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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...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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?
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.
325 webcam drivers anyone? I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 523 webcam drivers?
This guy's the limit!
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.
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?
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
Infiltrated dot Net
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.
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
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.
...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.
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
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.
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.
You sound like one of those people who, back in high school, complained about the "smart kids" because they were always "getting attention" from the teacher. I suppose you think the correct lifestyle is one in which you are completely invisible, do nothing with your life, and vanish into obscurity and the corner bar.
I think you're lost. This is Slashdot. The sports pages are over there.
NO CARRIER
I saw a documentary on PBS about the summer of love, and it struck me how much of that philosophy is present in the Open Source movement. Take, for example, the Diggers, who would get bruised and otherwise unsellable food from grocery stores, cook it, and give it away in the park to anyone who wanted it. They took things that would have gone to wasted and made them into something useful for others.
Open Source contributors are continuing this tradition. They're taking spare programmer cycles and spare server space and turning it into something that improves the lives of people for free.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
From a socialist/communist perspective, the problem is: While you're still required to earn money by submission to exploitation through a regular job, while the capital owns the means of production and controls everything about your job, by using your spare time to produce things without getting money for it, you're doing things for free which could and should actually earn yourself a living.
Working for free producing whatever you feel like would be socialist/communist only if society/community would provide you with everything you need *without* your still having to do a regular job.
There is no right within the wrong, as T. W. Adorno used to say: unfortunately, it's impossible to have "a little bit of socialism/communism" in a world with its master conditions determined by capitalism. Free software is not socialism/communism (a fact that some will pity and others acclaim...).
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.
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
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.
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...