Counter to what most people believe, I see development on Open Source apps and libraries slowing waaaay down in 2009.
- Most people are expecting a downturn uptick in open source development because there will be more unemployed engineers, but unemployed engineers need to pay rent, put food on the table, etc. so developing open source code will be a luxury like subscribing to premium cable channels. Instead, they'll be fully focused on finding work.
- Because being part of a team of people working on open source apps can help engineers get a job, expect people to 'join' projects for resume purposes but not really have the time (or desire) to participate.
- Desperate times call for desperate measures and when engineers are considering taking their substantial code base and making it open source, I believe they are less likely to do it during a bad economy simply because there are fewer ways to profit from that move.
- And, on a tangential note, I expect the biggest winners during 2009 will ultimately be the drug companies -- especially those that produce anti-anxiety pills.
I absolutely agree about the effect this will have on open source development. You're missing one big factor, though: Financial contributions. I know people like to pretend that money isn't important, but running open source projects gets expensive very fast when you try to bring people together for conferences / developer summits; and for large projects which are attacking complex problems (e.g., adding SMP support to an OS kernel) bringing people together in the same room is absolutely vital.
There was a big slowdown in the open source world in the years after the first dot com bubble burst; I have no doubt that there will be another slowdown in the 2009-2010 timeframe.
I'd actually expect open source to gain more contributors if there's a whole bunch of unemployed software developers.
If you're looking for work, you're still going to have a lot of free time.
On the other hand, perhaps we'll just see an increase in users at sites like reddit and News.YC instead.
The thing I find most impressive about these sites is how they have managed to harness the power of people's free time. With more unemployment, I'd expect these sites to see some growth.
So I'm going to predict that we'll see more of these kinds of sites which are designed to harness the power of people who are bored... that's basically what web 2.0 is all about right? ;-)
- Most people are expecting a downturn uptick in open source development because there will be more unemployed engineers, but unemployed engineers need to pay rent, put food on the table, etc. so developing open source code will be a luxury like subscribing to premium cable channels. Instead, they'll be fully focused on finding work.
- Because being part of a team of people working on open source apps can help engineers get a job, expect people to 'join' projects for resume purposes but not really have the time (or desire) to participate.
- Desperate times call for desperate measures and when engineers are considering taking their substantial code base and making it open source, I believe they are less likely to do it during a bad economy simply because there are fewer ways to profit from that move.
- And, on a tangential note, I expect the biggest winners during 2009 will ultimately be the drug companies -- especially those that produce anti-anxiety pills.
My two cents.