Independent Programmers' No-Win Scenario

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes about the no-win scenario facing today's independent programmers: 'In a knowledge economy, programmers rank among our most valuable workers, yet the current legal and regulatory climate makes a career as an independent software developer virtually a dead-end prospect.' Section 1706 of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the hurdles and costs of obtaining health care for one's own family, a hostile legal climate in search of accountability for any defects in code mdash; these harsh realities make it 'easy to see why software developers would give up on entrepreneurship. For many, the risks simply don't match the potential rewards. Better to keep their heads down, not rock the boat, and hope they can hang onto their jobs until retirement.' Great news for big software vendors, which will be 'ensured an endless supply of programmers desperate for the safe haven of a steady paycheck, predictable taxation, health benefits, and a shield from civil prosecution when their code turns up buggy. But where will the next Microsoft come from? A field that discourages self-reliance sends the message that the status quo is the highest goal.'"pa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/02/25/1949223/Independent-Programmers-No-Win-Scenario?from=rss"img src="http://developers.slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=10/02/25/1949223"/aa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.slashdot.org% 2Fstory%2F10%2F02%2F25%2F1949223%2FIndependent-Programmers-No-Win-Scenario" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Independent+Programmers'+No-Win+Scenario%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FcuGduM" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/02/25/1949223/Independent-Programmers-No-Win-Scenario?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./ppa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/YMLEtGSQB3j3Ezr8382FRLX8JpM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/YMLEtGSQB3j3Ezr8382FRLX8JpM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/YMLEtGSQB3j3Ezr8382FRLX8JpM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/YMLEtGSQB3j3Ezr8382FRLX8JpM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~4/8Z0TTzEI4pA" height="1" width="1"/

More...