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Boredom Drives Open-Source Developers?
Henry McClyde writes "Chris Anderson of The Long Tail posted an article yesterday in which he claims that "spare cycles" — or boredom and the tons of people who wish they had something better to do — is what drives Web 2.0.... and the open source development community. While Web 2.0 in general is driven by "the long tail," NeoSmart seems to have taken up issue with Anderson's claims that open source developers (and other freeware programmers in general) do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on. Same with Wikipedia contributors, and bloggers in general."
Spare cycles power Slashdot...
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Witty sig
I mean of course hobbyist programmers have nothing better to spend their time on, but that's because making something is satisfying and we like doing it :)
maybe it is not about being bored but more about not wanting to do that crappy assignment your boss wants you to do? Maybe creating a better disk partition method for detecting NTSF, sizing correctly, and loading GRUB efficiently feels better to do than that cover sheet for the TPS report?
People want to feel useful at work. Certainly the greatest percentage doesn't do it for the money so what about doing something useful with your time than being a cog in someone else's soulless business machine?
so, if you do what you like, then you are bored, and don't have nothing better to do, that makes sense
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
I was about to start an open source project, mostly to educate myself as my current IT jobs is custom one-time software only. Well, to make it short, I recently got a girlfriend. No more OSS coding for me.
Wow! Who'd've thunk?! People do things because they think it's more interesting than not doing them! People go to the beach because they are bored. People have sex because they are bored. People have families because they are bored. People read books because they are bored. Wow! This is like the most amazing explanation of everything I've ever heard!
325 webcam drivers anyone? I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 523 webcam drivers?
This guy's the limit!
on a particularly slow week at work i wrote an incremental backup utility in C. it doesnt do anything special; it was mostly because i wanted to re-learn C. i'm planing on releasing it under a BSD license, but that probably wont happen until i get another slow week.
I edit Wikipedia, "tinker" with programs and graphics, and blog all as a means for relaxation from whatever work I should be doing (homework, in my case). Gaming tends to take long periods of time... and that's a prime formula for guilt trips about laziness ;)
/. and posting here.
It's the same with READING Web 2.0 content... And why I'm reading
Slashdot is playing the gamt at an entirely different order of magnitude.
/. should leed us to find a cure for cancer.
A couple of spare cycle is what you need to build Linux.
On the same scale, the amount of time wasted on
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You know... I was bored and decided to read this article then got an idea... Instead of wasting my life read /., what I should be doing is writing code....
k er'|\ /g'|\
wget -qO - http://www.infiltrated.net/slashdot|\
ruby -lne 'puts STDIN.readlines.reverse!.slice(0,2).reverse!;#suc
perl -p -e 's/[0-9]//g;s/X/
ruby -pe '$_ = $_.chomp + " " + gets if $. % 2'
Infiltrated dot Net
This is by definition true for any activity we undertake. If there was something more profitable, enjoyable, pressing, useful to do, we (as rational thinkers) would be doing it.
Honestly, I would've thought the majority of people who don't get compensated to write open source software sacrifice all their time and energy into its development like me! What would you need a job for? What is this ... this ... "sustenance", you call it? I need not any of that. Nor any material objects. I have transcended that.
Except for the occasional bottle of Bawlz. Man, that shit is good.
So what's wrong with that? What's wrong with converting one's boredom or downtime into a product that benefits people?
I haven't read the article, so I don't know if this is supposed to be a slam against open-source contributors or not, but I think it's safe to say that people who choose to do this with their free time are certainly being more productive than those who just sit and play Evercrack for hours on end.
If these people were charging for their product, you'd call their motivation "entrepreneurial spirit", but since they're giving it away, you slight them by saying that they contribute only because they're bored?
The title talks about Open Source, while the summary talks about Web 2.0. Mutually exclusive I would have thought?
As a software developer, I have learned that without little side projects to distract you from the mind numbing development process developed by managers, that we would all go completely crazy.
... just to prove that I COULD!
Management-driven software development is what drives developers to extend their free time and more importantly their imagination and talent to open-source projects and freeware.
I was amazed at what I accomplished on one slow month. I made a Java version of that old Gorilla's game written in QBasic...
I don't know if it's boredom, that's probably part of it. Sometimes you see a need in an area and are feeling generous, sometimes you need something done and the tools aren't available, or free. And probably sometimes, we're just bored and are looking for something to do. I think most contributors are either trying to fill a gap in their set of applications, or just simply want to contribute to OSS.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It also involves wanting to help others out, or make something better for themselves.
Some similar things outside of computers:
1) (this is a bit in excess of what OSS typically has in terms of altruism) - I have friends who do Habitat For Humanity on Saturdays. One could say this is out of boredom, but it is also (and one case) more believably out of desire to help others.
2) I know a lot of people who do their own home maintenance and "upgrades". This is not only less financially burdensom, but they typically get things done somewhat faster and better than a contractor would.
