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> Why do you publish your work in the first place? To get donations? That's not what open source was invented for. I don't know about everyone else, but if I p

> Why do you publish your work in the first place? To get donations? That's not what open source was invented for. I don't know about everyone else, but if I publish something as open-source it's because it's something I made and needed in the first place. Open-sourcing it is just a way to enable other people who have an itch to scratch to be able to do so. More often than not, such scratches comes back benefiting me as the original author. I don't get this fixation on everything having to be profitable, but then again I don't work on any FOSS projects full time. I only do it to scratch an itch, to make the software work for me. And when it works... I go do the actual work I'm paid to work on, using the software I've helped make better.

stevekemp 6y ago
I feel the same way. In the early nineties a corporation got in touch with me, they said they were working on a Java IDE and could they ship some of my source as "example projects". I thought about it for about six seconds and said "Yes please!" I think they even mailed me a CD-ROM at some later point. At the time I was thinking "Yay! I'm famous! My code is good!". Over the years I've seen some of my code, not much of course, end up in other big projects and I'm a little proud, and a little pleased. The fact that the company got the money and not me? Doesn't bother me in the slightest. I write code for me, and if I get bug reports that prove other people used it then I'll try to improve things. Money just isn't a consideration, although I have linked an Amazon wishlist in a few places over the years, and received unexpected books/films which make me smile.