On May 23, 2009, at 5:05 PM, Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
In message <1243107160.13852.64.ca...@mung-papu>, Ari Torhamo
<[email protected]> writes
The first option is achieved by handling everything a non-programmer
can do: managing bugs, helping new users, writing the newsletter,
etc.
The second option is achieved in two ways: helping expand our
community (and hoping this way more programmers will join on a
long-term perspective), or hiring someone (with decent money) to let
him learn the code and implement the feature/fix the bug you want.
You don't quite seem to get Tim's point: everybody can't and doesn't
need to participate every project they find useful - especially when
they don't consume the resources of the project in question (more
than
marginally). Most people don't contribute equally to things in their
life - people specialize, which is good, because they have different
lives, situations, skills and talents. It's good to encourage
people and
make them aware of the ways to contribute - and then leave it to
them.
Unfortunately, Tim's point is at odds with the philosophy of free
software - which can be pretty succinctly stated as "he who writes
the software makes the rules".
Ummm. That's not the philosophy of free software.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
Indeed, projects governed by Anthony's description of the philosophy
tend to die quickly or get forked and the original developer loses
control over it.
And while I think that Graham is often more "bad cop" than
necessary (I've fallen foul of him too :-) he does have somewhat of
a valid point - if you're not prepared to put in any work then why
should other people put in work on your behalf?
Because if those things adversely affect my use of the application,
the odds are very good it adversely affects someone else's and maybe
lots of someone else's use of the software. Graham's idea (I am
interpolating here, he can correct me if I'm wrong) that "people
should be willing to put into the project is very valid." My point
was that the form of those contributions is going to vary with
people's abilities. For reasons already mentioned, I'm not going to
learn Scheme and I'm not going to contribute code. It is very myopic
to define "helping" as "writing code" (this is a widespread problem
in the FOSS community). On the other hand, I am a psychologist with
some knowledge of how people interact with information and those
skills might offer a way to contribute and I have tried to do that.
Also, my use (and others') of the software, feedback on its
usability, etc. is of utility.
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