Every once in a while on some technology websites a headline like this will pop up:http://www.osor.eu/news/nl-moving-to-open-source-would-save-government-one-to-four-billionMy initial thought about government and organizations moving to open source software is that tons of programmers would lose their jobs and the industry would shrink. At the same time the proliferation and use of open source software seems to be greatly encouraged in many programming communities. Is my thinking that the full embrace of open source software everywhere will hurt the software industry a misconception? If it is not, then why do so many programmers love open source software?
As a young student aspiring to have a career as a programmer, how should I feel about open source software?
open source
Just because a project is open-source does not mean that programmers are not making a living off of it. Governments and companies donate large amounts of money to foundations like mozilla and apache.Also keep in mind, companies have to hire programmers to MODIFY the open source project to customize it for their business. Companies can't use off the shelf tools for everything. This is something that can't be done with closed-source software so it's an example of how you can open up new opportunities for programming. It's not about eliminating programmers or not paying them, it's about rearranging the structure to hopefully make things more efficient so we have more time for NEW projects.Another thing to realize about open source is that you don't necessarily have to reveal the source code of your program unless you're going to distribute the program. For programs that a company is going to use for itself in its servers or intracompany needs, it will probably NOT distribute and therefore not have to reveal the source code for the modified program. 