Hi Tim,

Read your blog entry about the growing politicization and radicalization of the open source community. Very thought provoking. In reading it, I thought of a question I'd like to ask you. What would you, as an open source activist (if you accept that title) recommend to college students and recent grads who are interested in technology activism? Are there any groups, periodicals, or Web sites you would point us to? What about careers? As a person skilled in programming, I know it's possible to make a good living writing software. But what about activism? Do you think one could support oneself working as this kind of activist, or is it best left to people who don't rely on their day jobs for survival?

Thanks much. Keep the outstanding articles and books coming.

There are a couple of good organizations working to preserve our rights in cyberspace, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) being the first that comes to mind. Others include creativecommons.org and digitalconsumer.org. I'm sure that EFF can point you to others. Eric Raymond and Doc Searls have a new organization called GeekPAC, and the Free Software Foundation has a more limited, though related mission.

Based on my knowledge of EFF from my years as a board member, no one is getting rich working on these issues. Many of the people involved are volunteers, and the paid staff members work at below-market rates because they care so much about the issues.

However, I will say this: whatever your job, these issues matter a lot, and so you should make time for them--if only in the form of spreading the word about an issue through blogs or mailing list postings, or writing letters to your congressional representatives, but also by donating money to organizations that are working on these issues full time.

Standing up for your rights can be good for your career. Obviously, at some companies, speaking out of turn is frowned on. But a lot of individual developers have gained in reputation by standing up to be counted.

Tim

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