Where is open-source development going?

[wiak]

A thought-provoking article that perhaps suggests open-source becoming more corporate and less innovative: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-hidd ... f6bc2a8c0c

May be, may be not?

[wiak]

My 12 year old son represented his primary school in a speech-giving contest a few days ago. I was more than surprised he was good at making speeches...
Anyway, at the presentations he was asked by the organiser what he wanted to be in terms of future career, and he answered: "Software Engineer".

No, I haven't encouraged him to select that career path, though obviously he looks over my shoulder as I work away on FirstRib-related matters. In fact, I am worried by his choice and somewhat hope he will change his mind. I've already encouraged his older brother to go into some other branch of Engineering more generally, if he insists on a technical-based career type and that is what he wants to do.

Trouble is, the 12 year old is really enthusiastic about programming, and he uses FR driven version of Arch-based Endeavour OS as his favourite distro. Unlike myself, he is really into the likes of Javascript, and Java too come to that, and all from the Linux open-source point of view. In practice, I know very well however that in this country most paid IT dev and support work is in the Microsoft environment and we don't use Microsoft in the house at all, so in that sense he is deprived in experience... But more important to me is that I don't consider open-source per se at all a good career in terms of remuneration or, even, healthy social lifestyle, and I really wish he won't waste tons of his precious time working away on open-source projects like the addict we in that world somewhat become.

I'd rather instead that he found something not only enjoyable to do but also rewarding, and no..., open-source geek community status is a very useless reward that cannot buy you a house to live in. Also, it is definitely not a healthy lifestyle sitting at a computer all day and fact is, that 'status' reward that seems to attract some people, is not only transient and meaningless, but brings with it petty jealousies, harrassment/flame-wars, and all sorts of similar rubbish from those who seem to be trying to 'protect' their own favourite distro/open-source projects; it's all crazy of course.

Aside from our lives being now dominated by Internet/computer/capitalism, the truth I feel is that 'Computing is a Waste of Time'. I do it (but definitely less than I did and less in the future I hope), but that doesn't mean I want my children to make same mistakes I did!!!

One of the reasons I use/maintain-to-my-needs FirstRib, is that, aside from its initrd and root filesystem build script, I on-purpose made it to rely more on upstream-repos and their official package manager and overall way of doing things. But you can to a large extent 'pick and choose' what parts of these upstream-maintained components you include in your FR build. I myself have neither time nor wish to maintain my own repos nor deeper system-control scripts, so I do not try and re-invent any major wheel but instead go with the flow; I'm not trying to invent any new kind of Linux and accept that large teams of careful developers are bound to do a better job than I ever could especially in this environment where security concerns are so increasingly important. FirstRib is thus simple, because it levers the upstream work of others who are more capable than I certainly am. I am happy to thus sit back and drink my coffee whilst others build systems that I too can enjoy; for my part I try to make sure the core FR utilities and initrd continue to work as expected, and that is actually now a relatively simple/small maintenance job that I am likely to be happy doing (but, yes, that much I will also train my kid to understand despite maybe also trying to dissuade him overall from his Software Engineer career aspirations...).

As a hobby, within limits, computing is as good as any other (but not in excess or when taken too seriously at that hobby level). https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/18/open- ... ave-power/

[Grey]

In fact, I am worried by his choice and somewhat hope he will change his mind.

Don't worry in advance. He will change his plans many times before the age of 18.
For example, I wanted to become not an astronaut like all Soviet children, but an artist-paleontologist. As a child, I saw a special set of postcards in which a major specialist in this field, Konstantin Fljorov, performed a reconstruction of the appearance of dinosaurs by bones. On one side was a bone and a picture of a "restored" prehistoric beast, and on the other side was a description of the logic of restoration. I have kept the set until now, but the dream has not come true

Aside from our lives being now dominated by Internet/computer/capitalism,

These thoughts visited another person (or rather a character) exactly 35 years ago. Since then, there have only been more temptations.
In this 30-second scene, the villain is not Internet yet, but TV :

[mikeslr]

Ditto what grey wrote. Your son is good with computers because (a) you're good with computers, (b) he sees that you enjoy the work and (c) wants to be like you. That's natural. The best thing you can do is demonstrate your interest in other things and get him involved with those.

I had a different problem. My eldest son got involved with computers in the 3rd grade. Although he tried other, more "creative", fields today he's a computer programmer, capable is a half dozen computer languages, dialects or more.

My other, younger, son was just as bright. But being two years behind was always being compared to his brother. We notice one thing he was better at: he had great hand-eye co-ordination. Probably could have been great at sports. But since he liked to draw we enrolled him in an after-school art program. Today he makes his living as a commercial illustrator and video-grapher; and as a well-respected member of the art community of a major city he often receives grants to pursue more 'artistic' passions.

Everyone has to find out (a) what they are good at doing; (b) what they enjoy doing; and (c) how to make a living. The trick is how to meet all objectives. The best thing you can do is to expose your son to other interests; preferably involving your participation.

P.S. Re-read your post. Unless I'm mistaken, Android is Linux using Java(script?). Google is now and will be for the foreseeable future a major employer. Hopefully, there will be rivals. But wouldn't something like this be of interest to your son: https://developer.android.com/