Off Shoring

(Moved from OpenSourceEqualsSocialism)

There is some limited employment in the open-source market in service and support roles. However, with the Open Source dream of free and open applications also comes the realities of having to compete against emerging economies and radically cheaper labor costs for commodity developer services. U.S. programmers cannot sustain themselves on the labor rates offered by offshore development entities. The present clamoring of the U.S. Open Source community participants is both short-sighted and unrealistic when they fail to recognize the correlation between the erosion of intellectual property (market revenue opportunity protected by intellectual property ownership) and dollar-for-dollar labor service rates available to potential, end-user customers. After all, if I can download the sourcecode for free and pay to have the application customized to fit my exact needs, why should I hire a developer for $70 an hour in the U.S. when I can hire an offshore developer to do the exact work with probably a higher level of technical expertise for $10 an hour? Where will your service-based, revenue opportunity be in 5 years? In 10 years? Bombay, Beijing, and Ho Chi Minh - that's where. Seeing the economic fallout in the manufacturing sector from these very issues, why on earth would we want to repeat the mistakes in the information sector? After all, the justification for NAFTA was that the economy would be moving from a manufacturing-based one to an information-based one and that was good for Americans. Now we are sending the information-based opportunities away?

Unfounded. Not only is the ruckus concerning outsourcing jobs overseas (known as OffShoring?) over-exaggerated, the hysteria is unfounded. At the current rate, less than 4% percent of U.S. positions will be overseas by 2010. Not only that, doing so is being touted as being "good for the economy" and endorsed by the U.S.A.'s own president <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04041/271362.stm> and by its economic bigshots! Anyway, there is a very real backlash to offshoring that companies are now discovering: that of a loss of quality <http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/4711111.html>. For this reason, they are coming to the conclusion that offshoring, though offering short-term gains, results in long-term losses. For a low-down on offshoring, read this <http://www.cfr.org/background/trade_jobs.php>.

Anyway, Michael's argument is contrary to the investigable facts -- offshoring is being done by capitalist companies (like Intel <http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1081289419740&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851>) it has nothing to do with Open Source. And, why are there "offshore developers [...] with probably a higher level of technical expertise"? Maybe that's the problem. <http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62780,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3>

As for hiring offshore developers to work on native Open Source Software, that's crap. It is MUCH more likely that the companies will hire the developers who actually worked on the project and who are already familiar with it, than to hire a newbie whom they will have to train and acclimatize to the software. In the latter case, they end up losing money, market share, and the greater competitive-edge that they would've had if they had released sooner because they hired someone already knowledgeable with the software.

Incidentally, offshoring is capitalism at work - companies doing what they deem necessary to achieve greater profit. If you oppose socialism and offshoring but support capitalism, then there is a very real possibility that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Anyway, Open Source is a world-wide project, with proponents in U.S., E.U. (especially France & Germany), and China. It's already a world-wide market. -- CarlosNsRodrigues

Web Links

http://www.gonewiththeworld.com

http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/

http://www.techsunite.org/

There seems to be an argument buried in the rant at the top of this page that "if we all use Windows (or Solaris, or some other ClosedSource OS that costs lots of money), then the Indians and Chinese and whoever else will be out of the game due to inability to afford the licenses; it's OpenSource that enables offshoring". Which is a heap of BS.

Much work in Windows is done offshore. And think for a minute--if a company can save a five-figure amount by firing a local developer and hiring his replacement in India...surely they can spring for a Windows license? After all, they would have to pay for one anyway (assuming they wish to remain legal).

See: IsGlobalismThreateningTechCareers InternationalOutsourcing