Open Source - Why Do We Do It?

mikosullivan presents us with a unique opportuinity: "This Saturday, Sep 8, I have an appointment to meet with Congressman Rick Boucher to discuss open-source software. I made the appointment after talking to the congressman at a town-meeting here in Blacksburg, VA. During our short talk he asked a question that (not being a particularly talented public speaker) I found difficult to answer: why do open source software developers devote their time and talents to something they give away? That's the question I'd particularly like to answer: why do we do it? Answering this question may be the key to resolving public FUD about open source. This meeting is part of the opensourcelobby.org efforts."

Comments

Sir Edmund Hillary

[bricriu]

"Because it's there." Or, the geek version of it, perhaps, "Because we can."

Which is obviously no different from the views of commercial developers. The turning point isn't why such energy is put into it, it's why you give it away. And that should be self evident: in an increasingly, hideously commercialized society, developers are forced every day to work with things that don't work right, cost exorbitant amounts of money, and make you forego many of what should otherwise be your usage rights at the behest of whoever's selling said thing. Why give it away? To counterbalance the lunacy of current sales policy. Why put so much effort in? No-one likes working with junk.

Why do I do it?

[t_hunger]

Why do I spend time developing free software? That's difficult to answer... For a bunch of reasons:

• I want to learn something. Not just programming in general, but how complex systems for textprocessing, graphics rendering, multimedia streaming, ... work. I found that actually doing one is the only way to understand what's going on inside those systems! IMHO participating in one free software project should be mandatory for any student of computer science.
  
• I use Linux, mozilla, xchat, blackbox, ... exclusivly, no commercial software at all! That software is just great for me, I'm so happy that I don't have to bother with licensing and pricing everytime a new version of a program I like comes out!
  
  That's why I feel obliqued to return something to the community that provides the software I use. Others do webdesign, translations of documentation, organization of shows, writting new software, whatever. I'm rather good (I think) at writting software, so that's what I do.
  
• I like the people: Most tend to be open to new ideas sharing their own and using those contributed by users. Almost everyone I meet so far was very friendly and willing to teach and/or learn. They tend to know what kind of work is involved with a big project and tend to respect those contributing their time and energie into one .
  
• I like the ideas of free software. I believe its a good thing. Yes, that's rather idealistic, but that's how I am,
  

Regards,
Tobias

Salman Rushdie explains...

[swm]

NPR had Salman Rushdie on The Connection today. A caller asked why some of his novels were, or were not, set in India. After circling around the question a bit, Rushdie said

In the end, you write the book that grabs
you by the throat and demands to be written.

That's more or less how I feel about writing open source software.

Why I Write Code for Free

[CoreDump]

I'm one of the authors ( well, I contribute code and answer questions on the users mailing list ) for FreeRADIUS.

I do it because the equivalent commercial products suck. They are overpriced ( to the tunes of thousands of dollars ) and not as feature rich. Working for an ISP providing dialup services, having a functional Radius server that is scalable, reliable, and most of all, easily modified is paramount to the success of our business.

So, I get paid by my employer to write code that ends up under the GPL in the server. The entire world gets a killer server for a great price. And my employer gets the benefit of a larger array of "virtual programmers" who are constantly reviewing and improving the code. It's a shared development cost more than anything else.

Plus, I like writing code, and I've gotten to interact with people from all over the world as they use the server.

My 2 cents anyway. Others have probably said it better than I, but this is why *I* write code and give it away. :)