[HN Gopher] How to talk to your boss about open source
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How to talk to your boss about open source
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-03-01 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (opensource.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (opensource.org)
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's what unions are for.
| aauser1234 wrote:
| How do you convince people to use open source vs cloud services?
| The problem is running open source yourself (on VM's etc) is more
| costly than just using AWS etc
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Best advice: find another boss.
|
| If your boss doesn't understand open source, he is probably not
| interested in tech, which means you're a cost center, which means
| he'd rather not have you at all.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted, that's the only real way of
| having that talk.
|
| Non-technical management is typically a red flag.
| lnsru wrote:
| Should be the boss interested in tech? He has you to be
| interested in tech. And the boss makes decisions and manages
| money.
|
| We make here in Big Corp jokes, that 2 layers of management
| above us has tech knowledge from reading Wikipedia. Meanwhile I
| go into project management and see how I loose the touch with
| tech. Every fart (sorry) becomes Company Confidential
| Information. And I don't want to be the one who allows leaking
| it in some open source activity.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > Should be the boss interested in tech? He has you to be
| interested in tech. And the boss makes decisions and manages
| money.
|
| A good leader doesn't make decisions most of the time. You
| can lead people who work on things you aren't interested in,
| but doing that means you need to give up control and let them
| make decisions.
|
| One of the biggest frustrations I've had to deal with in my
| career are working with upper level managers who aren't very
| tech savvy but insist on making technical decisions against
| the advice of the people whose job it is to provide technical
| leadership.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| Dev: "I want to use open source".
|
| Boss: "I'm not sure..."
|
| Dev: "It's free."
|
| Boss: "Sold."
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| IME some people get uncomfortable when receiving something for
| free, since they're used to there being a catch (e.g. "if
| you're not paying for the product, then YOU are the product",
| and TBF that can sometimes be the case if you're not cautious
| with the licensing). In fact, paying for a support or
| enterprise plan sometimes goes over better with management than
| the "free" path.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I recently had a potential employer tell me they didn't use
| open source software because they can afford the expensive
| stuff.
|
| It's really hard to argue with what amounts to vanity. I didn't
| take the job.
| trinovantes wrote:
| Also need to check with legal department
| NeutralForest wrote:
| Sadly, sometimes it's about liability and having someone to
| blame when something goes down/wrong.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But you can have that even with open source. Just look at Red
| Hat.
| NeutralForest wrote:
| True but depending on the business, it's not always
| possible.
| [deleted]
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| In my experience this rarely works at big companies. IT
| purchasing decision makers at large companies always have
| armies of proprietary vendors whispering open-source FUD in
| their ear, and price alone is not enough to counteract that.
| Sometimes "free" is even seen as a negative.
| gfiorav wrote:
| In my experience:
|
| - It makes us more hirable
|
| Nowadays every new engineer wants to contribute to open source.
| itsronenh wrote:
| That's been my experience too. In addition to attracting new
| engineers that want to contribute to open source, it's an
| opportunity to showcase your organization's (hopefully good)
| coding practices to candidates.
| hsnewman wrote:
| My experience is that when mentioning Open Source I get FUD
| pushback.
| tomerv wrote:
| Seems mostly focused on _using_ open source, rather than
| _contributing to_ open source, but the general concept can be
| applied to contributions as well: If you need to convince your
| supervisor to contribute code to open source, it 's best to find
| out how this is good for the business.
|
| For example, suppose your company uses some open source component
| Widget and did some internal work to enhance it. Now you want to
| contribute that work back to the community. What does the
| business gain from this? If someone changes Widget and your
| extension is internal, then it might break. But if your extension
| is part of the open source repo - along with integration tests -
| now anyone working on Widget will make sure that it still works
| with the extension. It's a bit cynical, but the end result is
| more open source contributions.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I'm both eternally thankful and also slightly broken for new
| projects that I spent some time working for GDS, who have the
| requirement that all code produced is open source, unless you've
| got a very good reason why it should be closed.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard/point-12-...
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