All these mindsets mindsets (altruism, desire to have direct control of the quality, and greed) can also cause a person to develop OSS, with or without the presence of a "I have time and don't know what to do with it" state.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
There are alot of excellent open source project that have very good commercial potential. I remember alot of small startup gaming companies developed free mod for half life not because they were bored but they see it as a way to develop a customer base and as a mean to develop a commercial product.
but i do constantly develop outside of work. Work projects are absolutely BORING, doing things on my own engages my brain, allows me to learn new things, and allows me to create things i like.
I could read books, but I enjoy the architecting a solution to a problem more
Often boredom leads to half finsihed blog entries, projects and p
Actually, I develop stuff for myself out of... "I wonder if I can automate this so I won't have to do it again..." Typical lazy sysadmin stuff. Most of the times I end up creating my own little program of sorts and at times I usually post stupid/handy little scripts. Does it qualify for open source, perhaps. Maybe that's why I'm always bored, I've been automating my work for too long
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I'm one of them.
-jl
I totally agree. I have personally, in several occasions, taken a break from my job as a programmer by coding something else. Maybe in a different language, something totally unrelated to my day to day projects and usually something that I would release as open source. In a way, it helped me maintain my sanity while I did something I love to do. However, nowadays I rather go out for a run and enjoy real sun light.
[alk]
[People contributing to open source] do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on
In a lot of cases, people are contributing to something really meaningful and valuable, and to imply that they have nothing better to do is flat out condescending. If one CAN make the Linux kernel (or whichever project) better, there are very few things to be involved in that would go to benefit the public.
The implication that people contributing their valuable time to something like open source is only out of boredom and lack of alternatives is absurd and insulting. That may indeed be the reason why some people contribute, to be sure, but to imply that it is of no value to them, or the world, is utterly lunatic. (On the same continuum and with the same absurdity, the opposing exaggeration is that people contributing to open source are doing it for the betterment of mankind, as against the unrelenting corporate machine.)
I'm fairly certain that the truth lies in the middle, and that for an individual contributing to open source is a valuable way to spend your time because it gives you experience, exposes you to new ideas and people and challenges. As a bonus to the world, these contributions generally improve the publicly accessible wealth of knowledge, ideas and software functionality.
Any implication that these people are doing something of no value to them or the world is disgusting.
Here's where I'm coming from:
The folks who write that stuff publish it on line. And within the F/OSS community, at least, their names are recognized. They're moved up the programmer hierarchy of "greatness", if you will. I mean just see what happens when a F/OSS developer posts on this site, it's an immediate +5 Insightful or Interesting. And it's a way of proving how "smart" they are. It's a way of getting attention.
There's also this badge of entitlement or gratefulness that I can't get a handle on. If you criticize a F/OSS release, folks immediately come down on you like you just called Mother Teressa a whore.
And then there's their attitude. I recently un-installed a F/OSS application and part of the un0-install process was a web page that comes up to give them feedback. I did because it was the least I could do. I clicked the "I didn't like it." check box because that one fit the best. I commented that the program worked great, didn't crash, and everything, but, it just didn't fit my needs - there was nothing wrong with it.
A message popped up saying something like, "Didn't like it! You try to write an application like this!!"
Geeze! Get a grip! You think I called their Mother a whore or something!
I do it because I want to see a Socialist world. By developing collaborately and productively for free, and by showing the world that that way of organizing the labor is wastly superior to the current Capitalist order, I believe the world will move closer to Socialism. So in a way, you are all part of this great Socialist scheme started by RMS whether you know it or not. :) I'm in the minority, but only similar to how most Capitalists didn't understand how their actions would bring about the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Free Software is the best verification of Marx' Historical Materialism there has ever been.
Football Odds
Open Source contribution is about the most rewarding thing you can do, so of course dead time in between seems boring, what else is new?
Most professsional programmers, most of the time, are immersed in an environment where writing a piece of truly excellent software is simply not allowed. Writing Free and Open Source Software is one of the only avenues available to scratch this itch, if you have it.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
In your high school or college sociology class you might have learned that societies are created on the surplus food that a group of humans can create. In other words you don't get tributes to Zeus until there is a surplus of food lying around that the peasants won't mind parting with. The arts, religion, politics, and kingdoms all come from the ready supply of extra food.
The fewer people that are required to produce crops to feed the maximum amount of people frees those people for the pursuit of things like religion, philosophy, politics, literature, technology, or whatever other discipline doesn't lead to the direct creation of crops and cattle.
So basically, yes, Open Source is driven on free clock cycles that don't have to be dedicated to survival. This is even true for the company that commissions open source projects for its own use. If the company wasn't creating enough profit to allow for investment in future growth or any risky investment behavior then it wouldn't have the spare cycles to devote to the investment. And, software is risky it only pays off half the time.
You don't invest in the stock market with your lunch money. You might invest your retirement account in stocks, but not the cash you need to stay alive in the next few days. If the need is too vital it precludes any risk behavior.
If you want more open source, then create an environment where more people can take the risk of creating open source projects and even potentially waste their time on them. Consider that most projects fail. Most projects do not become popular. There must be enough surplus developer time to support those risks so that the one lucky project that changes everything has the chance to get created and have a few people waste their time on it before it becomes a product.
