Maybe I should tell another story.
I wanted originally to be a graphic designer, as a kid spent years in Paint and PaintShop Pro, finally learned Photoshop. I tried to intern with a graphic designer and he basically said "you don't want this job", it was already competitive and becoming automated.
I was not such a versatile illustrator and was better at layout, I joined newspaper and learned InDesign and Pagemaker while at a place that still laid out classifieds by hand. I remember when my Editor's older brother came in who worked at Time with a digital camera and said, "We don't develop photos anymore, and we can even send them in from the field." I believed in journalism but the tech side of it for me, a dead end. Only a few people were needed now for the production.
So I learned web development, cut my teeth on Internet Explorer and DHTML. We hated the fight between browser behemoths, why couldn't they agree on a standard? Well, they did. And now, anybody who could read a standards doc could do my job. So, I moved on to app development.
Apps were exciting — still are! — now I could make a program and see people use it in their hand in their daily life. Many competing technologies, Android seemed like the right choice, open core so the ecosystem thrived. A few years in, this also meant anyone in the world with a basic subsidized phone and a computer that could run Java could do my job. I switched mostly to iOS.
I think you see where this story is going, but I agree with the article. We fight for equal access to knowledge and tooling. Information wants to be free! And I see that firsthand every day. That is — to reference TFA — a double-edged sword. As we share information we lose control of it.
Is AI the potential greatest success of open-source or its failure? I think we still have time to decide if we make the right choices.
I wanted originally to be a graphic designer, as a kid spent years in Paint and PaintShop Pro, finally learned Photoshop. I tried to intern with a graphic designer and he basically said "you don't want this job", it was already competitive and becoming automated.
I was not such a versatile illustrator and was better at layout, I joined newspaper and learned InDesign and Pagemaker while at a place that still laid out classifieds by hand. I remember when my Editor's older brother came in who worked at Time with a digital camera and said, "We don't develop photos anymore, and we can even send them in from the field." I believed in journalism but the tech side of it for me, a dead end. Only a few people were needed now for the production.
So I learned web development, cut my teeth on Internet Explorer and DHTML. We hated the fight between browser behemoths, why couldn't they agree on a standard? Well, they did. And now, anybody who could read a standards doc could do my job. So, I moved on to app development.
Apps were exciting — still are! — now I could make a program and see people use it in their hand in their daily life. Many competing technologies, Android seemed like the right choice, open core so the ecosystem thrived. A few years in, this also meant anyone in the world with a basic subsidized phone and a computer that could run Java could do my job. I switched mostly to iOS.
I think you see where this story is going, but I agree with the article. We fight for equal access to knowledge and tooling. Information wants to be free! And I see that firsthand every day. That is — to reference TFA — a double-edged sword. As we share information we lose control of it.
Is AI the potential greatest success of open-source or its failure? I think we still have time to decide if we make the right choices.