[ossig] CAREER PROGRAMMERS SHOULD EXPLORE OPEN-SOURCE OPTIONS

[Nan Phin <nplee@tm.net.my>]

Ignore Linux at your own risk

by Garry Kranz
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In the old days -- 10 years ago, before Linux burst on the scene with
its iconoclastic idea of sharing core software code -- Windows and
Unix developers followed a fairly straightforward career path.
Earn a computer science degree, specialize in some programming
languages, tack on a few certifications, and sell your services to
the highest bidder in an IT-hungry marketplace. This was pretty much
the standard way to get the programming skills you needed to land a
job.

But that old-school way of getting an IT job isn't just old, it's
ineffective. The evidence is mounting that you must be open to
open-source if you want to sell yourself in this day and age.

The Internet ushered in this era, bringing distributed computing and
collaborative software development more into the mainstream and
helping change open-source software development from a pipe dream
into a practice that's gaining broader acceptance among large
businesses.

Throw in the lingering economic downturn and the expectation that
revenue for Unix licenses will diminish in coming years, and
developers have compelling reasons to learn -- and to apply --
open-source technologies.

Although no one is tolling a death knell for Unix -- much less for
Windows -- open-source-based computing systems are becoming permanent
fixtures in many enterprises. Projects like Linux, Apache Web Server
and Mozilla shattered an erstwhile belief of proprietary software
companies: Namely, sharing source code would never result in usable
enterprise-wide computing systems.

One example of open-source's deepening traction: Through September
2002, according to the Netcraft Web server survey, about 63 percent
of Web sites were running on Apache Web Server.

Within the next year, it's expected that more and more enterprises
will move toward the Linux platform for high-availability
applications, for the purpose of hosting database management systems
such as Oracle and other programs.

"People who have experience and are able to improve performance and
tune [proprietary] applications to run on Linux will be in big
demand," said Bill Claybrook, an analyst with Aberdeen Group Inc. in
Boston.

Enterprises are placing greater emphasis on working collaboratively,
too. The days of the isolated programmer pecking out code in relative
seclusion -- with a "trust me" attitude -- could be numbered. In his
forthcoming book, "The Business and Economics of Linux and Open
Source," Martin Fink writes about the changing structure of companies
that work on collaborative software projects. Open-source programmers
who want to move up within the engineering hierarchy, he writes,
"will need to demonstrate not only technological talent, but some
degree of architectural vision, and maybe more importantly,
significant interpersonal skills."

Virtually all large IT companies are performing some degree of
collaborative software development using open-source applications,
according to Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Web Server
Project and chief technical officer for CollabNet in Brisbane, Calif.
This includes large vendors, like IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and
Sun Microsystems Inc., but also encompasses firms in the financial
services and pharmaceutical industries.

Collaboration forces developers to be social animals, extending the
concepts of pair programming and peer review even further.

"It's learning how to work in an environment where lots of people
look at your code. You have to expect to be challenged to explain how
things work," said Behlendorf, whose company provides collaborative
software development services.

The strongest argument for learning about open-source tools is the
added value you can bring to your company.

"A developer who knows about open-source products is going to be able
to save his or her employer money by building internal systems that
use those open-source systems," said David Truog, a principal analyst
with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.

For example, you might be a Windows developer charged with building a
system that must house a company database. Your first instinct may be
to choose Microsoft's SQL Server. "But if you also know the
open-source equivalent, MySQL, you would be able to save the company
quite a bit of money," Truog said.

Windows developers will continue to have plenty of career
opportunities. For Unix programmers, shifting to Linux likely will be
an easy transition. Still, competition for jobs will intensify.
Younger, hungrier Linux-trained graduates will enter the labor pool
in vast numbers in coming years, and they'll be willing to start for
less money than experienced Unix developers make.

As Fink tells IT managers in his book: "As your enterprise grows and
you need more talented personnel to run your network infrastructure,
application servers and data center, Linux-capable talent will be one
of the most readily available resources."


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Garry Kranz is a freelance business and technology journalist in
Richmond, Va.



--

best wishes.
/nan phin

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.





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