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Cristian Medina
Cristian Medina

Posted on • Originally published at tryexceptpass.org on

Open Source Contributions Are Part of My Professional Development

Should we have the right to contribute to open source?

“Boy did I spend a bunch of time organizing all my issues today” — he said while trying not to sound like a whiner — “You know… I found this neat tool yesterday that easily integrates with our repository management software. It adds project management capabilities that would save us time. Might be interesting to take a look?” — He ended his sentence with a question, something that he absolutely hates doing, a sticking point he’s had since spending a lot of time with a coworker that incessantly did that. He definitely did not want to sound insecure while talking to his manager.

The manager looks up, away from the computer screen in which he was diligently reassigning issues to their newly requested releases, and instead answers with the dreaded: “Is that tool freeware? Did you download it?”. The programmer, a lonely, isolated peon that was simply trying to make his own life easier, was definitely not expecting that response, and so he answered with the unfiltered truth (those of you that often communicate with management know what I’m talking about).

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