[signature]
maybe it is not about being bored but more about not wanting to do that crappy assignment your boss wants you to do?
<br><br>
Well, in order to stop me giving in and getting a TV I wrote a book. Now that's finished my next project is a risk management toolset. In my case it's not so much boredom, it's the fear of distracting myself in non-productive ways when I could be doing something interesting.
Beep beep.
If i'm bored for a long stretch of time I might start a new project, but I _WILL NEVER FINISH IT_ unless i'm fully committed to the project, and forget about supporting it for years. The people that work on many projects as founders or major code contributors do it because they have a passion for it. Many that work on high-profile projects get their job contracts specifically modified to allow for funded development while they retain the rights to their code.
Not too far from these people are the contributors who submit bug fixes and new features and support. They don't work on this every day but they created a little something they needed and end up sending it back to the source (no pun intended) for the community to enjoy. They probably do it originally out of necessity and send the change back out of generocity and a sense of community.
Some of the most fun i have is when i work on my private projects.
:)
Does a painter paint because he's bored?
I think not!
Being creative is giving me a feeling nothing else can, and I
think this is true for people since way back when man painted
on the walls of their caves.
Saying it's boredom cheapens it.
Previous generations had hobbies that let technologists use their skills in ways that gave them pleasure. For example, electrical engineers would tinker with Ham Radio sets, and build gadgets. Because at the time there was no internet, these hobbies tended to be personal and private, although there were some magazines that would allow submissions (and sharing of information).
Modern technologists are far less limited. They have the global internet and the open-source movement, plus a huge infrastructure for sharing information (like Sourceforge and Slashdot) available. It's like a hobbyist renaissance, or maybe the hobbyist version of the Enlightenment.
Who can resist participating? It's marvellous. Your average nerd (myself included) was picked on throughout his childhood, and surrounded by people who didn't share his interests. Now, suddenly, there's a whole world of people who would just LOVE to help you debug your networked application.
It's Nerdvana.
Saying it all derives from boredom is equivalent to saying you don't share our interests, and don't "get" them. It's not cool. We're not bored, we're INSPIRED.
And it's WAY more fun than what we have to do all day at work.
NO CARRIER
echo "slash dot"
Infiltrated dot Net
By a huge one.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Still sounds like boredom to me: boring job. Note that while the job might be boring it can be still useful.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Well, for anyone that has a kind of hobby, or something that they enjoy doing in their free time - isn't that what it is, 'something to do, because you don't have anything else to do (that they want to....)', and I don't mean this in a bad way.
Some people choose to spend their free time say. Watching TV, playing video games, playing cards, knitting, gardening, building tiny ships inside of bottles, listening to music, going to the gym, going for a hike - all things that *some* people may enjoy doing, so when they have free time and 'nothing else to do', its what they spend their time on.
Is it so bad that open source developers chose to spend their time on something they enjoy doing, are passionate about, and helps out thousands of others in the process?
I'd say an Open Source developer that is contributing to a widely used project is making far better use of their 'spare cycles and boredom', than the fat lump watching American Idol re-runs.
Totally read that headline wrong. I was wondering what the hell a boredom drive was and why they would open source their developers and not the drivers. Damnit, now my brain hurts.
After calming me down with some orange slices and some fetal spooning, E.T. revealed to me his singular purpose.
This past year I was very bored.. spent a ton of time working on a PHP framework (http://www.phpneoform.com/php.neoform.v1.164.zip if anyone wants to try it out) that i used for my various sites like http://www.newsique.com/
now that it's nice outside and i feel less bored, I haven't been working on it at much..
MABASPLOOM!
If I don't get to code I get bored. What's the news?
So suddenly all this good will people who invested their time in giving us all a better computer experience just became some bored folks who didn't have anything better to do? :-/
...is another guy's passion.
Look, this is a stupid argument, akin to saying that they're doing it "even though they're not getting paid for it." Of course open source developers do it to relieve boredom - if I have available time, and I get bored, know what I do? Something that makes me happy.
The author could have said that open source developers do it because of the joy it brings them, and it would have been functionally equivalent.
Personally, with a wife and four kids, a 50+ hour-per-week job and lots of hobbies, boredom is not a problem for me. I do contribute to open source projects when I can find the time, but it's definitely something that I have to make time for, because "spare cycles" just don't happen. Mostly, my OSS development time is between 11pm and 2am, when I would (should!) be sleeping.
Like virtually any other characterization you choose to make about open source developers and open source development, this one is partly true and partly false. Lots of people really want to pigeonhole OSS developers, to fit them neatly into their existing worldviews, but it doesn't work because there is simply too much diversity. To say that there are as many motivations for OSS development as there are OSS developers is really only a small exaggeration. Some people undoubtedly do it out of boredom, some do it as a way to avoid other work, some do it to build a "resume", some do it because they love it, some get paid to do it, some do it for the admiration of their peers, some do it because it's the only way they can get software they like (this is me, mostly, along with the "love it" and, when I'm honest, a little bit of peer admiration)... I'm sure there are plenty of other motivations out there, and I'm sure every OSS developer does it for some blend of reasons.
