
the free fixes that you've gotten for free from other apache-using folks 
AND against the fact development of Apache in the first place.  To 
compare, factor in the cost of maintaining a proprietary web-server and 
how much the service people at proprietary-server-company X would charge 
you for a two-line fix that you could dist out to your employer within a 
single night.  I think it still comes out to the fact that you owe the 
Apache module group a couple grand :-).

Of course, in order to avoid this discussion entirely, you could use a 
web platform written in Python (and therefore practically immune to 
"malloc errors"), such as Zope, WebWare, or <PROMOTION TARGET="self" 
STYLE="ruthless">twisted.web, available at 
http://twistedmatrix.com</PROMOTION>! ;-)

> Anyway, the main thing IMO is not whether something is GPL'd, but that
> whatever the author decides to do, they announce their choice up front
> and don't spring surprises on contributors afterwards.

But what would USENET be for, if not for those sorts of surprises!

>> Getting paid to develop open source is the best of both worlds and
>> benefits everyone.
>
> Yes, that's a very good feeling :-).

Amen to that :-)

--
______      you are in a maze of twisted little applications, all
|   |_\     remarkably consistent.
|     |          -- glyph lefkowitz, glyph @ twisted matrix . com
|_____|             http://www.twistedmatrix.com/