> From: Wol > You only need a couple of users who aren't > free-loading, and the project is unlikely to die ...
I agree with Wol and Ian. Most people just free-load, abuse a generous author, and then abandon the project when the author gets burned out, while blaming the open source model for the failure. There is a concept that most people don't understand about FOSS: the "free and open" part of FOSS imply both an ability and a responsibility to contribute back to the source. Offer to pay FOSS authors something for their effort. Offer to pay some other developer to improve your free (liberty AND beer) and open source code, and then give your updates back to the author. Heck, just offer some documentation to the project website, or dedicate some time to helping other users, to free up the author's time to write code. One rarely sees software with multiple contributors rotting on the vine. More often it's a single burned out author who chooses time with his family over people who nag for changes and give nothing in return. Yeah, I know that sounds preachy, but someone needs to say it in response to this: >From David Jordan: > I need to know that it has ongoing support if I commit > a package on it, I have seen too many people get into > trouble when an open source application is no longer > supported. Organisations have not been able to apply > security patches because their free application cannot > support the security patch. C'mon, all of us here know that software is just text that can be changed by anyone with competent skills. People who "get into trouble" have obviously not looked at the code or hired someone competent to do so. There's no magic in there, nothing that only one person can figure out. Is the cost of switching to new software (from something 'that' important to you) really less than the cost of fixing something you got for free? T _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
