Re: Support of open-source software by business

[ravi <gadfly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
>>I don't know how we switched from open source to outsourcing, but I find
>>the concern about outsourcing quite interesting.  For decades,
>>manufacturing workers suffered the brunt of outsourcing.    I saw little
>>interest in the media regarding the plight of these workers.  Now that
>>better educated, more skilled workers are vulnerable, the subject is
>>becoming popular.
>
> Is that true? There were plenty of stories about the Rust Belt in the
> early 1980s, and even in the early 1990s. But job loss was presented
> as a fact of nature, about which we could do nothing - except go to
> college and learn computers. But now the people who did the "right"
> thing are taking hits too.
>

what are the numbers on people who actually "went back to college" and
became a high-level software developer? my suspicion is that that number
is very small. i suspect that many of these "retrained" folks became
lower-level workers in the IT/telecom industry (operators and such, and
these jobs are probably more secure than s/w and h/w development jobs).

what is interesting (at least to me, because i am "in the space") is
that the high-paying privileged jobs in IT (the ones that ivy league
educated "liberal" white men filled) are being outsourced to india or
elsewhere, and some of the whining from these "liberals" sounds quite
inconsistent. that perception (of mine) might be correct and
uninteresting, yet insignificant. but perhaps not... being higher up in
the food chain, the influence [of those now affected] must be
exponentially larger than that of the blue collar workers. further,
would it be true that this segment is a swing voter group (that cannot
be swayed using some other means such as appeals to racism or nationalism)?

        --ravi