Things Every Programmer Should Know - Edited Contributions
programmer.97things.oreilly.com
programmer.97things.oreilly.com
Head explodes
"Fulfill Your Ambitions with Open Source" is just such terrible advice that it's hard to even articulate why. If you're stuck writing meaningless accounting code for some giant company, the last thing that will distinguish you would be to write some meaningless device driver code for a giant open source project.
How about, instead, you register a domain name and build an interesting product to put there in your spare time. Charge people to use it, make money, make a name for yourself, possibly even get yourself out of the Actuarial Tedium Developer role permanently.
Fulfill your Ambitions by Fulfilling your Ambitions. Not by giving away your time on somebody else's thing.
Oh FUD. Don't write the bloody device driver. The whole point the article was making was that you can choose what you contribute and to what you contribute with open source. If you'd rather write something else, write something else. If you're trying to make a name for yourself write something that will get noticed. It's certainly a lot more amenable to some people's preferences than your 'spare time start up' idea.
If you're looking to do something noticeable, do something noticeable. Open source has nothing to do with the issue. I mean sure, you could conceivably do something noticeable in an open source project, but then you could also conceivably do something noticeable working at your cube farm.
Startups are by definition noticeable, otherwise they go away immediately.