slashfucker's Journal: You Are All Being Open-Sourced

From: Profit, Dirk - Director of Information Systems
To: Development Staff
CC: Finance
Subject:Our New Open Source Initiative

Dear Development Team Members:

As you well know, we have had some departmental budgetary challenges in the past year, which have led to cutbacks in such items as Monday donuts, Starbucks-brand coffee in the cafeteria, and pizza parties to celebrate meeting project milestones. Fortunately, we are still able to provide the free Mountain Dew fountain drink machine, and a half hour of Laser Tag on Fridays.

Unfortunately, the economic slump continues, and our budget for next year is even more challenging. As a result of decreased revenues, it will be hard to even meet our current payroll.

Fortunately, I have a brilliant solution to this problem. As you know, we recently installed Interweb Security Content Filtering for websites accessed through our internet connection. While perusing the Interweb access reports, I came to find that a significant portion of our department reads the website "SlashDot.Org".

Following the links, I found that our department members were also participating in discussions on the website. Through copious reading I was introduced to the concept of "Open Source Software", which is apparently a philosophy which some of our team members agree with. In posts under the pseudonym "Anonymous Coward", it seems that employees of this company felt free to enunciate their frustration with being forced to use Microsoft's operation system and suite of development tools, and also espoused that they would be far more productive if they were allowed to use "free software" tools such as "EMACS" and "Python".

After doing a "self-360", I realize that my own employees have given me the solution to our budget dilemmas, and I thank you for it. So I am pleased to finally announce: You are all being Open-Sourced.

In the interest of immediately reaping savings from our conversion to the "Free Software" mentality, I've cancelled the order of new desktop PCs which were to replace the current depreciated models. In the spirit of Open Source, the team can bring in memory and other parts from home to upgrade their existing PCs as needed; "Case Mods" will be permitted with signed team-leader approval.

Also effective immediately, the salary basis for the department will be reduced to a "living wage". Since we're now in "the Bazaar" (not "the Cathedral!") developers can cooperate to meet their needs. As a suggestion, any employees who have difficulty making housing payments could consider living together in a "commune" of sorts, which should further increase teamwork and camaradarie. This should also go over well with your spouses, (for those that have them) as they can share food-preparation and child-rearing duties in the "free software commune", which should be a benefit to all.

Needless to say, we will also be cancelling the terms of our Microsoft "Select" licensing agreement, and will no longer be using Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect to build and package our product. I am assuming that, with the help of open source tools, the team will be able to migrate our product's source tree from C# to the "GCC" compiler within 4 weeks to meet our milestones and shipping date.

Also, I would like to make sure that everyone is aware that the Company's Intellectual Property is our greatest asset, and that no source code developed on company time should be contributed or otherwise released to outside projects. We have invested in increased network monitoring tools to alert senior management immediately if source code "packets" are detected leaving the company LAN, and the terms of the Non-Disclosure agreement signed by all employees will be enforced to their full extent.

Please join me in looking forward to a great future for our company, as we begin to reap the benefits of our new strategic "Free Software" focus!

With Warmest Regards,
Dirk Profit
Director of Information Systems