JBoss Founder Hard-Nosed About Open Source

Infonaut writes "In this Business Week interview, JBoss founder Marc Fleury refers to "hobbyist" Open Source contributors and makes the case that "no one is going to work for free." Fleury dismisses people who contribute for something other than money as "Hari Krishnas" and makes reference to the "hippie dream". Fleury's sharp, profit-focused approach has brought him success, but isn't it in some sense built on the shoulders of the hippies and hobbyists he seems to scorn?"

Comments

Not as bad as story summary makes it sound

[Doug Merritt]

The story summary pissed me off, but the actual article is nowhere near so bad. A key quote:

This guy in the front row says "You've got to stop banging on people whose motivation is something other than money." There's always a Hari Krishna in the audience: "It's illegal to make money at this. We're all garage bands, and you sold your soul to the devil for a handful of dollars." So I go, "Have you contributed anything?" and usually they say no and I stop it there.

Turns out the guy is the founder of a pretty significant chunk of Linux, so Point A goes out the door. So I say, "You are what I call amateur open-source or hobbyist open source, which is you have a job and then you do this because that's your passion." And then somebody in the audience yells "You mean amateur open source as opposed to asshole open source?"

So there's always that. It's normal. There are always a bunch of amateurs because they've never made money at it, and it kind of pisses them off that there was a way to do it.

He's not making a blanket statement about open source developers being Hari Krishnas, he's talking about hecklers in his audience.