"Jason Bassford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
Fk4J6.79342$[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:Fk4J6.79342$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >In any case, I think, you have a misconception about open-source. It is
> >driven by actual work. I find it only fair that you pay for a certain
> >feature you want, given that many people worked long time to give you
> >most of the code for free. (If somebody implements also your favorite
> >feature for free, all the better for you.)
>
> Of course it's driven by actual work. The source of the
> disagreement comes from the GOAL of the work that is done. Since you
> are running a business, your goal is to make money. That's fine, you
> have every right to do so. However, I DON'T think that that's the
> goal of *everybody* who invests their time and energy into open source
> projects. Just like at David Harris' Pegasus Mail. While he would
> like to make money off of his project, he does it more for the love of
> the project itself than for any other end goal. He enjoys creating
> his application for the sake of the application itself.
>
> When I think of open source I think of the David Harris model -
> I'll admit that I'm biased. I'd rather think of having children
> because of the love that they will bring me in taking care of them and
> raising them, than I ever would because of the chance that they'll
> somebody grow up to be good business people and give me some money
> back. (Perhaps it is unfair to equate business with personal life -
> but, then again, perhaps it isn't. Many programmers would think of
> themselves as taking part in the art of creation, rather than the
> business of economy.)
Yeah, but something has to pay the bills. Some people have
other jobs and hack Mozilla as a hobby. Others are paid to work
on it, and that money has to come from somewhere.
WRT having children: it used to be (way back in the day) that
survival in old age was an important reason for having children
--the idea being that when you were old and infirm, your children
would be the ones taking care of you, so their success was
important for self-serving reasons as well as parental love. Now
we've got nursing homes and Social Security, so this isn't really
as important anymore. But there's no equivalent to nursing homes
and Social Security for programmers working on open source
projects (as nice as that would be ;)
