Here's a cute resume blurb from some random schmoe whose weblog was recently quoted over at JoelOnSoftware.com: 
EXPERIENCE 

Nov02-now   ________________________________________________________________

          OSA Foundation, Software Engineer/Interface Designer.  storage

          

          summary: open source development, mainly on Python based apps.


The beauty here is that this "job" is basically just someone saying, "I'm working on open source software," which, when you combine all the job interviews he's had that he quite openly lists on his blog, translates to, "I'm working on open source software until I can land another job." The next logical extension is, "I'm pretending to help on this open source project until I'm gainfully employeed so as not to look like I'm wasting time. I may even intend to continue helping once I've been hired again."

Here's the neat/brilliant part -- others are helping. There's a board of directors, a Systems Architect, a Community and Partner Relations manager, all sorts of stuff. And even if they completely drop the ball on the only product "OSA" is making, they still gets to be the lords & ladies of a right grandiose open source project. The source is out there just waiting for someone to "pitch in".

At any rate, I'm impressed. It's like a face-saving [hopefully temporary, I'm sure] elephant dying ground. Get a few friends together, draw positions from a hat, and have everyone write up some text for someone to shove into html and publish online. Heck, some of these guys even have good bios. Good to get them on the team, at least on paper. Brilliant.

Perhaps I'm too cynical (of course I'm too cynical), but nobody -- and I mean nobody -- advertises features before they've written working code in the post-venture/madman capitalist era. Not even open sourced schmoes. Reminds me of that initiative a while back where some old schmoes that helped make Macintosh were going to create some brilliant UI for Linux, a relatively desktop-unfriendly system. They failed; Apple's OS X did not. But if you'd believed their hype, taken together with their resumes, you'd have really thought the opposite was going to happen. Also a little like that Transmeta Crusoe chip, which is actually doing fairly well, I think, all things considered, having found its way into a number of mainstream notebooks. But it hardly delivered on the hype, even with several really big names, and shows just how hard it is to go from concept to concrete. Actually it reminds me even more of how the government works, but in this government this plan is, sadly, a receipe for success.

Anyhow, if you're currently unemployeed, get together six or seven other people in the same boat (or who want to add something to the resume), create some vaporware (it's really easy), and slap together a decent-looking website. Poof. Instant job-limbo-which-does-not-quite-look-like-job-limbo-and-that-you-can-actually-put-on-your-resume.

And now, back to work on my trailware app that, when it has delusions of grandeur, thinks eventually (years out) it'll be awfully similar to the features of the OSA application. (Yes, there's some funnin' o' myself in this last paragraph here.) But honestly, if there's one thing I learned quickly it's that you can't, no matter how wonderful the people you attach to a project, make something great out of simple grand intentions, no matter how much money and time and talent you burn. Aim small and work your way up. Unless you were just in it for the resume to begin with. Brilliant.