Open Source Developers are Rock Stars | Hacker News Reader

Open Source Developers are Rock Stars

kbedell.com

28 pointswslh29 comments

The thing is, being a rockstar is a mostly about sleeping on buses, not washing, and using drugs to dull the loss of identity caused by never being in the same city for more than 6 hours.

What people want is to be successful and adored. That's all anyone ever talks about in these 'programmer as rockstar' articles. As much of a sense of martyrdom startup people cultivate about their work habits, none of it is as physically difficult or as psychologically degrading as actually being an truly internationally famous rock musician.

There's a reason why they all act so damn crazy after a certain point in their careers.

If you want to be celebrated and rewarded way out of proportion to your contribution to society, just say so, dont make some false analogy to a completely unrelated profession.

very appropriate username to make such a comment i must say

Unfortunately this username betrays nothing more than a love of puns. My musical talent extends only as far as the playback of other peoples records in an artfully considered sequence.

I might go as far as to take part of one persons record and combine it with someone elses without asking, but thats as original as it gets.

I agree with most of your comment, but I think there are a few inaccuracies worth pointing out.

> The thing is, being a rockstar is ... [about] using drugs to dull the loss of identity caused by never being in the same city for more than 6 hours.

I am not entirely sure that's the root cause for rock stars' drug use. It's certainly part of it, but in large part it's intimately tied to the socialization context that surrounds the entire rock scene.

When a fan is going to a show, it's a special event. A large population of those fans use drugs in an effort to enhance their enjoyment. They also want to share that enjoyment with the band, and they are quite willing to share their supply with the band. In other words, the rock band basically has a free, unlimited supply of drugs and a social expectaton to take advantage of that.

> There's a reason why they all act so damn crazy after a certain point in their careers.

I'm sure you didn't mean that literally, but there are several rock stars who don't end up crazy. Led Zeppelin, Brian May (a PhD!), BB King, Buddy Guy, Ben Folds, Nickelback, Darius Rucker (Hootie), I could go on forever... The reality is that it's a small subset of rock stars that go crazy, and I would argue that the proportion is actually lower than for the average population of somewhat-heavy drug users.

To be honest the whole comment was pretty flippant and ill-considered, I was just trying to combat the idea that the life of a 'rockstar' is really worth idealising outside of the material rewards, which aren't even that great.

Rockstars get paid just enough so that they'll be too busy spending it to realise that they're getting stiffed.

In the words of Chris Rock: "Shaq is rich. The white guy who signs his cheque, is wealthy ... If Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah's money, he'd jump out a fucking window." - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m37JkkGjAY

>there are several rock stars who don't end up crazy

I'd be willing to bet though that the eventual craziness of rockstars is fairly closely related to what proportion of their career was spent on a hardcore, label-mandated touring schedule.

This reminded me of a very interesting interview with Russell Brand I saw recently, in which he discusses the error in seeking celebrity for the sake of celebrity as this ends without any real fulfillment. Instead, he advocates working in a particular field for the love of the craft (in his case comedy, although I don't see why this doesn't apply to any art that has cults of personality, e.g. programming).

Even though I am not a fan of his comedy, his eloquence and thoughtfulness on the subject surprised me.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qdNBrzAQjo&feature=playe... Originally found on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/gvr1o/charlie_sheen_...

Unless your job gets you laid as much as a rockstar, chances are you are not a rockstar. Successful entrepreneurs may be a little closer to the definition of a rockstar.

I tried to search the first mentions of developers as rockstars. Indeed the "Developers are the new Rockstars" (beyond Open Source) is a motivation statement.

And unless you get paid 1000x's more than the average person in your field, you aren't a rock star.

Developers will be rock stars only when people compare rock stars to developers rather than the other way around.

There's a typo in the title. Should be: "Open Source Developers Wish They Were Rock Stars"

I'm going to be a cynic here and say that the author's real thrust seems to be to reconcile his childhood dreams of being a rock star with his current station in life. The definition of rock star precludes the vast majority from ever attaining it, and most of us have to "give up the dream" at some point.

A rock star is a public figure that a sizable portion of the general population respects, envies, appreciates, and to some degree emulates.

I agree with many commenters here that the almost no tech-related workers are rock stars. Steve Jobs (and even he is debatable), Bill Gates, and now Mark Zuckerberg are the only legitimate tech rock stars. If you claim anyone else, you're just kidding yourself.

