Hello!
I'm a CS student, have been a FOSS lover for a long time and am a commie since recently (a year or two). I was thinking of my future career and as much as I'd love for there to just be an easy, free and open approach to using my skills, capitalism just makes it all impossible. I know thay capitalism will make it impossible for me to exercise my profession in a good way, but is there no alternative that fits in the middle anywhere?
There just seems to be for profit software if I want to actually get a decent wage and a decent life. How can I get a decent job with free software? The idea of it just inhibits it while on the capitalist mode of production.
TLDR: how can I be a FOSS dev while not caving to the interests of big techs and corporations to provide for myself (aka be a hypocrite)?
Thank you for your time reading, cheers from Brazil!
There's a lot of work to be had doing maintenance and training in FOSS software rather than developing. It's not as glamorous, but it's of equal if not greater importance, since those using FOSS often need it due to low budgets (and therefore can't always expect highly trained employees).
But the bad news is that your bio says you're Brazilian, and the FOSS scene has been really bad in Brazil since Temer. Government has cut a lot of investment in developing national open source software, and even critical government bodies like the Receita Federal (IRS-equivalent for english-speakers) are now back to being fully reliant on windows licenses.
I've even heard that national banks want to migrate their ATM systems and networks to Microsoft systems, and they use shitty software like Teams for """security reasons""".
We're in a bad state, but if you want to work on FOSS, you should try to think small. Social Assistance centres, small firms, maybe even research, that sort of thing.
But in the end, free software is free infrastructure, so don't be surprised when you see big techs funding what's supposed to be their antithesis if it marginally reduces their internal costs.
Thank you for your reply (and everyone else's replies as well)
I have the privilege of being able to get out of the country, I'm currently in the US visiting family and working for a small business, it's been about a month. A family member living here managed to get me in the company. It's been pretty meh so far, only done some webdev work (they didn't even put the site live) and IT assistance (installing PCs and such). They have their own management software that (I think) they're selling, which is not ideal but capitalism™. I don't yet have the know-how to make any contributions to it, unfortunately. I'm entering my second year in university and I'll come back to Brazil when it starts.
Even in Brazil, is entering the academic or research field hard? I can get a (sorry if not right name in English) doctorate, post doc, master's, etc since I can find jobs that pay enough to provide for myself while studying due to my qualifications and my parents helping me if I need to. Honestly I'd kill just to get a job at Pine64, System76 or the FSF.
Sorry if I'm too naïve or enthusiastic about all this, I'm still very new to the job market and stuff. (20yo also)
Getting into academia in Brazil is arguably way easier than in the USA or other Global North countries (for foreigners) because our public universities are free and the competition is not too tight. We have a national test for computer science master's programmes, kinda like ENEM. Here.
But academia is its own particular brand of hell no matter which country you're in, so if you're thinking about it first try and get through most of the course with good grades (for selection programmes) and consider doing a Master's before getting set on a doctorate programme.
If you do an undergraduate, a master's and a doctoral degree back to back, assuming nothing goes wrong, you'll be stuck in academia for at least 10 years of your life, and that's not an easy decision to make.
There are possibly also undergraduate research assistant positions in your college, so you could check those out to see if the research lifestyle is right for you.
Since you're young, if you focus your interests on areas that are commercially interesting for open source projects (like the aforementioned Pine, or low-level systems that corporations depend on but can't be bothered to develop), it's possible you could end up working in the area. But along the way you'll have to work on lots of non-free software jobs in order to survive, but also just to learn how to become a better professional.
This is just the way it is right now. It's not a moral failure to engage with capitalism while living under it.
BTW, I'd advise you not to post too much identifying information on internet forums. You never know what kind of person might find it, and once it's on the web it can be really hard to erase it.