Digested

At one point in my life I had the privilege of choosing my career. Death march projects punctuated with periods of inactivity was no way to raise a family. So I went off in a different direction.

Free software development has proven to be different. We see people working on projects over long term, getting paid to do what they enjoy doing, in an environment where it is possible to have a life. The difficulty is to get into the position where you are paid.

That is what frustrates me about the poaching by Mark Shuttleworth. Are we so short of developers that we need to poach from another free software project? Is there not some fine talented developer somewhere, working away on a project, that would appreciate the opportunity to work for someone doing what he loves, and in the process benefitting Mark's project and all of us by extension? How about the radical idea of finding an individual with promise, hiring and training them to suit your purposes?

If you insist on poaching, why not increase the ranks by poaching from, say, Microsoft?