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The Role of Freeloaders In Open Source Communities

Posted by Soulskill on from the arm-extended-palm-splayed-upward dept.

dp619 writes "The Outercurve Foundation has published a defense of freeloaders as part of a blog series on how businesses can participate in open source. '...in the end, it's all about freeloaders, but from the perspective that you want as many as possible. That means you're "doing it right" in developing a broad base of users by making their experience easy, making it easy for them to contribute, and ultimately to create an ecosystem that continues to sustain itself. Freeloaders are essential to the growth and success of every FOSS project.'"

5 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Freeloaders by aXis100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Otherwise known as regular users???

    1. Re:Freeloaders by dimko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, that's what assholes call us. If you don't like your user base - just don't open source your code, thank you very much,

    2. Re:Freeloaders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, the primary directive behind open source is peer review, which in turn produces better code.

      There is no such thing as a primary directive behind open source. Everyone who decides to release their source code does so for different reasons. Do not try to second guess what the intent of the license is.
      Likewise, never assume that a "loophole" in a license is a bug or a flaw, most likely it is intentional and probably the reason to why the author chose that license over the million other licenses out there.
      Also, respect the Beerware-license it isn't a joke. Some people just value drinking beer with a stranger more than a small monetary compensation.

        * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
        * wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
        * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
        * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
       

  2. Not freeloaders by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They aren't "freeloaders". They're called "users". Without them, there's no point to creating software except for stuff you personally need. And there's more stuff you need than you have the time or the skill to create, so you will be one of those users a lot more often than you're a contributor. Users aren't a problem, they're the reason software exists in the first place.

  3. Freeloader here - willing to help! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Count me in! I am a freeloader, but willing to help. When do I start? I volunteer to: Put the permanent status bar back in FireFox so I don't need an extension. Get rid of Gnome 3 entirely. Revert the GIMP's atrocious Save As.../Export As... abomination. Oh, right, these projects are closed cluster****s, and don't want me to help. Sorry, I'll go back to being a freeloader now.