A friend of mine, Keith smiled when he said, “You are Passionate About OSS, whereas I’m the opposite, I feel like its more like death by OSS,” while catching up over lunch recently.
Keith has a point – a whole series of points. Every project is beset by problems, delays, cost blowouts, inability to get / keep great resources skilled in your flavour of OSS, seeing the same mistakes repeated, being given low-cost resources to supposedly keep prices down, etc.
Why would anyone even want to get into the industry, let alone be passionate about OSS?
Keith rightly sees the huge range of hurdles getting in the way of delivering great solutions for his customers. I see the excitement of having opportunities to do things better every day, knowing that almost anything I choose to do will contribute towards the huge potential benefits that OSS can deliver.
Which side of this same coin do you fall on? Excited or dejected?