which is nice and all, but omits something obvious to those of us who see life as something a little wider than a cubicle

today, i make money from my efforts in the open-source field. lots of other people do too. i work hard to contribute back what i put in (and i’m more passionate about this than when i worked closed-source, where it was possible to get away with nasty code tricks that “seemed to work” or were “good enough”).

in the early years a lot of what i got back was purely in terms of being able to make my scanner go when it didn’t before (and share that with others), but now … it’s a win-win for me, my customers, and the strangers I never get to meet who share the benefits.

i won’t get into the issue of defining sourceware versus freeware, though from a software perspective it’s an important distinction (i prefer both).

chris does raise an interesting point, but i think it’s based in part on a perspective that reflects a lack of understanding (or a radically different idea of ‘productive’, one that is very jealous* and doesn’t value contributions except those which benefit the self and not others).

* jealous as defined by axelrod wrt the “iterated prisoner’s dilemma” games and referred to by hawking in “the selfish gene”

When viewing one side of the coin, there still is another you cannot see, so OK, you have a different experience, as valid as mine, but I commented from my experience. And note my C and D bullets. I did not said it was necessary to be bored at _work_. Also, remember, bored does not always mean not doing anything, but also, what you are doing seems menial.

And I did not meant cellar installations, but both governmental and global corp level projects over +20 years time. No geniuses to see anywhere, just stressed people making a lot of mistakes. I have spent years to correct the mess what these pressed projects created. As you mention, they are rare. In all these years, I only worked with two geniuses, both had a part in closing down AT&T’s 3B2 computer series (identifying some serious bugs). Both came from the same background as Anders Hejlsberg (Borland Pascal etc) and Bjarne Stroustrup (C++). And both was at their best when bored.

I’ve seen projects doomed to failure, then when the pressure level is increased to outrageous proportions, certain people shine through. 24 hours later, you can’t even recognize the project because of what these people have done.

The problem is that these are the very minority: brilliant, but with pressure become pure genius. Unfortunately, managers don’t realize that they’ll have these two or three people driving at max, but they’ll kill off all initiative in the others. And even then, some of these “elite” have limits lower/higher than others – one or more will burn out if you apply too much pressure.

Management isn’t as easy as it seems, IMO. You can’t have boredom power your staff, because then nothing will get done. If a big company gave all its employees a holiday, how many will choose to work in their homes to make the project happen?

Boredom is all well and good for 2-3 people working on minor projects, and best for one man working one project – but it’s an absoloutely impossible incentive for anything bigger than that – including many (dare I even say most?) open-source projects. Like someone mentioned above, it’s the drive for recognition and accomplishment that’s the real kicker.

Boredom is the best driver. My best work have been done when bored, same with others I worked with. Tention or short project times never given good code, because the programmer tend to make crucial mistakes in the haste. Managers tend to think that pressure is a good driver; having being involved in at least 7 major projects (+$10M), I never seen this situation to deliver.

A. Organize yourself accordig to the “Mythical Man Month”
B. Put 50% of the project time on the first 10% of the project, having time to analyze
C. Take a holiday, getting bored
D. Do the job
E. Cut out _all_ extra smart additions, leave zero of it in the code.

Then you succeed.

Anyone who has the luxury of being bored, surely has few and far between problems.

“Boredom” I am sure is merely an off-the-cuff answer a developer may retort, in the midst of a more complex explaination of necessity.

 Long live ingenuity and passion for problem solving!

cheers!

mars

> But that’s not the definition of boredom, that’s just life!

So very true.

La diferencia de nosotros a personas como usted, es que ganamos dinero por divertirnos y aportamos nuestro cerebro en cosas interesantes. No en estupideces como lo ha escrito

hardworking souls behind the ‘apt-get ‘ and the corporate (RedHat, Novell-MS (eeks!))

making money ‘off’ free-software developers.

Well, so the oft’ repeated  ‘Linux is cancer’, and  now ‘the bored people do it’ joins this list,

of brainless quotes.

Just find out how many MIT, Berkeley grads do it. How many of us are engineers, scientists.

How many of us do it for ?

1) Coders like to code
2) Say you are a coder and at work; you make some business product like a spreadsheet.
3) Creating a spreadsheet app is fine; but you might want to exercise some of your other talents.
4) Perhaps doing some kernel hacking or creating some drivers sounds like fun.

Is it boredom? No; this is how you may want to expend your free time. Some peoples work are their hobbies. How many professional athletes do other sports in the off season or in their spare time? Michael Jordon (basketball player) does golf and tried making a professional career out of it. Is MJ bored? No; he is just doing what he loves to do; sports. I know several professional mechanics; after 10 hours fixing automotive issues; they drag in their own classic cars into the garage and keep pimping them out. Those cars go to tracks for racing; as well as auto shows. Are the mechanics bored? Nope; they are doing what they love; work on cars.

Is it boredom? Nope; just doing what you love in your spare time.

But that’s not the definition of boredom, that’s just life!