As I've seen open-source technologies improve, while proprietary ones becoming more and more draconian in restricting freedoms and imposing arbitrary burdens on us, I feel a longing to work with and use as much of the free ecosystem as I can. At the same time I've begun attempting to extricate my data from the serfdom of Facebook, Google, and the like.
I firmly believe that, all other things being equal, an open-source product is superior to a closed-source one. And so I am grieved when the superior eBook reader on the market is the Kindle, and the best motion-sensing technology is largely closed (e.g. Kinect and Leap Motion), and so on. What a breath of fresh air my Linux OS and open-source web development stack are when compared to closed alternatives. If I have any problem whatsoever, I can either find help from the community or look at source code on github.
So my question is, how can I live so that the benefits of open-source are maximized while the detriments of closed-source are minimized? I don't want to become an extremist zealot, but I wish my work to benefit as many people as possible. What are my career choices? How can I sustain open-source projects?
I firmly believe that, all other things being equal, an open-source product is superior to a closed-source one. And so I am grieved when the superior eBook reader on the market is the Kindle, and the best motion-sensing technology is largely closed (e.g. Kinect and Leap Motion), and so on. What a breath of fresh air my Linux OS and open-source web development stack are when compared to closed alternatives. If I have any problem whatsoever, I can either find help from the community or look at source code on github.
So my question is, how can I live so that the benefits of open-source are maximized while the detriments of closed-source are minimized? I don't want to become an extremist zealot, but I wish my work to benefit as many people as possible. What are my career choices? How can I sustain open-source projects?