Corporations trying to protect intellectual property can be just as mindless as zealots like RMS and followers.
How about AT&T trying to protect the code for the true(1) utility?
It's easy for each side of the debate to criticise the other.
Maybe what really matters is whether people can access and use good software. (Thus RMS's seemingly radical position might actually be useful to society.)
Google would be nowhere without having access to free code. They built a company on open source. And they still haven't replaced it all with stuff written in-house. The most they do is make modifications. What does that tell you? For one, it's cost-effective.
Where would any of us be without free code? We all use it, to some extent. It has helped us make progress. That includes business progress.
There is very little "brilliance" at play. Just code. And much of it sloppy, and inefficient. code, written in easy to learn high level languages. But people are so easy fooled.
You have an asset that most of your "competition" lacks. You have knowedge of so-called "real world" problems. The ones that face the O&G industry.
Lua is an example of a nice bit of programming that came from working with the O&G industry. It's small and efficient for what it is. It will continue to grow as computers get smaller.
I think having exposure to the pragmatism of the O&G industry may be a real advantage for you.
There's money to be made through laziness and hype, the Ruby, Python, Javascript people have proven it. You can sell games. You can serve online video. You can run a photo sharing operation. And so forth.
But what the world really needs are good, pragmatic programmers tackling real world problems. Lots of computing power is being wasted on junk.
Then when asked about his future, he says he plans to work for one!
WTF?!