If you insist on finding a dominant motive, one that is perhaps more common and leads to more code than any other, I'd nominate "for the love of it". People who don't understand just how much fun writing code can be tend to discount that reason, and for them boredom may perhaps seem a more plausible alternative, given that they have experienced boredom and been led to do useless things to fill their time, but have never experience the rush that comes from creating a finely-crafted and elegant piece of code. IMO, though, "because I can't find a better way to fill my time" is a very weak and unlikely motivation. There are always Star Trek reruns.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Next step is to develop artificial intelligence so the computer will do it all for you.
Then you will have truly mastered the art of the sysadmin.
Deleted
Speaking as a shareware/freeware developer who has been featured in many magazines, newspapers, & books in this field (above & beyond website articles or ratings of softwares) since 1997-1998 up to around 2004?
v ermakesgooglehappy.html ))?
.dll, .ocx, and .vcl addons).
(2004 is around/about when I stopped doing freewares/sharewares, due to lack of energy and time to do so anymore as well as need to do so (in that that apps I have done are finished, per user tests/critiques long ago, & they work "perfectly" (purely relative term imo) all the way from Windows 9.x - VISTA currently as of this writing, & this is the prime example thereof: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/389/foowhate
Shareware/Freeware helped me to understand more than just what I do for a job/livelyhood in this field (which is MIS/IS/IT database coding mostly), primarily, as to bettering myself in this field of endeavor.
Shareware/Freeware construction basically truly helped me to improve my skillset as a coder, no questions asked: Practice HELPS make you perfect!
(Perfect? Ah, there is no such thing especially considering "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", especially in software development, without user critique & feedback that is - nobody can 'spot it all' as to useability issues or bugs, w/ out help imo & experience - you cannot please everyone however, this IS "the rub").
Doing shareware/freeware has also aided my resume to some extent (because some of my wares went into commercial products for Microsoft partners) and also got my name around this field as well, in written publication (as well as on websites).
Personally? I never considered doing shareware/freeware a "waste of my time"!
To myself, it amounted to time spent improving myself on more fronts coding (other than databasing work) & doing so aided in my understanding of how Operating Systems work as well as improving myself on how to use, for instance, the Win32 API & also custom 3rd party controls (mostly
It has paid off (literally AND figureatively) in many ways.
Idle hands are the "devil's workshop", but I personally would not call software development of ANY kind, idle hands. If anything, it is far better than blogging or writing articles only for example, because it improves you and is basically on-the-job-training of a sort you are doing independently.
This is what I gained by this, personally, in the doing of freeware/shareware over time the past decade or more (as of this writing of this post).
Additionally: How many products over time have come from the "freeware/shareware" area, which I consider the "farm teams" semi-pro leagues of software development? Quite a few:
Example: Norton GHOST's origins? Freeware/Shareware, iirc.
There are far more, but that is a "classic case-in-point/example"...
APK
P.S.=> And, as far as larger projects (other than shareware/freeware utilities such as I have done)? Look @ LINUX: The damn thing's pretty awesome (though I am truly a Win32 person mostly), especially considering it was created at the expense of MANY contributor's personal time - Linux is a construct based on freely given time mostly, and it is a socio-cultural/technological phenomenon that proves people CAN & WILL do great things, for free, voluntarily on occasion (without being paid), that is impressive in & of itself... apk
open source developers (and other freeware programmers in general) do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on
You could say that about any pastime, from climbing mountains in Tibet, through to watching TV. We do it because we'd be bored if we didn't.
For further insight into the very, very obvious, check Miss Anne Elk's new theory about the brontosaurus.
"In other words you don't get tributes to Zeus until there is a surplus of food lying around that the peasants won't mind parting with. "
In other words: Fat people are working towards an atheist society.
*grabs another snack*
Many FOSS types are functioning, simply, as moral and self-interested folks. They appreciate the huge leverage that's been gifted them, and feel both an appreciation and a debt. Both of these encourage contribution.
Appreciation of the code handed down to us encourages respect for the givers, and a desire to garner some of that appreciation for ones' self. The debt demands payback, or in this case, pay forward.
That's all you need for the 'moral' part. The 'self-interested' folks have taken it a level further, and understand they have future wins, not just present, if they nurture the value-donating culture.
"(...) Anderson's claims that open source developers (and other freeware programmers in general) do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on. Same with Wikipedia contributors, and bloggers in general"
You mean, like every other hobby? You do it because otherwise you wouldn't have anything to do with your free time and would, therefore, be bored.
The author descibes a well known phenomenon. It's called creativity. His article is nothing else than bashing people for using their creativity. And he is bored, otherwise he would not have written that article.
cb
It probably starts off with inquisitiveness or need (in my case it was because of an academic related project).
