Software Below the Poverty Line
Remember, the Free Software movement all started when RMS wanted to fix his printer.  Xerox told him to go screw, so he did.<p>Should anyone <i>expect</i> to make a living writing software?<p>First: we don&#x27;t need endless piles of software.  Most of the software we actually need could be written by less than 0.001 of the programmers and &quot;software engineers&quot; working today.  (And I could put more zeros in there and still be right-ish.)<p>Second: if you&#x27;re not one of the truly good programmers[1] you should not be writing software for others to use.  It is not needed (see point #1), and it&#x27;s irresponsible.  Most of us should be pulling off-the-shelf components and configuring and connecting them.  Excel proves that most people&#x27;s real software needs are mostly handled by Excel.<p>We don&#x27;t write all this software because we need it, we write it because we like to write software.  (And because we have tricked normal people into thinking they need us and should pay us tons of money.  It&#x27;s a huge scam.)<p>It&#x27;s understood that the really good folks pretty much write their own tickets (meaning they can generally pick and choose what they work on, whether they are in industry or academia or just private individuals.  I.e. Jim Simons does what he likes.)<p>So my question is: Should mediocre programmers get paid to produce inadequate software?  At all?  Regardless of the FLOSSiness of their licenses?<p>[1] People like DJB, Fabrice Bellard, Mark Miller, RMS, and their ilk.  They&#x27;re like professional athletes compared to you and I.