"Vanity is the driving force behind OSS, as is greed behind
closed-source
software. Try to use someone's OSS code without attributing original
authorship, and you will see how quickly your quaint "community"
devolves
into harsh campaigns of public remonstration towards the violator. It is
of primary importance that original authorship always be identified.
My opinion is slightly different than Danny and Noel's, and somewhat ironic since the 3 of us are aged members of the James community (that just removed the author tag).
To quote Gorden Gecko, "Greed is good." Altruism is a tenuous motivator (just about every non-profit I donate to/work with is hard-up because altruistic donations since the recession started).
Not to pick on Noel, but he is driven to get James to be the mail server the ASF uses, working tirelessly to improve features and scalability. If he was solely motivated by altruism, he might get tired and realize the current mail system already handles Apache's needs.
We work and get paid for that, and that's one of a very constant motivator. "Greed", "vanity", and "fame" are very pajoritive terms for what is a good, healthy instinct of self-preservation. Obviously you want a job that you LOVE doing, and I think that's a factor of OSS in that we have more freedom.
"This is _not_ the hallmark of a communal environment; it is indicative
of
an environment in which everything is okay as long as people get credit
for what they have contributed to a project. In other words, people in
this community are not driven by altruism over greed, but by fame over
obscurity. "
And it beg's some interesting questions. Though there is a nucleus of thruth - how does this mesh with groups like Apache, where we like to think that the longer term goal, and the code base surviving individual coders, are paramount.
IMHO, Apache has some of the best rules for a community of wildly passionate self-interested individuals. :) For my money, Apache projects (and ASF-style licensing) are more successful over the long-haul (than GPL-style licensing) because Apache accepts and incorporates the economic system that most software development exists within, rather than trying to dislodge it.
-- Serge Knystautas President Lokitech >> software . strategy . design >> http://www.lokitech.com p. 301.656.5501 e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
