Solaris is now open-source

[alexander]

Increasingly here in sillycon valley, a strong motivation is proving to your boss that its worth paying you 5 times more not to send your job to India, China or Russia....Its an incredible incentive for writing good code!

Hey Russian programmers now days probably charge about the same as here, aside from considering them some of the best programmers, hackers anyhow, i wouldnt say that Russia is outscourcing, although it was different a while ago, i know that one of my dads friends, who is a pretty high level system programmer now, about 10 years ago made a game development package with about 3 other people for $30,000 for a US company, and about 2 weeks after the package got finished a game made with it was on the top of the list for sales.

Be careful of these statistics: I know programmers who fill their code with mostly irrelevant comments just to beat the "industry standard."

are you saying that my estimate of 800,000 bugs in windows isnt even close? should i increase that to 1,500,000?

Increasingly here in sillycon valley, a strong motivation is proving to your boss that its worth paying you 5 times more not to send your job to India, China or Russia....Its an incredible incentive for writing good code!

proprietary software developement huh? You know open-source software is becoming increasingly more and more the way to go... And yes the programmers get mainly paid out of donations from people and companies, thus their income is directly dependant on how well their programs come out, and thus these things dont tend to get outscourced, not to say that there are no good programmers in India and China, just that many of the ones that work for cheap tend produce bad code. (no racism intended here, there are bad programmers everywhere, just going by what i've seen, and what i've heard many programmers say, many...)

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by alexander

Hey Russian programmers now days probably charge about the same as here, aside from considering them some of the best programmers, hackers anyhow, i wouldnt say that Russia is outscourcing, although it was different a while ago

Ah, nope. We still prefer to outsource to Russia (where I won't say, state secret). The quality of programmers vary everywhere, the difference is cultural: unlike China and India, the Russians will argue with you when you're wrong about a feature or implementation. They are a lot more expensive than India, but because the cost of housing in Petropavlovsk is no where near what it is in Palo Alto, they are indeed cheaper than here.

Originally Posted by alexander

are you saying that my estimate of 800,000 bugs in windows isnt even close? should i increase that to 1,500,000?

Sure, if you want. Its all swag anyway....

Originally Posted by alexander

proprietary software developement huh? You know open-source software is becoming increasingly more and more the way to go... And yes the programmers get mainly paid out of donations from people and companies, thus their income is directly dependant on how well their programs come out.

I run a software company, but you're 18 so you probably know more than me about the subject...
I've had lots of earnest arguments with true believers on this subject. The bottom line from me is that Open Source works great for horizontal software that has huge bases of both users and developers, so its no question that Linux will be successful (watch out though, in 5 years, most of the development will be done inside of places like IBM, HP and Sun because its worth it to them--even if they can't charge directly for the code--cuz it helps sell hardware and there's big bucks to be made from the support and services). That's why Sun made Solaris open source.

OTOH: Software development is expensive. Honest. Even games now require armies of people, and the smaller the target user base, the fewer programmers there are to "contribute" free code. Shareware operations with one or two guys can work too, but they are usually very targeted and if they're successful, they grow and get more restrictive (one of my favorites, Trillian had to explain recently that the original $25 "donation" doesn't buy the pro version any more).

Sure its evil, but one of my friends sig files sez it all: "Will code for food."

Cheers,
Buffy

[pgrmdave]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I run a software company, but you're 18 so you probably know more than me about the subject

What kind of software do you deal with?

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by pgrmdave

What kind of software do you deal with?

"That would be telling...." No, actually, big business software...beeeeg...$$$$....but I don't want to advertise: against policy I'm sure. If you need what we got, you'll surely find us.

Be Seeing You,
Buffy

[alexander]

They are a lot more expensive than India, but because the cost of housing in Petropavlovsk is no where near what it is in Palo Alto, they are indeed cheaper than here.

There are areas of Russia where the cost of living is still pretty small, although if you deal with cities like Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Novgorod, costs of living as well as average salaries are very close to the ones in some parts of the US, and everything costs about the same as here, plus there is up to 80% tax to consider, in other words, i was wrong to say that Russia doesnt outscource, they do, but they do it less and less as cities grow larger and cost of living goes up to the point where you need to pay a russian hacker the same ammount of money to write the same program as a programmer here in the US...

Sun because its worth it to them--even if they can't charge directly for the code--cuz it helps sell hardware and there's big bucks to be made from the support and services

and its not until companies like HP, Nvidia, Cisco and microsoft realize this that the world will become a better place.