Hi all

I’ve been working as a software developer for the past few years and frequently decided to leave a company/project myself because I could not find the motivation to keep working for it.

First, I was questioning whether software development was really for me. But in my spare time, I still enjoyed writing small useful tools, configuring my linux desktop and self-hosting.

I recently realised that my demotivation is mostly due to the kind of software I was working on for the companies I worked for. Usually building APIs to facilitate sales/marketing for products I don’t really care for. Or configuring some unnecessarily complicated ERP/CRM microsoft stack.

Instead, I would like to work on software that I use myself. Or at least on something that will useful for other people in the future, not just boost the sales of some company.

But I’m not sure where to look. It seems like jobs focusing on free/libre software are difficult to find (Or I don’t know how to look) and the few I find seem to be looking for senior profiles much more experienced than me.

Anybody have some tips or places I can start looking? Honesly I would prefer to just contribute to some project for free, but I don’t really have the option to do so at the moment.

Thanks!

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    21·
    6 months ago

    Best you can do is work for an opensource company. That might take a lot of research (unless there’s already a website for it). Otherwise you’d have to start a project and hope to get funding (e.g NLnet) from somebody. Unfortunately, there aren’t many options at the moment 🙁 Until citizens vote for governments that make opensource preferable or even mandatory, the situation is probably going to stay the same.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • NationProtonsOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      What I’m surprised with is that libre software is not more commonly utilised in goverments and libraries. For services that should provide open resources for all people, it would make much more sense to use similarly open software (and remove the overhead from paying for proprietary licenses)

      • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
        21·
        6 months ago

        They’d still need to pay for support of libre software. But I’m convinced the major reason there’s a lack of libre software in governments and libraries is that there is little to no marketing and no lobbying for it. It’s basically word of mouth. Politicians can’t make shady backroom deals with opensource vendors because those vendors are broke af.

        Also a lot of opensource software doesn’t have any support at all. It’s basically a side project for many people with no commercial offering. Especially governments aren’t going to sign on for something where the response to a support request is “PR welcome”.

        Finally, citizens aren’t conscious of opensource, much less of its benefits. Most people I talk to don’t know, nor care if it’s on a political party’s agenda. IMO, the biggest reason opensource is becoming more popular is digital sovereignty: not everybody wants to be a digital colony of the USA. Governments are realising the dangers of relying on USAian megacorps and the easiest way to get away from them is building upon what those megacorps did: opensource.

        If the opensource community also got its ass into gear to proselytize opensource to their governments, friends, and family, maybe the transition could be faster.

        Anti Commercial-AI license