CeBIT 2010: Career Benefits of Open Source
Dr. Dirk Riehle is the first official open source college professor in Germany. At the Open Source Forum at CeBIT, the former businessman described the new career model.
Professor Dirk Riehle in his Open Source Forum talk at CeBIT covered the specifics of programmer careers in the open source arena.
"It's hard for me not to look at the economic context of open source," said the newly installed open source professor almost apologetically at the beginning of his Open Source: a New Developer Career talk at CeBIT. The difference between the classic developer and his new counterpart writing software for an organization is the quintessential "to earn versus to be recognized."
Riehle suggested that developers in the open source world for the most part have to prove "peer certification" apart from the obligatory technical and social skills. This is reflected, for example, in the project community's acceptance and implicit acknowledgment of upstream contributions. Open source developers can further build their reputations partly through contributions to source code and also by documenting their efforts on mailing lists. This transparency also has an advantage: the developer has a much higher likelihood of finding effective collaborators.
Riehle was named Professor of Open Source at the Computer Science Institute of the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremburg, Germany in 2009. In the 10 years prior to his academic calling he was in banking IT and worked among other things in the SAP realm.
Related content
-
CeBIT Open Source 2010: All Talks in Free Live Stream
Tuesday is kick-off for CeBIT, the world's foremost tradeshow for the digital industry in Hannover, Germany, and with it high-class talks in the CeBIT Open Source forum. All talks will be visible on a live-stream in the internet.
-
CeBIT Open Source 2010: First Forum Videos Online
Much in demand, now online -- the presentation streams from Tuesday and Wednesday of the Open Source Forum at CeBIT Open Source 2010.
-
CeBIT Open Source 2010 in Pictures
From March 2-6 CeBIT Open Source 2010 called open source projects, enterprises, and organizations to Hannover, Germany. Here's our photo gallery from the talks in the Open Source forum, the project lounge, and the Linux New Media awards.
-
Video: A short walk around CeBIT Open Source 2010
At CeBIT 2010 Open Source was one of the main issues, prominently placed in hall 2. This video of Linux Magazine Online shows an extract of it.
-
LinuxTag 2010 Program Set
The 16th LinuxTag runs June 9-12, 2010 at the Berlin Exhibition Grounds. The conference organizers released details.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.