Re: [tlug] GPL vs. paid version and ethics

[Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>]

2012/8/5 Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>:

> In most cases i would argue that a group of dedicated hobbyists
> can easily outperform any paid staff.

I think Steve captured everything I had to say on that subject and
more in his refutation. :)

> Why? Because most paid programmer groups i've seen so far [...]
> have a project lead who tells them what to do, and they toil until they
> have finished their task. Discussion between group members only
> happen when interfaces need to be designed or when one is so much
> stuck that he hasn't found a way out in days/weeks.

My goodness, the places you've seen sound like terrible places to
work. Luckily for professional software engineers, such places are no
longer the norm. I've worked for four different software companies
(and three different software teams at Amazon), and never had an
experience such as you describe.

Agile development may be a bit of a buzzword right now, and many
companies implement agile practises without really getting the main
point, but at least they tend to have daily standups, which eliminate
the never talking to each other problem at the very least.

75% of the places I've worked (three of four) have had a culture of
unit testing (I've been able to even start a test-first tendency on
some of the teams I've worked in), continuous integration, pair
programming, reviews of all code before it goes into production, and
short iterations.

> And every time someone new is hired, there is long time until he has a grasp
> on how the software works and who the right guy to ask questions is.

This is also true in general for all but the most trivial open source
projects, at least the ones that don't have one or two project leads /
project founders.

Cheers,
Josh