

Why do Open Source? - edw519
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=229570

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mark-t
For me, it's mostly avoiding the hassle of commercializing something. If I'm
never going to try to sell it, I might as well give away the source. Also,
there's not really much choice when a lot of what you do is in perl or ruby or
... -- just about anything but c/c++.

How I got started is another story. I switched to linux because windows drove
me crazy. Then Gnome and KDE drove me crazy. Then xfce drove me crazy. It
became apparent that I had very specific needs, and nothing available was
going to fill them. So, I chose something close to what I wanted (fluxbox) and
started fixing things. Thus, I guess you could say I started because I'm
picky.

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mcormier
The author makes a blanket assumption that because you release something as
open source, you will get feedback from other developers. From experience this
will not happen unless the project reaches critical mass. Even then, the ratio
of people that help to the people to use the software is always huge.

Some of his arguments for releasing open source are very weak, excused
documentation and liberation from delivery schedules especially.

The authors main open source example is Pantheios which is a library. There is
no market for libraries. Using an open source library to enable consulting
gigs is a common business strategy.

This posting is fairly weak.

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mosburger
To learn something new that I wouldn't otherwise get a chance to learn. And to
scratch an itch.

I wanted to learn Python. And I wanted a clock and a weather applet in the
Avant Window Navigator (a dock for Linux). The opportunity was too good to
pass up... I wrote them myself.

