"Charles Angelich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [...] > As the primary contributor (referred to as a 'maintainer') of CoBBS for > the Radio Shack Color Computer I've been there, done that.
A good point: "Contributing" doesn't always mean "programming". I put up my little free Cisco lab pod as my own contribution to others in part because of the debt I feel I owe to the contributions others have made to me over the years. And of course, I've learned lots in doing it. > >I think Stephen's BasicLinux is a good example of this. The lone codesmith > >can keep things running just fine. > > I would say that his determination to keep Eznet in the distribution even > though more than one person reported difficulties with it also proves that > it doesn't always work. Well, it works HIS way... he's the 'smith for that particular distribution after all! But anyone else can use the same codebase to tweak things to be their way as well. One thing I have seen a few times is a "dead" project being revived later by a volunteer, usually with the blessings of the original developer. A refreshing change from the experience of being abandoned by commercial houses when a product line is dropped, or fails commercially. With Open Source, the motivators are different than in the commercial world, and I like the fact that a "neat" project can continue without appealing to the masses. There's a bit of Darwin as well, where projects that product software that works succeed, where those that don't quietly fade away -- without any sort of media blitz and glossy magazine ads telling us that it just ain't so. Hell, someone's probably dreaming up something using vi as the user interface, just because they can! - Bob To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
