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On his site he claims "One way or another, I have a couple meg of code and documentation in the core toolset of every general-purpose Linux and BSD distribution
by fecak 13y ago
On his site he claims "One way or another, I have a couple meg of code and documentation in the core toolset of every general-purpose Linux and BSD distribution in existence." Assuming that is true, would your opinion about 'owing him a living' be different? I'm not suggesting that it should change your opinion, but it's an interesting concept (to me anyway) to consider if one's unpaid past work that benefits many others is a legacy worthy of some compensation.
- pedrocr 13y ago>One way or another, I have a couple meg of code and documentation in the core toolset of every general-purpose Linux and BSD distribution in existence Is this true though? Wikipedia only lists CML2 (the rejected new config system for the kernel). Grepping through Ubuntu's /usr/share/doc doesn't turn up much either (libpng, libgif and some minor stuff).
- fecak 13y agoI wasn't claiming it was or wasn't (those are ESR's words). My point was that if it were true, would the poster's opinion be different. I'd be curious as to how many people would actually pay past open source contributors due to some personal sense of obligation or perhaps respect. Some in this thread are asking 'what have you done for me lately?', but would that feeling change if someone had done substantial (and assume again unpaid) work that comprises the foundations of today's preferred toolset. Just an interesting concept to consider.
- kybernetikos 13y agoI pay people (not many of them yet, but I like gittip and hope to do more) who I want to be free to create something interesting in the future. I do not see it as recompense for their previous work but as a way for me to help them keep doing the things that make us all great.
- leoc 13y agoIIRC he was #2 Emacs committer at one point (though that was years ago).