opencomponentry

If you’ve ever poured your heart and soul into a product/company and ended up with nothing to show for it other than a cool product (which is still pretty cool) then this post is for you I mean really given yourself to it. Sleeping under desks, coding for 72 hours straight. You know..Being ensalved by free lunch/dinner/bloody mayhem on lan games.

I’ve spent the better part of the last 5 years of my life completely obsessed over my ex employers little EMRS. It is a really nice system, probably the best one available on the market. (this speaking from having attended most of each years conferences displaying said competitors products). But you know what, where the f-$% is my money? No, really. After 4 CEO’s and countless promises of future riches you really start to feel demoralized. …That was, until I found out what life is like working on open source projects!

You see, I really really like the idea of building something and then watching it flourish and grow. Constantly tending to it and helping it along. I didn’t get this during my early years because I spent a lot of time consulting, building a companies product for them and then kissing it goodbye. It made me sad. It must feel similar to the way au pairs feel. That probably sounds weird, but that’s honestly how I viewed them. I didn’t want to hand the products over to their creepy “in house” developers. They didn’t know it like I did. Wouldn’t love it like I did. Damn them.

The open source world has no CEO barriers though! There is no one standing around promising you stock/$$/beautiful women for achievments. Your project either does or doesn’t succeed, and it’s completely based on your and your peers ability to make it happen. Without even knowing what other doors would open up as a result I soon discovered that not only could I work on the products I was growing to love, I could get paid for it too! Not only that, but I could do it without any help from a pointy haired ceo !!

What joy! I’m now doing full time consulting working on the projects that I love, and I even have a future! I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed programming more. Thank you (open source project name here) for making life so fun.