Re:Why do people bother with open source?
by ekidd on Saturday March 09, 2024 @12:42PM
(#39653334)
I bother with open source for a number of reasons:
1. I want to write a cool program, but I am painfully aware that it would make a lousy business. Why not toss it up on GitHub?
2. My employer wants to write a useful program that we need, but is too low-level to fit into our commercial offerings. And by itself, the program wouldn't help anyone compete with us. So rather than splitting our sales team's focus with a product that doesn't fit into our strategy, we publish it on GitHub with a short manual.
I've absolutely gotten jobs and consulting gigs from people interested in my projects. They function as a portfolio.
And it's not like releasing projects as open source imposes any particular burden on me. I am absolutely willing to close a feature request with a note that says, "This is an excellent idea! But realistically, I will not get the time to implement in the next 5 years." And then I can finish with either "I would review a clean PR with tests," or "Even if someone sent me a PR, I would be unlikely to merge it, because it would add maintenance overhead." Once you learn to say no, it gets easier. Or if the requestor is obviously making a lot of money using my software, I could offer consulting services.
(Also, for many types of open source programs, it helps not to ship Windows binaries. This reduces support costs.)
1. I want to write a cool program, but I am painfully aware that it would make a lousy business. Why not toss it up on GitHub?
2. My employer wants to write a useful program that we need, but is too low-level to fit into our commercial offerings. And by itself, the program wouldn't help anyone compete with us. So rather than splitting our sales team's focus with a product that doesn't fit into our strategy, we publish it on GitHub with a short manual.
I've absolutely gotten jobs and consulting gigs from people interested in my projects. They function as a portfolio.
And it's not like releasing projects as open source imposes any particular burden on me. I am absolutely willing to close a feature request with a note that says, "This is an excellent idea! But realistically, I will not get the time to implement in the next 5 years." And then I can finish with either "I would review a clean PR with tests," or "Even if someone sent me a PR, I would be unlikely to merge it, because it would add maintenance overhead." Once you learn to say no, it gets easier. Or if the requestor is obviously making a lot of money using my software, I could offer consulting services.
(Also, for many types of open source programs, it helps not to ship Windows binaries. This reduces support costs.)