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I suspect this is because all the young developers who have the free time and inclination to release their efforts as open source are writing Ruby rather than .

by mryall 16y ago

I suspect this is because all the young developers who have the free time and inclination to release their efforts as open source are writing Ruby rather than .NET and Java these days. In a few years, they'll have mortgages and families too and will try to start charging for their work. The wheel goes round. > this mentality seems like it really does a lot to stifle hobbyist exploration of the platform ... It definitely does seem to stifle innovation on these platforms. Although if you need to use a bunch of commercial widgets in order to try out an idea, you're probably doing it wrong.

cheald 16y ago
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's necessarily accurate. There are lots of people with marriages and families making good money in more open communities. I honestly don't believe the line that ".NET is a professional's community, Ruby et all are just for hobbyists". .NET has been relegated to a professional community because of the buy-in for everything, but it really doesn't have to be that way to make a living writing code. Speaking as a 27 year-old-married-with-two-kids Rubyist, it's entirely possible to make a living charging for your work and still give away useful tools and libraries. I keep a GitHub account and publish code there, usually under MIT or BSD licenses, and while I don't publish everything I write, I have benefited so much from the open source that others have written that I contribute back to the community where I can, and somehow manage to get the bills paid at the end of the month.