I consider that the golden
rule requires that if I like a program , I must share it with other
people. - Richard Stallman
Open Source
Open source is
a philosophy that promotes free distribution of technical information. (A
products design and implementation details) The concept has been there long
before the open source movements took it and popularized it. The above comment
from Richard Stallman (The founder of free software foundation) explains the
philosophy behind open source. The golden rule or the rule of reciprocity
essentially states the following. “One
should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself”. When this
rule is applied to software world, it is all about sharing the knowledge, code
and skills such that we all can collectively benefit from it.
Career
The
difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty
hours a week – Robert Frost
A
career is a chosen life goals or chosen field of expertise. To become a
successful career person one has to acquire special skills from learning and
training and it also requires lot of dedication and hard work to succeed.
A
job is done for the sole purpose of earning money. Jobs are performed over a
fixed period time. Usually a person who is doing a job would turn up for the
office in the morning; follow some routine tasks and would leave in the evening
often without regard to the completion of the tasks. A career person on the
other hand would consider work as an extension of himself. Often a person’s
lifetime of achievements is tied to his career.
Being
an IT person means being a career person. The technologies in the industry is
constantly evolving and changing and hence it requires constant learning in
order to survive and succeed in the IT industry. Also all IT projects requires lot of dedication from the people involved in order to succeed. Any person who
has done a product release would know how many long hours were required to get
the product out.
Now having looked into the open source philosophy and what a
career means, let us look at how one can benefit from open source development
movement to succeed in an IT career.
Open source software is no longer a small time geek thing. There
is worldwide adoption of open source software in many industries and its market
share is continuing to increase.
1. There has been a huge change of
direction in software adoption after the recession at the end of last decade.
Most companies had to look at ways to cut down the costs in order to survive
and this led CIO’s look for cheaper options of software. By adopting open
source software, companies have to incur only a fraction of the cost of
commercial software.
2. Open source
software products are now available for wide variety of purposes and most of
these products have been around and have matured enough for industrial
deployment.
3. There is always some company behind an open source project and in some cases, there are many companies and hence the availability of enterprise
class support. For example Linux kernel is developed in participation of large
number of companies including the likes of IBM, HP, Red hat etc.
Many people come to think of open source software is developed by
geek/hacker/academics programmers in their spare time. Although there is much
such software, this is not the case with many mainstream open source projects.
For example, following table shows the Linux kernel contribution data.
Linux
Kernel data ( Table )
As you can see, there are hundreds of companies behind Linux kernel
and they had contributed thousands of developers to Linux kernel. This is a
clear example of the amount of career opportunities that exist in the open
source software industry.
Why participate in an open source project
Why would someone dedicate his time and skills to participate in
an open source project? Well, there are many reasons. Advancing the state of
the art in computing, to become part of a team that create great software, work
with some highly talented people, being truly creative are some of the
motivations behind participating in an open source project. Of course there is
nothing like doing something useful and beneficial to others while learning and
having fun.
What you gain
Being part of an open source project can benefit you as a student,
as an IT professional in many ways.
1. Communication Skills
Software
projects need excellent communication throughout the development cycle to
succeed. However, there is always lack of people who explain technical detail
in a precise manner. Open source
participation is a great way to develop
written communication skills because , that is the only way you can
participate effectively as the code is developed by individuals who are
geographically dispersed, and communicated primarily using email.
2. Programming Skills
Programming is a skill that is
mastered by practice. Trying to read and understand good quality code is a
great way to pick up coding technique and style.
3. Technical expertise and research skills
Open source
requires lot of self-learning and research due to the very nature of
development style. Long term participant of an open source project can develop
exceptional research skills and technical expertise that is par with the best in
the world.
4. Networking
Open source development is a great
way to get to know people from the industry around the world. Not only does it
help you get to know some of the best minds but also you may be able to develop
friendships across the globe.
5. Experience the entire software engineering lifecycle
Software product
development process consist of many parts including inception, developing code,
testing, packaging , releasing , writing documentation , providing support, and
maintenance.
An engineer in a
normal software company would only participate in few phases of the above
process. For example a developer might participate in the development phase. A
QA engineer would participate in the QA phase.
