Hi everyone,
sorry, I'm a bit late here, but I wanted to answer on this thread.
On 11/10/2010 09:52 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-11-10 at 21:31 +0100, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
>>> The reason I ask this is because I am curious about what kind of
>>> backgrounds a free software developer has. As for me, I am a student
>>> majoring in Music and minoring in Computer Science. I got the idea of
>>> writing this email, actually, because Google had an internship panel at
>>> my school. Google just loooooves open source and those involved. It
>>> sounds like Google has quite a friendly and cooperative working
>>> atmosphere, and they treat their employees very well. Yeah, I'd like to
>>> work for Google, but who doesn't right? :)
>>>
>
> it's true, among other things they created an atmosphere that please the
> needs of highly gifted people and it's no fun to work in an 'averaged'
> atmosphere when you aren't 'normal'. Indeed a 'subtle' trick to catch
> 'unwanted' people.
I recently met someone who worked at Google and she said that she indeed had a
lot of freedom, and could choose the projects she worked on. For what it's worth..
> OTOH it's your choice to shit on ethics ;), because Google shits on
> ethics.
Well, ethics and big companies are maybe not the best friends. But Google
sometimes gets above the crowd, as recently in the suit against Oracle:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101111114933605
"Each of the Patents-in-Suit is invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because one or
more claims are directed to abstract ideas or other non-statutory subject matter."
About myself, I have been self-employed for about 10 years, at my own little
company, which is mainly comprised of myself, a few interns from time to time,
and working with other small companies or freelances here in Paris.
I only do software development, and for a few years now I have mostly done audio
related development. And yes, it pays the bill.
I also do music and have quite a lot of artistic and not-so-artistic projects
maturating in the lab, which usually involve both music and software
development. Free software is everywhere here, it's my culture, but I'm no
fanatic. I think there's enough room in the world for other approaches, and that
it can all be complementary.
--
Olivier