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Technology news and Jobs 
The Linux distillery Open Source programmers earn more and combat trade deficit
The Linux distillery Open Source programmers earn more and combat trade deficit | Open Source programmers earn more and combat trade deficit |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 14 April 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Firstly, the survey data shows open source companies are actually very structured and sizeable – not to mention viable – organisations. Over $500 million in revenue is raised by open source companies.This survey finding has two stated ramifications. The first is that open source provides an opportunity to government for a national export. The deficit between IT imports and exports in Australia is sizeable, which makes sense given the amount of hardware and software which flows in from overseas. Yet, fostering open source development gives an opportunity to provide commercial exports back with a low or zero cost outlay. In fact, 45% of the respondents service international markets. Additionally, the survey finding becomes an effective response to the argument that open source solutions are unreliable because they have little to no vendor support. In fact, this argument was the chief concern expressed by government agencies in a previous survey. Hence, the Waugh’s conclude, the capability for local support is present but hard work is required to quash this oft-repeated but faulty perception. The next survey finding shows the median age of the open source community is 30, which is lower than the median age of the population. 42% are between 25 and 34. 7.3% were women (and the majority were web developers) which was surprisingly low. The Waughs – with a 1:1 male:female ratio in their organisation – suggest this figure has been lower and is only increasing since the commencement of the annual Linux.conf.au conference and its Linuxchix mini-conference. Whereas the relative youth of the open source community is not surprising, the very low percentage of females involved is both surprising and disappointing. 65% of survey respondents are members of a user group or other open source group, although this is not altogether surprising given that those not engaging with the open source community would have had far less exposure to the existence of the survey itself, let alone the opportunity to submit. Moving on, the survey found while 54% of respondents were University graduates, 67% believed their open source skills were learned outside formal education. Despite this, people’s exposure to open source mostly coincided with their time at University. Enough of this; let’s get onto the result everyone wants to know: how much will it pay? Please read on. CONTINUED |
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