On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 05:27:04PM -0400, Greg Estabrooks wrote: > > This is exactly what a lot of users don't get. NO ONE CARES if you or I use > it. It is NOT a PRODUCT. It is a collection of code put together by people > with > a common interest. AKA, a HOBBY. Just because they make it available for > those would wish to use it, and just because a lot of people do find it useful > does not change what it is. This is not a monetarily motivated project, > there is no company, no financial backing, no paid QA tearmM, and there is > no large push to increase the userbase. I realize a lot of users have
This is not a universal philosophy among developers. There are all sorts of motivations for participation in open source developing. Some people are just coding for their own use but happy to release to others to play with. Some people are doing it because they want their code to be used and appreciated -- without the users, they don't feel fulfilled. Some want thanks and glory and groupies(*). Some want donations. Some hope to make a living off it some day (and many have.) Some are true philanthropists, who simply enjoy doing good for the world. In addition, in a larger project, you will commonly get multiple developers, all of whom may have different motivations and philosophies. This project will definitely have this issue as it grows, because PVRs are cool, and that attracts all sorts of different philosophies. As you all know, many large open source projects get internal wars, sometimes even leading to forking. Sometimes over technical differences, even more often over philosophical ones and even personality conflicts. (*)Yes, this happens. In fact, Bram Cohen told me last week he put his kid into the photo on the bittorrent home page to clarify his non-availability to the groupies, though to confuse people, he also linked it to hotornot.
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