

You cheap, freeloading bastards (and how not to be one). - joshtronic
http://deanproxy.com/blog/posts/2012/03/10-you-cheap--freeloading-bastards--and-how-not-to-be-one--.html

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melling
1) Beta test.

For example, the Firefox and Chrome nightlies:

<http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

<http://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs>

A couple million hackers can help "upgrade" the Internet every day.

2) Ask/answer questions. You're making it a lot easier for the next guy.

How can I do X in Linux?

<http://superuser.com/>

<http://askubuntu.com/>

How can I do Y in Gimp?

How can I do Z in Inkscape?

<http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/>

------
zem
this is a well-meaning but badly misguided stance to take. open source is a
gift economy, and as one of the "producers" i am more than happy for people to
accept the gifts i'm freely putting out there. the reward is getting to feel
that i have made their lives better (and that too at no incremental cost to
myself). in my role as a consumer, i likewise know that there are people out
there happy that they have made _my_ life better. there is absolutely no need
to make people feel bad about taking from open source if they don't have the
time or inclination to give anything back - that just cheapens the idea of a
gift.

now would i _like_ people to contribute by way of code, money or bug reports?
definitely. but they should do so because that is a gift _they_ wish to give
to the ecosystem-at-large, not out of some sense of reciprocal obligations.

------
droob
There's really no implied reciprocity to open source, though. Humans like
giving gifts. It makes the work more enjoyable.

~~~
mathieud
Completely agree.

@Droob : Yes and no, for sure, if you look at the BSD license or the MIT or
whatever, there is not reciprocity implied, but if you look at the GPL, there
is. If you look at that piece (<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-
lgpl.en.html>) for example, it's pretty obvious there is a certain
"brotherhood" mind implied.

But I think that even if there were no reciprocity implied, giving is more or
less morally mandatory (for the bandwidth, hosting cost, etc) ...