:p
Then it takes some getting used to, during which you learn a lot of things which you previously read in textbooks but never really understood.
Then in Rasmus's words it's Oxytocin!
Indeed, trying to avoid boredom drives open source development, just like it drives flying to the moon, writing a great symphony, or doing anything else worthwhile. (The other motivations for doing something are being forced to do it, or doing it because one needs the money.)
Boredom is what got me started. My mindless job was driving me crazy, but then I realized it was up to me to change it and started working on stuff that I thought was important. At first, I thought the chances of success were 0, but now I'm seeing buyin and I'm engaged. Not always, but it is much better. One of the biggest benefits has been the participation in an open source project. It is cliche but I can't believe how helpful the people are and how important that community is to me. Something I used to get from work, early in my career but don't now. I say participating quite deliberately, because I am mostly just benefiting from the expertise and productivity of others, but it makes me want to be a 'good citizen' and help the community in whatever limited way I can. It is a debt that I am proud to owe.
Doing something because you're bored and have nothing better to do... sound like the definition of a hobby to me. If I have nothing to do for several days in a row, I'll consider starting a project. If that project lasts for several days in a row, I'll consider doing it on an ongoing basis; and thus, a hobby is born.
If what this guy means to say is that "Several people weren't spending their free time driving race cars, collecting model trains, teaching pole dancing classes or saving the world, so they decided to dedicate that time to writing code." Then, yeah, he's pretty much correct.
There are other reasons too, but hobbyist developers are definitely a large portion of of the FOSS contributors.
...yet it's not written in such derogatory terms.
Boredom powers the book publishing industry, the video game industry... hell, just about everything defense, procreation, shelter and food.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
"because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on."
That's half right.
A programmer in his downtime can play video games, watch TV, get drunk, or contribute to open source projects. Being an amateur open source contributer is a great hobby, and is a very good thing to spend your time on. Everyone has spare time once in a while; it doesn't mean they're bored.
$8.95/mo web hosting
If you look at history, people who have no time to be bored generally don't find themselves making great leaps in progress. Workmen are certainly hardworking as a class, and many are certainly not dumb, but if you are working all the time on your assigned tasks, it gives you little time to take your notion to fruition. And if you are very focused at your current job, which usually represents some sort of status quo, you're not making progress.
The fact is that a leisure class with the right motivation and philosophy, can be a real benefit to the rest of society. They have the time and money to "follow their dream", for the most part. Many artists, writers, and scientists in the past held down more or less sinecure positions that paid cash even though they really never actually did the job as specified in the job title. A significant portion of notable contributors to progress and art have been outright aristocratic.
Boredom can be aimless and cause no end of trouble, but in the right sorts of people, can lead to progress where it could not otherwise exist.
Feeling bored is what drives people to do anything else in spare time than conserving energy. It drives creativity and out-of-the-box thinking better than anything else. An extremely useful feature, brought to you by Natural Selection.
Note how often doing creative work is accused of being driven by boredom, and how seldom watching TV.
Trust me, I work for the government.
How can anything driven by boredom produce many instance of high-quality of software and be so vibrant?
I guess I'll just live, there's nothing *else* to do.
(The whole premise is a troll.)
Boredom by it's very nature gives the creator time to think of what would be a worthwhile endeavor.
On the other hand, deadlines cause editors to pontificate on the obvious because they have editorials to write, news aggregator sites to point to lame articles because they have quotas to fill, and so on.
This sig is alpha and shouldn't be viewed on production machines
"It also involves wanting to help others out, or make something better for themselves." - by jimstapleton (999106) on Monday May 07, @09:29AM (#19019901)
v ermakesgooglehappy.html ))?
.dll, .ocx, and .vcl addons).
OR, to improve one's self, & skillsets as a coder.
Speaking as a shareware/freeware developer who has been featured in many magazines, newspapers, & books in this field (above & beyond website articles or ratings of softwares) since 1997-1998 up to around 2004 (2004 is around/about when I stopped doing freewares/sharewares, due to lack of energy and time to do so anymore as well as need to do so (in that that apps I have done are finished, per user tests/critiques long ago, & they work "perfectly" (purely relative term imo) all the way from Windows 9.x - VISTA currently as of this writing, & this is the prime example thereof: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/389/foowhate
Shareware/Freeware helped me to understand more than just what I do for a job/livelyhood in this field (which is MIS/IS/IT database coding mostly), primarily, as to bettering myself in this field of endeavor.
Shareware/Freeware construction basically truly helped me to improve my skillset as a coder, no questions asked: Practice HELPS make you perfect!
(Perfect? Ah, there is no such thing especially considering "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", especially in software development, without user critique & feedback that is - nobody can 'spot it all' as to useability issues or bugs, w/ out help imo & experience - you cannot please everyone however, this IS "the rub").
Doing shareware/freeware has also aided my resume to some extent (because some of my wares went into commercial products for Microsoft partners, which ended up being bought from myself) and also got my name around this field as well, in written publication (as well as on websites).
Personally? I never considered doing shareware/freeware a "waste of my time"!
