Seriously. What's the major difference between shipping jobs overseas and eliminating them by releasing your systems to the “open source movement”? Solaris kept a lot of programmers employed at Sun. And, not that I don't want to see BIOS improve, but developing that itself and the drivers for BIOS also kept a lot of people employed.
I know there are companies based around developing for open source (such as Red Hat Linux), but I get the feeling that the mass of open source is still a volunteer effort. Creating a large pool of unemployed developers would build a pool of talent with plenty of time on its hands, but that's not a road we should be travelling.
Is it our fate to train our Indian replacements? Or to become implementers of an open technology? Where's the fun in either of those? If that's my career path, I'm going back to gene splicing (it's always cool when your fish glow green).
I'm not advocating keeping technoolgies closed source merely for the sake of employment figures. I'm just trying to figure out what movement will have a greater impact on our jobs in the coming years.
“Ironically, the good logic of transferring jobs offshore depends on it not becoming widespread. Otherwise, those collective decision makers will find that their customers are unemployed.”
- John McDaniel, comment in response to Offshore Storm: The Global Razor's Edge
Intel To Release Open-Source Code for BIOS
Intel is releasing new open-source code for the computer boot-up process, now controlled by BIOS -- the oldest software technology in PC platforms. BIOS is what allows computer hardware and software to communicate.
Sun plans to open source Solaris
Sun Microsystems, one of the biggest names in the server world, reported that the company will now make Solaris an open source project. Sun is not sure as to when the move of making Solaris open source will take place at this point.
Add in some “free” hardware, and we're good to go!
Sun's giveaway gamble
...it was the prediction that future hardware may come at no cost that has put the company back on the radar. The comments came from Jonathan Schwartz, the former Sun software chief who has moved up to the president post and who is in charge of trying to turn the troubled company's fortunes around.
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Schwartz says Microsoft's Bill Gates agrees with him that hardware will eventually cost nothing, which is what you might expect when two software executives get together.
FxCop, Your .NET Cop
FxCop is a rule based engine which helps the development team to enforce best practices of the .NET platform and development standards. This article will help you understand how FxCop works and how you can make use of it in your ongoing .NET projects. You can download FxCop from http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/fxcop/. This tool is provided by the FxCop team from Microsoft for free. (The current version available at the time of writing is 1.30.)