Anders Johansson wrote:
On Saturday 26 August 2006 20:00, suse@rio.vg wrote:
This guy wanted money. He saw what he did as work that he deserved compensation for. This is the wrong attitude if you ever want to code Free Software. You have to think of yourself more of an artist than a bricklayer.
Ah yes, and artists as we all know don't have to pay rent, and get all their food for free
Words simply fail me
Thought seems to, aswell. If you want to code free software, and you believe that you should be compensated monetarily for your code (bricklayer model), you're doing something wrong. Have you ever worked on free software? Why did you do so? Was it because you thought you should get paid for it? Or was it because you had a burning need to right the software? The writing of free software comes from within, just as that of an artist.
Free means "devoid of restrictions", not "at no cost" in the Free Software Foundation definition. When Richard Stallman did his emacs thing, he sold it. For money. Lots of money. Oh the horror, this greedy guy wanted MONEY
But what did this guy really do? He fixed a couple of bugs and through a tantrum when most people clicked the free download versus the paypal button. His code was also built upon the shoulders of others: the hundreds of programmers who wrote the linux kernel and xorg server. Both of which he has gotten to use for free. Free software is also COMMUNITY software. Each person adds a bit and the software is better for all. If everyone who fixed a bug in the linux kernel or xorg demanded $5 every time, where would we end up?
You're right, in that developers are often underappreciated. Demands for support should simply be filed under the delete key. It costs nothing to simply ignore them. "If you have a problem, fix it yourself" is a cornerstone of open source.
Not really, that is suicidally stupid, and reminiscent of the 1337 attitude that reigns among people who don't really know all that much but like to pretend they do. Cooperation is the corner stone, nothing else
Quite the opposite. Free software is all about empowering the user. It starts when the programmer has a problem current software doesn't solve. So he goes and solves it to his own satisfaction. Someone else finds that software only fixes half his problem, so he expands the program. And so on. The cornerstone of Free Software is to give the user the right to fix problems themselves. I've never even heard of a free software coder who wasn't willing to help others use his software. However, there is no OBLIGATION to do so. If the author has every right to ignore people asking him to do things, if he so chooses. I don't think Free Software coders should never be compensated, but I read this guy's rant, and honestly, I smell a rat. He specifically set up a situation and criteria so that it would fail and allow him to throw a tantrum. There were a number of other avenues available to him, but he chose to throw a tantrum instead, and that's never classy.