To myself, it amounted to time spent improving myself on more fronts coding (other than databasing work) & doing so aided in my understanding of how Operating Systems work as well as improving myself on how to use, for instance, the Win32 API & also custom 3rd party controls (mostly
It has paid off (literally AND figureatively) in many ways.
Idle hands are the "devil's workshop", but I personally would not call software development of ANY kind, idle hands. If anything, it is far better than blogging or writing articles only for example, because it improves you and is basically on-the-job-training of a sort you are doing independently.
This is what I gained by this, personally, in the doing of freeware/shareware over time the past decade or more (as of this writing of this post).
Additionally: How many products over time have come from the "freeware/shareware" area, which I consider the "farm teams" semi-pro leagues of software development? Quite a few:
Example: Norton GHOST's origins? Freeware/Shareware, iirc.
There are far more, but that is a "classic case-in-point/example"...
APK
P.S.=> And, as far as larger projects (other than shareware/freeware utilities such as I have done)? Look @ LINUX: The damn thing's pretty awesome (though I am truly a Win32 person mostly), especially considering it was created at the expense of MANY contributor's personal time - Linux is a construct based on freely given time mostly, and it is a socio-cultural/technological phenomenon that proves people CAN & WILL do great things, for free, voluntarily on occasion (without being paid), that is impressive in & of itself... apk
Jobs are tedious and not challenging or playful enough. For the political fears of others, we spend extra time on metrics and social/political games, which generates a whole lot of phantom work that is not necessary. Every job I've ever had could be done in three solid hours of work per day. Those extra cycles need to get recycled into something, and Open Source software is one of the few you can do from your desk.
A prime example of this from years gone by is the mailing list. You could get detailed replies to queries that were often better than professional documentation (and on some lists, you still can). Employers paid for that effort. Why? Because it was more fun, challenging and interesting than what we do as wage-slaves.
technical writing / development
The biggest contribution that I made to open source did not come from boredom at all. It was more of a political thing. Like all the people you see who donate some of their time to a cause they believe in. They do it because they believe in the cause.
I'm going to make a leap here and guess that most open source development does NOT happen on company time unless the company sanctions it... usually for their own purposes. Not that SOME people can't get away with spending hours doing something other than their TPS report cover sheets, but most can't.
Though I have some doubts about this "boredom drives OSS idea." Sure, programmers might be bored if they didn't have some fun/intersting programming to do... but certainly that can't drive them. I mean, you have to really enjoy it to do it. Enjoyment or satisfaction has to be the motivator here. Otherwise you'd have to conclude that the only reason anyone does any non-essential life supporting activity is to avoid boredom.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Isn't your description the functional equivalent of boredom? I'm not sure how I would see any difference between a situation where you were just plain bored and a situation where you were nominally interested but still felt that your work assignment was crappy. I guess I see that you, yourself, could differentiate between the two, but to a third party I think the two situations look alike.
My take on Long Tail is that Chris Anderson uses the term "bored" as a sort of short-hand for the variety of emotional reactions to work that doesn't demand anything close to our full concentration or energy. The reactions might not all fit the description for everyone, but the practical result still might be the same: it's the application of the spare cycles that makes the difference. In other words, playing Solitaire doesn't have the same impact as blogging or working on open source code.
I actually agree that, for the most part, open source development happens because of boredom. You know what we call something people do when they are bored? We call it a hobby. Everyone gets bored. There are simply not enough things for people to do to pass the time while also achieving satisfaction. Open source developers should be praised for choosing to spend their free time doing something that is not only productive, but beneficial to the rest of society. Most people just sit on their ass watching TV when they are bored. Doing something productive when you are bored is what you are supposed to do!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I usually work on side projects not because I'm bored with my current work, but because something snags my imagination and I get excited about it. It doesn't mean I'm any less enthralled (no pun intended) with my current work, it's just that people can focus on more than one thing at a time (unless it's chewing gum and walking where statistics certainly conclude....)
It is a matter of "we, us" understanding that drives open source. We like it. We like being "us", together with other people working for the same common altruistically beneficial goal. Additionally, this goal brings in other stuff like recognition among peers, some job offers, which just add up to the momentum.
One just needs to tip the balance a little more to the altruism side. Then s/he feels light as a feather, and any feeling of guilt that results from the recognition and job offers that working on open source brings, is offset.
Read radical news here
The Year 2022: Open Source dies with the invention of Virtual Girlfriend 2.0...
Personally, I think Open Source comes from a need to do something that matters. Many of us lack the business acumen to handle lawyers, employees, budgeting, etc, but we really want to made code that matters.
The imagination is that we're going to make something so useful that everyone will be using it.
If someone comes up to you and says that your FOSS work is the result of boredom and having nothing else to do, just smack him and laugh in his face. Then ask him what creative work he has done outside his work hours. On a sidenote, let's suppose you're a scientist, who has let's say 2 hours a day when not doing paperwork or not working on fulfilling some grant's expectations (yes, you live on money too) or not working for someone else etc., then you could say you have two hours of boredom and everything you create during those 2 hours are a result of boredom, since you had no compulsory work to do during that time. Man, we ought to love boredom, if it results in things like the internet, the web2 buzzworld (yes, buzzworld, see, boredom leads to new words too) and so on.
