2012/2/7 John Hunter <jdh2...@gmail.com>: > On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Benjamin Root <ben.r...@ou.edu> wrote: >> [...] > > [...] > >> About a week later, I got a personal email from the original poster >> informing me that my solution worked perfectly. He also noticed that I was >> working in a neighboring building on campus and wondered just how much >> longer my PhD was going to take and if I had any interest in going into the >> private sector. (The company happened to deal with atmospheric science and >> my PhD is in meteorology). > > I love that a tiny bit of altruism turned into a good job for you. > [...] > > [...]
John, I agree fully with you on the altruism, but I think there is more to Open Source than just altruism. I'm currenty trying to convice me to work on publishing my matplotlayers project, which is a mature but in some parts incomplete project to add layers on top of matplotlib, and connect layers with colorbars, all intended to make the data more dynamic and take the update process off the user. But that as a side note, it might be necessary to understand the procrastination character of this email. I just have trouble understanding *why the hell I should do that*. I think that's a rather general question of life. And the answer of OSS to this is, AISI: Good programming is like good art. It shows you, in the case of programming, that things just work, instead of having easy talk, instead of dwelling on the only shallow and only apparently deep "wisdom" that is too tempting – the ideas, the planning, all that things that are up in the air but never turn into truth. What I do like of matplotlib, is that it just happened, that it works, at least mostly, and that everyone with a basic understanding of Python can verify fully independently that it really works, is truth, and to what extent it works, and where it stops working. What I don't like about matplotlib, is that so many details are solved not thoroughly. But that's a matter of taste. And I guess, as talk is easy, that's the reason why I wrote matplotlayers, just to help overcoming that part. And this is what connects matplotlib and all OSS with art for me: Just do it. Show and experience the deepness of life when it comes to the kernel of it. There is more to it than altruism. Altruism is directed to other people, or, let's say, when we stress the altruistic character of OSS, we mean the mailing lists, where we help each other, if we can, where the conversation partner is in mind. As I said, what I mean, is that part of OSS that makes the code happen, the dark or not dark rooms with the keyboards or nowadays the laptops, where everyone dies on his own, where is no conversation partner at first, where we all stand on our own, where we have to overcome the procrastination. This is something much more personal, something much more "egoistic", or better, avoiding the word "ego", something much more selfless. To be a good OSS dev or try to become one one needs to train one's selflessness. Maybe that is the reason why the people doing it make it free of cost, just as a side effect of this selflessness, when I did it just for me anyway, it doesn't matter if I make it public in the end too; making people pay for it would spoil the whole feeling. Of course we are paid sometimes, but I see that as a side effect. First the work, then the payment. The work is to make yourself a name, to show you're capable and determined, and all this stuff which comes for free. I see this effect of success as the ingredient of fate to a good dev – fate rewards the selflessness, at least to my experience. It just pays better. People will be interested in investing in you if you show that you do it just for youself, that you are really interested in what you do, etc. pp. – people will tend to let you die alone if you make the appearance of doing it just for the money. Of course that depends a bit on socialisation; meaning on the people around you. But there's also an active component of socialisation; one has some influence on it, let it be with or without noticing it. I'd like to thank John and Ben for this inspiring posts, which showed them from a side I've never seen so far. Show your hands if you're thinking the same. I hope I didn't bore you all :-) Friedrich ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-users mailing list Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users
