[Gllug] UKFSN

[salsaman at xs4all.nl]

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 salsaman at xs4all.nl wrote:
>
>> Yeah great, yet another scheme that only pays money to students. Just
>> like Google. I guess it's a good thing, but what about the FOSS
>> programmers who aren't lucky enough to be students, and are struggling
>> to feed and house themselves ?
>
> The amount involved will just about give a student a reasonable amount of
> money to cover the basic cost of living. Others are very unlikely to be
> able to get by on that small an amount.

The article mentions some 7,000 euros going to one guy. Personally, I
could live reasonably well for six months on that amount of money.


>
> Also students have an excuse not to have a job. :)

Except that many students have part time jobs working bars and so on.
Yeah, if you are not a student, you can get a job - except that then you
have no/little time to work on a Free Software project. In fact, the only
way I have been able to work on my own projects was by saving money myself
and then living off that. Well, that money has now run out, so I guess
it's the end of my project.

Also in my own case, when I have tried to apply for jobs, I got one of two
responses, either:

a) you have been out of work for too long, your skills are out of date
b) we don't think you will stay here very long, since you obviously prefer
working on a Free Software project (which is probably true)

so working on a FOSS project has actually harmed my employability.

>
> I know exactly what it's like to work on Free Software projects of one
> type or another to the exclusion of being able to work for others. I am
> not unsymathetic to the issue however UKFSN only has a limited amount of
> money for this. If it is to be used to pay people a decent wage otherwise
> I think I should be 1st in the queue.
>
> Jason


Well, anyway, good luck with the project !

Regards,
Gabriel.
http://lives.sourceforge.net


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