Everyone wants to be adored and respected -- it's what makes us care about "meaningless" karma points. It's great to find from time to time that a total stranger appreciates you. That does not mean you're a rock star. You can come to grips with that, delude yourself, or actually become a true rock star. Changing the definition of rock star is not an option.

More "mildly popular local pub musicians ... without groupies"

Stephen Tyler != Linus Torvalds

Maybe it should be called "stage technicians". Working hard in the background so others can become stars.

They're called "roadies"

I like the analogy - it works to a degree.

I'd say more like it covers the whole spectrum from solo musicians to garage bands that suck, to good garage bands, to "rockstars".

Sure, those working on super high profile projects can be like rock starts to the software community, not becuase they get lots of chicks, but they attain a following, but because their work is out there for everyone to see and use, learn from, and appreciate. Other aspiring programmers can say "Wow! I want to do that someday."

Those with real talent (including the ability to execute!) can rise to the top, even if just for a while. Solo people can create game-changing technology (eg: Bram Cohen / BitTorrent protocol)

But just like rock bands - you can also sit in your garage making decent music forever, having fun, but never becoming famous. That doesn't make you a rock star, but it still gives you practice, experience, and confidence.

Not answering the main thesis of the article, but I found this interesting:

I've made some googlefight-s. Turns out that Linus Torvalds has more google results than most of the absolute top pop/rockstars, (much more google results than John Lennon) Other famous open source developers are pretty 'weak' compared to famous musicians though, so Linus is an absolute outlier.

Ordered by 'num. of google-results popularity':

Britney Spears: 5730000 results

Michael Jackson: 5650000 results

Linus Torvalds: 3640000 results

James Hetfield: 1850000 results

Elton John: 1740000 results

John Lennon: 1560000 results

Jim Morrison: 698000 results

Jimmy Hendrix: 469000 results

Richard Stallman: 149000 results

John Resig: 43400 results

Turns out that Linus Torvalds has more google results than most of the absolute top pop/rockstars, (much more google results than John Lennon)

Though to be fair, John Lennon wasn't very active on mailing lists, and didn't even have a blog.

My thoughts exactly. And Linus's name was not misspelled like Jimi Hendrix's name was.

I get a lot more when I Google for most of those. I'm using their names in quotes. For example:

    158 million, Britney Spears
    162 million, Michael Jackson
     33 million, Elton John
     30 million, John Lennon

      2.7 million, Linus Torvalds
      1.8 million, Richard Stallman
      0.3 million, John Resig

Non-eye-burning: https://www.readability.com/articles/9likw7md

After reading the article maybe it should be titled "Open source developers are like local musicians but maybe can make a bit more money".

In general I don't believe that open source developers are rocks stars but the people who use open source. Pretty much all well known web companies use open source but don't open source their flagship products. E.g. Google. Facebook, 37 Signals

Now I'm confused, I thought they were ninjas. Or Pirates. One of those, I'm sure

They're ninja-rockstars. That's why they stay out of the limelight ;-)

Open Source Developers diminish importance of pay by giving things away; society as a whole suffers a bit as a result...

By contrast, rock stars are paid handsomely.

Open source developers create free systems and building blocks for people to build business and other applications on top of. They lower the barrier of entry for new, money making ideas to come into the light and get a shot, rather than having the high barriers to entry that used to exist. They also force continual innovation on the commercial software front - most things widely popular and commercial software will end up with reasonable, or often better, open source counterparts in some amount of time. (This applies more to underlying building blocks than finished products - there isn't a great market for an open-source alternative to Visio or Office - yes, we have dia and openoffice and a few others, but Office is still king. The main reason is, these aren't really building blocks that lead to more things - they are just continual maintenance nightmares for their vendors. A browser, on the other hand, like firefox, was a HUGE undertaking, and was sub-standard for a long time, then it surpassed everyone, raised the bar, and caused everyone else out there to start amping up their browser strategy. If anyone falls behind in innovating and optimizing the browser as a useful, open platform, firefox will take up the slack.

At the risk of feeding a troll, are you seriously saying that society is suffering because developers give stuff away? If so, you really need to take another look at the world get your priorities adjusted.

And no one has ever played music for free.

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