However, in an
open source project, this is entirely different. The core committer team would
participate in all the phases of the product life cycle. They would be the
developers, testers, release managers, support provides and bug fixes. Also
they would be doing a lot of marketing activities such as blogging,
presentations in the conferences etc. Hence a programmer in an open source
project can develop excellent skills over time.
6. Reputation
Unlike most
developers in commercial software companies, a programmer in an open source
project can claim his work and develop a reputation for himself.
7. Higher Studies.
When
students apply for higher studies overseas, the evaluators will be looking for
factors to identify exceptional people. As such GPA, GRE etc. does not mean a
lot as these are common to all students. However, a student programmer how has
open source credentials has a distinct advantage.
8. Employment
Some
open source products have become industry standards for doing tasks. For
example, svn and git are widely used as version control systems. Similarly,
maven, ant are the standard build tools for many java projects. Therefore
having skills in these products can be a great benefit in the jobs. Also, a
programmer with open source credentials can easily land a job because, his skills
are already proven and his work is out there in the open for all to see.
9. Your own business
You can build
your own company around open source software consultancy or product
development. For example, by mastering php, drupal, joomla, wordpress etc., one
can easily build a successful web development company.
Participating in open source.
To become a
valued open source contributor, you need two essential things.
1. Motivation.
Open source is
not an instant reward thing for a developer. It takes time and effort to become
a valued member. Hence a programmer needs lots of motivation to keep going.
2. Self-Learning
Of course you have to be a very good self-learner.
Join a project.
There are hundreds of great open source projects out there and
there is great deal of opportunity waiting for you. You can contribute to an open source project in multiple ways.
User
Every project needs some developers,
but also, they need many users. You can easily contribute by becoming an active
user of an open source project. All you have to do is to download and use the
product for your work. When you encounter problems, go to the product forums,
mailing lists and ask questions. When you hit bugs, go to the project bug
tracking system and report them. That way, not only you are benefiting but also
making a contribution to the project as well. Also make sure to write blogs on
how you use the product. Include your code samples as well. Many open source
projects lack through documentation and hence your blog post could help many
fellow developers out there.
Contributor
A contributor would be a person who
dig deeper into the code and fix bugs and provide patches. As a contributor,
one can give new ideas to discussions, contribute additions and extensions and
help in testing and documentation. Contributor is only a step away from
becoming a committer.
Committer
A
committer in an open source
project is a programmer who commits to the source code repository. A committer's
contribution consist of writing code, bug fixes, documentation additions,
introduce new ideas and implement them and also participate in testing and
release processes. To become a committer of an open source project, you have to
demonstrate not only your technical skills but also your commitment to the
project in the long term.
Your own open source project
Open source
is about reuse. When Linus Torvalds started writing Linux, he did not do it
from scratch. He started from Minix operating system and systematically
improved it piece by piece to what finally became Linux. Therefore, if you find some product can be
improved or done in a better why, you can start your own project and develop it
in a systematic way. If you have code that can be useful
to others, always contribute it. You might
have some grate ideas that would change the world.
I’ve found that luck is quite
predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. —Brian Tracy
How to succeed in open source
Publish your code.
If you start your own project, there
are many sites that let you host your code. Github, sourceforge and google code
are some them. If you make improvements to an existing project, make sure to
contribute your changes back to the project.
Show your work.
Of course, being open source means,
you can claim your contributions. For example, by configuring your project with
ohloh.com, you can show your contribution.
Write
Writing is an essential part of
being an open source programmer. You have to do your own marketing for the
project. Blogging is an important part of that. Most open source foundations
have their blog roll which is known as planets. Planet Apache and Planet PHP
are two such examples. You can submit your blog to these blog rolls and greatly
increase your visitor count. Writing articles to popular web sites is another important
aspect of marketing your work. Not only you can contribute with it, but also
you can earn some extra money in the process.
Success.
Let me tell you the secret that led me to my goal. My
strength lies solely in my tenacity - Louis Pasteur
When we talk about success in any task, we usually take about
passion, commitment, and dedication. Even though those qualities are important, when it comes to success, the single most important quality is the tenacity. That never give up attitude, that
special thing that keeps you going till the end no matter what obstacles you
have to face, is what matters the most.
[ My speech at Apache Meetup , Kandy ]
