Hello!
I’m a CS student, have been a FOSS lover for a long time and am a commie since recently (a year or two). I was thinking of my future career and as much as I’d love for there to just be an easy, free and open approach to using my skills, capitalism just makes it all impossible. I know thay capitalism will make it impossible for me to exercise my profession in a good way, but is there no alternative that fits in the middle anywhere?
There just seems to be for profit software if I want to actually get a decent wage and a decent life. How can I get a decent job with free software? The idea of it just inhibits it while on the capitalist mode of production.
TLDR: how can I be a FOSS dev while not caving to the interests of big techs and corporations to provide for myself (aka be a hypocrite)?
Thank you for your time reading, cheers from Brazil!
If you can get a good job writing closed source software that gives you a decent quality of life and gives you the free-time to contribute to some open source projects outside of work I think you’ll still do good for FOSS. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
At the end of the day we have to be realistic with ourselves about the world we find ourselves in and the limits of the power of an individual in it. Starving for the sake of some imagined purity or living a lower quality of life isn’t Marxist. As long as you’re not directly abetting the imperialism machine by working for some ghoulish NATO defense contractor I don’t think you have that much to feel badly about.
That said there’s things like programming around helping coordinate mass transit and provide info to travelers. Programming for industrial machinery including especially in areas not related to manufacturing of goods like power, utilities, and though that’s pretty specialized if you can get your foot in the door you have a fairly interesting skill-set. Government jobs for government agencies are also an option.
There are companies that write open source software that isn’t free to companies (e.g. they charge for use when used as part of a profitable enterprise or sell support packages to large enterprises) but they aren’t that great in number and to get in the door you’ve a better chance if you have something on your resume already which means unfortunately working for a for-profit, usually closed source company.
Hypocrisy is good and well for the idealist to worry about. The realist however cares more about feeding the children, feeding themselves and doing what they can with what they have. There is in the FOSS movement a certain idealism among many that think via free computing they can free humanity when in reality you must via revolution free humanity to free computing. FOSS is a rebel insurrection against capitalism but not one that can ever change the superstructure or base in any meaningful way on their own.
Never forget under capital you are forced under duress to sell your labor, it is not your fault, you are not a bad person for doing so and for doing so under conditions less than ideal for people who uphold a way of doing things you find philosophically repugnant.
So try, try to find something that fits these ideals but if you cannot, do not feel too badly.