Survey: Techies reckon open sourcery has better prospects than familiarity with a single vendor's cloud wares
- Reference: 1612945509
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/10/foss_jobs/
- Source link:
Or so states IBM sponsored research from O'Reilly Media, which paints a picture of open-source technologies proliferating as cloud adoption continues (be it public or hybrid). Earlier research from the IBM Institute for Business Value noted that a typical enterprise tended to be fickle in its cloud vendor selection. An average of six hybrid clouds would feature in plans of the common organisation in the next three years.
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As such, hitching one's wagon to the likes of AWS or Azure might turn out to be unwise. Instead, it is the underlying open-source technology such as Linux (or darling of the hour Kubernetes) that is attracting most interest.
The survey collated the thoughts of approximately 3,440 respondents, of which 1,123 claimed to be software developers or engineers. It is quite a bit down on the annual Stack Overflow survey, which contained the responses of [2]65,000 last year , but it gives IBM's perspective on the strength of open source in the age of cloud technology.
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Pretty much all of the respondents used free and open-source software (FOSS) in their organisations. Some 94 per cent reckoned FOSS code was as good if not better than the proprietary option, and 70 per cent picked a cloud provider based on open source.
Linux, containers, and databases were rated as the most important to know, and employers also considered knowledge of open source an important factor. The spectre of vendor lock-in loomed large over the results as more than half of respondents reckoned that professional growth would be limited by sticking to a single cloud provider (17.5 per cent disagreed).
A similar percentage (54.9 per cent this time) said that the use of FOSS boosted credibility among peers, while a substantial number (38.9 per cent) had no strong feelings one way or the other. A T-shirt emblazoned with a penguin may therefore not always be the best way to make friends and influence people.
The open-source love-in is not universal. While the [4]UK government is very keen on the use of FOSS , a report from Acquia found that adoption lurched from nearly 100 per cent at the Department of Transport (although .NET Core played a major part, doubtless infuriating the "anything but Microsoft" brigade) to between 3.5 and 3.7 per cent for the Department of Work and Pensions.
The latter stated in a response to a Freedom of Information request by Acquia that many apps contained both open and closed-source components.
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As for the IBM-sponsored survey, it is more evidence that cloud technologies have their roots in open source, and so fixating on a single vendor or proprietary technology could end up being somewhat career limiting in the longer term. Findings that fit neatly with Big Blue's view that we live in a multi-cloud, hybrid world. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YCO8yn35p2oYMNLXFeGP7wAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YCO8yn35p2oYMNLXFeGP7wAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/be-open-and-use-open-source
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YCO8yn35p2oYMNLXFeGP7wAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
One thing people tend to forget about FOSS.
By it's very nature, FOSS will be around as close to forever as makes no nevermind. Corporate closed source software, on the other hand, is just as ephemeral as the company in question. IBM is doomed to die, eventually. So are Amazon, Goophabet, Apple and Microsoft. Shirley the proverbial Thinking Man should throw their lot in with the obvious long-term winners and eschew the obvious losers?
Before you poo-poo this, think about it. Where are Burroughs, Sperry, Allied Signal, Philco, Amdahl, Remington Rand, DEC and ROLM? We won't mention the likes of HP, the poor mewling thing, so senile it doesn't know it's dead. And that's just for a start.
Re: IBM is doomed to die, eventually
Agreed, but its intellectual property will be recovered by someone else, or maybe many someone elses.
So there may be hope for support in the long run.
single vendor cloud wares ...
... had to deal with $title, they were extensively documented, every minor version had its own page, every option named etc., but no story to tie them togeter, no clue about how to actually use in a real life scenario
got the paid help and got it working, turns out some concepts were called using two different terms, and some different concepts were called using the same term in different contexts
on top it off there was very little information about failures on the net, even on stackoverflow
opensource might not be perfect but at least I can read the source when I don't understand the docs
"94 per cent reckoned FOSS code was as good if not better than the proprietary option"
Seems obvious. FOSS code is public, therefor if you code like shit, you're going to have it up for the world to see and the world will tell you you code like shit.
Proprietary, on the hand, allows a bad coder to do his worst, secure in the knowledge that nobody will see his code so it doesn't matter.
Of course, there are very good coders that write proprietary software, but hiding the code means you can hide mistakes and bad practices - and with the amount of bugs due to buffer overflows that still happen, well let's just admit that there are more bad coders on the proprietary side.
Sounds desperate
No longer relevant company desperately clutching at straws to validate own view of world while laying off all experienced employees.