I just keep thinking those people who came up with this boredom-idea article are the ones who are bored. More than we are.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I could make the same argument about many things, such as "Rich people make money due to boredom". There are many reasons that people do things and not wanting to do nothing applies to many of these.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Personally i find i do a lot of coding when i have little else to do, but i do find it fun to do :)
Its also a good way to spend your time, getting in some practise, and more often then not trying to solve a problem, its a good challenge
And when you have finished, you have added a bit more knowledge to your codebase, you know how to do something new, and you have a (usually) useful tool for your trouble
Sure i may do coding when I'm bored (and i wouldn't say this is limited to "open source" in any way) but its a good way to spend otherwise wasted time - hell you may even do something really useful that people will thank you for
God forbid different people have different reasons for doing something? Let's just put everyone in a box and label them bored.
I have my own reasons for contributing to OSS and different reasons for contributing to WikiBooks. Neither of them has much to do with boredom. Besides this stuff (though, my contributions to wikibooks has been a little slow lately) I have a full-time job as a software engineer, take 16 hours a week of classes pursuing two degrees, and work about 8-15 hours a week as a research assistant in one of the labs. I don't really have time to be bored, but thanks for labeling me.
IMHO, folks who produce open source do so from four major backgrounds:
1. Paid to do so. A number of folks are paid by various companies to make sure that companies' products operate properly with open source software. This is a relatively new phenomenon which did not contribute to open sources' original growth.
2. Side-effect of career. When I worked for for an ISP, I produced software to improve our business. The software wasn't the product; the services were. So I was able to release some of the software as open source. A colleague down the hall recently released a perl module that he built to manipulate one of our databases where I work now. There is some real generosity here, but make no mistake: the software would not have been developed without the business need.
3. Education/research byproduct. Think NCSA httpd, NCSA Mosaic, BSD Unix. Universities exist to spread knowledge. Students learn by doing. For a sufficiently creative professor, open source is a natural extension.
4. Boredom. I wrote a tremendous amount of software when I was in high school. I like writing software and high school classes bored me spitless so I spent all day with a paper and pencil figuring out the code I would write when I got home. A couple years ago I spent 8 months working as a government contractor in the branch managing the agency's email. Nice people but they had enough work for me to fill about 2 hours each day. So I spent most of the other six writing my own anti-spam software.
Even Stallman fits above. He's currently in category 1 but he got his start in categories 2 and 3. He probably also had a healthy dose of category 4. Given his personality, I'd bet that before emacs his services were not in high demand.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
....so I'll denigrate it"
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It's a brilliant idea: all that Microsoft needs to do to have opensource threat neutralized, is to regularly produce and release lots of interesting, geek-oriented movies on the net for free!
Just a hint for MS: don't use that crappy WMV format and use Bittorrent for distribution, not Xbox Live. Think about target audience.
"NeoSmart seems to have taken up issue [CC] [MD] [GC] with Anderson's claims that open source developers (and other freeware programmers in general) do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on. Same with Wikipedia contributors, and bloggers in general."
Well considering how much time outsourcing/downsizing leaves a person? I'd say boredom is a natural result.
I've used the "it's more fun than watching TV" argument a lot for a lot of the "little" development projects I've done. But for the big stuff one person sitting with a laptop on a couch instead of watching TV doesn't cut it so much.
Incidentally, I suspect open source and "side projects" are going to get a whole lot more hours devoted to them now that Scrubs is ending. And maybe we should all thank the networks for not picking up Firefly.
E pluribus unum
It is called structured procrastination
Maybe the paradoxon is work. They observe that persons "work for free". what they don't see is the force which drives people to do what they find meaningful. In fact the labour system is suboptimal as it leads to a misallocation of talent.
IMHO this is the way things should be... individuals should not have to work because they HAVE to but because they WANT to.
I know the world's not like that, but shouldn't it be?
- "They misunderestimated me."
But what's the problem with being bored anyway? :)
Their articles are shit. Why does /. even link to them?
Spare cycles power families, political involvement, and communities.
I guess I will go back to watching TV..now there is a activity that extends the human condition.
:snark:
Open source is my Anti-drug.
Seriously...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
When many-a-sysadmin tout "I automate my job with scripts" I bite my lip to prevent from crying outloud "THAT IS YOUR JOB!"
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
I think most people do that. At least with smaller programs and scripts. The fact that you end up spending way much more time then you could actualy win the first time is irrelevant.
e.g. I made a script makeSUSEdvd so I did not need to do the process manually each month. The time I gained by doing it with a script is completely and utterly lost by the time I spend making and perfecting the script.
The up side is that several thousand of people have enjoyed it and it is the basis for making your own SUSE based distribution. Another plus thing is that I have learned many things doing this, which will help me in the future.
