[markrendle]

Look, the people you are "pitying" are the people you depend on: we make your operating systems, your languages, your frameworks, your tools; we invent the things you use; we create your social networks; we abstract away the things you find too hard; we built the very internet you're using to mock us. Do not fuck with us, for without us, you would be a clerk in a dusty room writing out invoices with a pen.

[SarahJane]

Why are you assuming "501 developers" don't do any of the things you list? I think the point is that you can have balance in your life and be a good & passionate coder.

[Xylakant]

Because they say so in the manifesto. They feel pity and respect for people that build an open source project. Without Open Source: No MacOS in it's current form, no php (facebook), no ruby (twitter), no linux (google), no apache (large parts of the web). Granted, there are paid OS-developers nowadays, but most is still for fun and passion and not paid for.

[eli_gottlieb]

Which is precisely why open-source programmers have to be 501'ers. If we stayed late every night at our paid jobs, how would we ever do our unpaid jobs?

[markrendle]

You can have balance in your life and be a good coder. I think balance and passion are mutually exclusive, though,

[SarahJane]

I don't think balance and passion are mutually exclusive. That would be conflating passion and obsession.

[eli_gottlieb]

Look, the people you are "pitying" are the people you depend on: we make your operating systems, your languages, your frameworks, your tools; we invent the things you use; we create your social networks; we abstract away the things you find too hard; we built the very internet you're using to mock us.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The opposite, in fact, is true.

For every programmer working overtime at his paid job as a Ruby on Rails rock-star producing an advertisement-backed web application, there need to be several more clocking out of their paid jobs at 5:01PM to go home and write open-source operating systems, languages, frameworks, and tools without being paid.

Because most of the time, the essential infrastructure all the paid businesses rely is created by unpaid volunteers working off the clock (or at least it started that way!), or even better: researchers.

[moocow01]

This is encouraging developers to leave their jobs at 5 and possibly use their time to build open source, creative projects. I highly doubt people pounding away long hours at their jobs writing commercial software are the ones also contributing to these clerk-to-programmer tools.