Joshua BarrettoIt occurred to me today that the social value of the open-source work I do in my free time has probably been an order of magnitude more useful to the world than everything I've ever done as a paid employee. Needing to seek a wage almost certainly makes me a less productive member of society than I would otherwise be.
The number of boosts this is getting implies that a lot of folk feel similar, and that's sad.
David Zaslavsky@jsbarretto That's true, but I bet there are also a lot of people who don't feel similarly and thus are not reacting to this post. Obviously I can only guess at the real numbers, but I would imagine that among programmers (or writers, organizers, etc) who have worked on #opensource projects, only a small fraction of them have had a meaningful impact on the world through those contributions.
@diazona I guess that depends on your definition of 'meaningful'. An extreme definition might be "is on the critical path to a human being receiving sustenance or shelter" but I'm of the view that there are more indirect or immaterial ways for things to be meaningful.