The downside of automating things is that when you need to do it again, you sometimes have to look it up again.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Everyone could have their hobby or job out of boredom. Life without challende is boring. Different people feel prefer different challenges. If you have something you're skilled in then you have enough creativity to make anything to put your mind on. Lots off spare minutes is enough to achieve great things. And great may not be great for other people, but if it's great four yourself then it is just that. But the fun part of open software is that it's easy to share and modify. This is also a social thing. It's nice to be part of a bigger whole. I think most open source programers think software fun, useful and meaningful. As a programmer I think software means all those things and life without it would be as boring as being a child without having a toy.
Yeah, tell that to the boss.
"Hey, boss, I'm going to spend all day running the release tests." "Okay, good work. Send me an email when you're done."
Next release....
"Hey, boss, I'm going to spend all day running the release tests." "Okay, good work."
"Hey, boss, I'm going to spend all day running the release tests." "Okay, good work."
"Hey, boss, I'm going to spend all day running the release tests." "Okay, good work."
"Hey, boss, I'm going to spend all day running the release tests." "Okay, good work."
"Hey, boss, I think with a day of work I could automate all of our release tests." "What?!? You barely have time for your current tasks. You know better than to suggest fun and games when we're so busy. Why don't you do it on your day off?"
It makes all the difference in the world. There's something toxic about trying to ignore each other when you can see or hear each other. When the door is closed, you have immersion-in-work time and immersion-in-each-other time, which is a lot better than being not quite immersed in one because it's hard to ignore the other.
I have lots of ideas and the required skills to implement them, and my mind is quick to understand most problems as well as to react to them, the problem is that I seem to lack the motivation or the discipline to keep myself focused on something. I start a project, write like 90% of it, and then when it comes to put the pieces together and make everything work I just give up...
Last time this happened was on the YopyNG project, I was porting the 2.4.28 Linux kernel to the Yopy YP3700 PDA and everything was going perfectly. The drivers were all working and the new kernel was responding much faster than the original one ported by G-mate (the manufacturer), but there was a final bug to resolve: for some reason people were reporting random kernel panics that I never managed to reproduce, and all of a sudden I lost interest in the project, especially when G-mate disappeared and the Yopy died.
For years I've wondered why this is happening to me and envied people like David Reveman (cmpiz's father) for their ability to remain focused on their personal projects as well as quiet about them until it's time to come out and show the community what they've made, and the culprit has always seemed to be my lack of discipline, but after reading this article I'm beginning to believe that perhaps there's more to it than what I thought, perhaps I have too much to entertain myself with and will have to accept the fact that no matter what I do, I'll never be like those people...
wasting my leisure time on slashdot when i could contribute more by picking up some more php/xml/javascript skills to improve my site...
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
You know, i think this has to do more with developers wanting to hear, "You did a good job", or "I like your work" than anything else.
Bosses don't say enough of that any more.
That explains why most OSS is of so bad quality...
After being bored trying out other endeavors the open source developer realizes that working on an open source project is a truly meaningful thing to do.
Here's my blog where I talk about my work.
It's important to always lay the cards on the table, and be truthful about what is going on with one's work, for better or worse.
I know some people here would say Microsoft does not always do that, but I feel that I need to, then my work has some value.
I use my own OS all the time, and I like it, but don't we all like our own work.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
If this article is any indication, open-source developers cause boredom.
OMG, I think we've discovered a perpetual motion machine!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Can't have any more spare time than that. Also I mistakenly believed that it would look good on a resume and help in finding a job. The down side was it felt like work and distracted from the job search.
Now that I have work there's no need to be creative. Creativity is actually a detriment in the work environment. So best to get that all behind me.
>That certainly is an interesting way of looking at it.
>Here are the people that make more than half of the software on any given computer
What... I'm writing this from linux now... but if I turn to my right there a whole lab of windows machines that only have *one* piece of open source software on them (firefox).
>and are the drive behind most (if not all) of the innovation in the software industry
>being referred to as bored people idly filling their time...
Open source is the drive behind innovation in the software industry? Wha? The vast majority of open source software I use is a clone of pre-existing commercial software, including the entire unix operating system...
I'm not saying that the open source world is *stagnant*, but I'd hardly say that it's driving innovation in the rest of the industry. In the case of google I'd maybe say they were... enabling it.
A lot of developers start coding open source for free... but almost no one would stick it out for the long haul of a big project if they weren't getting paid for it. Do you really think linus would or could afford to keep spending all of his time on the kernel without economic support?
Projects start for a lot of reasons. Most of the people I know who do open source do it for a mixture of
1. They are just creative, and part of their personality makes it necessary to do creative things to be happy
2. They want to impress their friends
3. They want to make money (which they could often to otherwise), but want to do it on their own terms.
Honestly though, the way corporate culture is becoming at some companies, where engineers are getting more freedom and higher pay, I expect more projects to start for the same reasons, but this time starting from the beginning with corporate support.
...for me at least.
That's how I started building OSS projects.
No I don't mean man pages!