I'd suggest the opposite of parent comment's advice to young programmers. Don't buy in to the mindset of "how does this benefit me, me, me." If you find yourself in a position where you're happy with your burgeoning career--i.e., having a roof over your head, and not worrying about your next meal--contributing your talent to F/OSS, regardless of who "benefits", is one of the best ways you can apply your specialized domain knowledge to improving the general good. Basically what the article says.
Hacking on open source does increase the education improvement for low income children. Example: Poor kids in Africa now have android phones and have access to open source education materials made possible via open source web technologies.
[1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012...
Nor was every possible motivation given about money/getting ahead - intrinsic motivation (happiness) was mentioned, too.
Contributing back to the community is a good thing, but only do it if you're getting some benefit from it. Does spending your money and time for other people give you some business advantage? Help establish your reputation? Pay you back in return? Tickle your morality and make you happy? Cool, then go for it.
But think twice before contributing your time or money for somebody else for free. Chances are they are getting one of those tangible benefits from it, and if you're not, well, what does that make you?
(the above is satire, with purpose of criticism)
Yep, pretty much agree.
> (the above is satire, with purpose of criticism)
Oh...
Also open source projects are not "somebody else's", they belong to everyone. When you contribute to open source all of mankind is benefited.
For preference contribute to the services governments are legally obliged to provide. Think about say Electorarl Roll Management services. There are over 2000 services local UK governments have to supply - choose one, http://oss4gov.org/lgsl then find a local councillor who cares and start delivering. That's going to make value. Not IPO value, maybe not even gonna get paid value - but it makes government services better.
Remember the story about the airline check-in clerk who was looking up flights in the free public iPhone app because the official airline system was slow and confusing. Now imagine there are hundreds of thousands of government employees just like her in front of appallingly bad software. There is plenty to keep you busy.
Edit: fat fingered a draft post
Edit: it's no harder to get open source software into go ernment than into private sector organisations - it's just that no-one with the skills to buikd has the itches government needs scratching
Contributing to Open Source is a good thing, but only do it if you're getting some benefit from it. Does spending your time writing code for other people give you some business advantage? Help establish your reputation? Pay you cash money? Tickle your creativity and make you happy? Cool, then go for it.
But think twice before spending your time patching somebody else's thing for free. Chances are they are getting one of those tangible benefits from it, and if you're not, well, what does that make you?
Notice that many of those big, altruistic Open Source projects that made the world a better place also made the world a better place for their corporate sponsors in very specific and well thought out ways [1]. There's not that much real charity to be found, even though it would make a better story if there were.
Notice further that all those upsides listed above can also be had from developing your own for-profit, possibly closed source software products or working for somebody else doing so. If whatever you're doing isn't getting you further ahead than that, it's your duty to yourself to fix that.
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html