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The majority of the world chooses not to work for free. My landlord certainly won't let me live rent-free. I can't go to a movie for free. So I'm not sure who a
by ericb 18y ago
The majority of the world chooses not to work for free. My landlord certainly won't let me live rent-free. I can't go to a movie for free. So I'm not sure who are the weird ones (or disparate) in this equation.
That said, I love, use and appreciate open source. It's just not the only answer, and many people working on open source are compensated by a sponsor (IBM, Sun, etc.). Is it fair to pick on someone for expecting to be paid for their work? World of Warcraft isn't much more than a time waster.
- voidfiles 18y agoI think you need to expand the definition of paid. These people aren't slogging away in a mine. They are writing code. Many of them enjoy it so much they like to do it for reasons other then money. Also, don't forget that if you contribute to an open source project you are recognized for doing so. You are apart of a community. That is worth something. Thinking of open source solely as work done for "free" isn't the right way to think about open source.
- tx 18y agoI am not picking on anybody, I don't code much for free either (should be apparent by looking at my profile). I am just wondering out loud how some guys afford to do that, while others (myself included) try to follow PG's advice of building something small and easy on top of mountains of free products created by others. In fact, if I were Zuckenberg, I'd give a fat chunk of Facebook stock to various free software projects such as PHP, etc. Moreover, I believe it should become a tradition, those guys are the reason why "startups are so cheap!" (quote) these days.
- aditya 18y agoThey did, with VA Software when all the free software hackers became temporarily rich. And we all know how that story ended :)