What is Digg?51 Comments
- frontporsche, on 07/31/2008, -0/+86Author seems to be implying that "Mountain Dew and Twinkies" is not a legitimate open-source development expense.
- inactive, on 07/30/2008, -7/+80Personally I reckon that if you use a 'free' program a lot, you should still dip into your wallet (or Paypal account) and send some cash to the developers. If nothing else, it's a sign that somebody appreciated their hard work enough to pay something for it.
And no, I'm not a developer - just a heavy user who thinks that too many OS users are cheapskate freeloaders! - Vadi0, on 07/30/2008, -0/+31Spend it on a nice logo contest / make a bounty / hire people to help out on some things.
- Mongoose, on 07/31/2008, -1/+28This is just a spam rehashing of the Coding Horror post. Boo.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001158.h ... - inactive, on 07/31/2008, -0/+23Spend it on paying the ***** bills? Open source devs have living expenses too yanno.
- yargthepirate, on 07/30/2008, -0/+17apparently being nice = buried. +1 sir.
- kazamx, on 07/31/2008, -0/+17When I donate to a project I always think of the money as beer money. That Dev made me a piece of software I really like and I want to say thank you to him. Depending how much I send I like to think he went out and used the money to buy a few beers, maybe took the wife and kids out for a nice meal or if I ever was able to donate $5000 he could take the family to Disneyworld.
- bieber, on 07/31/2008, -0/+15I'd like to think that if I donated to a small free software project, it would get paid out to the developers of the project to do whatever the hell they want with it. I would see it as a form of rewarding the work they've done, not trying to drive them to work harder in the future (they'd probably do that anyways, if they were donation-worthy in the first place...)
- Drahkar, on 07/31/2008, -0/+13No kidding. I think what some people, and the author of this article is apparently one of them, fail to understand something vitally important.
In the world of Business and software development, $5,000 is nothing. Giving an open source project $5,000 and expecting some profound movement in it is like giving a homeless guy $5 and expecting him to suddenly have a job, living in a nice house with a family. Its a unrealistic expectation. Anything that the developers might use it for long term would require a lot more funding that one deposit of $5,000. Now you say they suddenly have like $100,000 to work with, that's different. Maybe they can start a small business then and hire people to work on making the business profitable. But you have to understand that Developers are not businessmen. They are developers. That's why they are writing software and not running a business. - goombasf, on 07/31/2008, -0/+13Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" called "Fortunate Richard." Mocking the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented by Franklin, the Frenchman wrote that Fortunate Richard left a small sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500 years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia. As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin's Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time, and was used to establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston.[50]
Sounds like something similar could be done w/ open source. - nemoder, on 07/30/2008, -1/+12This really is a rather difficult problem. Even small projects can have dozens of coders, how do you distribute the cash? If you split it evenly then people who only spent a few minutes fixing a small bug would be rewarded as much as the guy who worked on it from day one. If you try to base it on on lines of code or something then you'll end up with coders spending more time arguing over how much time was spent on what than actually working to improve the software.
Perhaps instead of donating to an entire open source project it would be better to just hire an individual to improve it. - diggdiggerid, on 07/31/2008, -0/+11Whenever I donate money for projects or code snippets or whatever I use, I fully expect them to make good use of it however they want.
- daftman, on 07/31/2008, -0/+10Depends on the amount of money. For small amount of money, improve the infrastructure, e.g website, repository. For a medium size amount, say $10k, hire a full time artist or run some promotional campaign. For ***** amount of money, see firefox, apache, etc
- hwy9nightkid, on 07/31/2008, -1/+11You get 20 menthol kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs.
- MalDON, on 07/31/2008, -0/+8Does the author realize how much hosting can cost? If you end up with a large project, you better be ready to host it correctly.
- nemoder, on 07/30/2008, -0/+7All of which takes time to organize. I suppose you could hire somebody to organize things but if it's a small project with a small budget that probably isn't feasible.
- morphinapg, on 07/31/2008, -0/+6I am a dev and though I haven't really gotten many donations since my project has started, whenever I do I use them to pay my bills as best I can, as I don't really have a job right now, aside from helping out with random people's computer problems every once and a while.
-Author of ASXGui (Another Simple X264 GUI) - aywwts4, on 07/31/2008, -0/+6Yeah, when I have donated to various projects/artists, I don't care how altruistic their spending is, they freely spent their time to make something valuable to me. liquor, video games, a dinner out, whatever they want, they deserve it. If "The Project" doesn't need money, the people coding it certainly could.
- goteki, on 07/31/2008, -1/+7Badly phrased blog spam, this is originally from codinghorror.com. This new "article" is a shallow copy at best
Buried. - inactive, on 07/31/2008, -0/+5That's what I usually do. Specially with good movies that their creators decide to put on bittorrent (usually) or any other P2P network. Last week I send some cash to the producers of the documentary "The Corporation". Good film, hope some other people watch it and send some cash too.
- sk11, on 07/31/2008, -0/+5More money to the developers would allow them to spend more time to work on their projects. Maybe even pool the money together and pay someone to work full time.
- proficient, on 07/31/2008, -1/+6Buy oreos and smoothies.
- hwy9nightkid, on 07/31/2008, -0/+4I guess check the CVS logs :P
- cantormath, on 07/31/2008, -0/+4This really depends on the project and the needs of the project. I don't think this is a good blanket statement. Maybe this has happen, but to assume this is an Open Source Standard is probably inaccurate and irresponsible to say without a bit more research..
I think groups that release an Open Source Edition (which is free but less complete) and a Professional Edition ( which cost money but is complete and gets more attention) is the real issue around money and open source. - sharternarter, on 07/31/2008, -0/+3I'd go for the cocaine and whiskey.
- Almadiel, on 07/31/2008, -0/+3How is it unscrupulous to take personal compensation for good work? Programming open source takes valuable time which could be spent doing more profitable work. Donations are a way of justifying that time. Not to mention, they encourage more good work.
- Cryoniq, on 07/31/2008, -2/+5Seriously.. What is the purpose of this?
- dazparkour, on 07/31/2008, -0/+3I'd take you up on that -
I use firefox - I doubt, with all the people they had, I would be much use there so ideally, a smaller project would benefit more from my time.
I'd volunteer to help a small OSS project - I just don't see a lot with space. I DO check sourceforge's help wanted occasionally, still nothing.
I imagine not everyone has a skill they can donate to a project however, in the meantime - looking for a code monkey, hit me up OSS! - oobuntu, on 07/31/2008, -0/+3The projects I'm aware of spend money on new hardware. Either to speed up things, or testing/compatibility.
- cfuse, on 07/31/2008, -0/+3If this is true, then all the more reason to offer help rather than money - if you care enough to drop 5K on something, then your time and sweat is going to be far more valuable to the project.
- bradleyland, on 07/31/2008, -0/+2Seems like a logical trade, considering the entire ideology behind FOSS is that you get software with which you are free to do whatever you want.
- darkhero, on 07/31/2008, -1/+3This story was taken from coding horror: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001158.h ...
Codinghorror is one of my favorite blogs. - inactive, on 07/31/2008, -0/+2"Author seems to be implying that "Mountain Dew and Twinkies" is not a legitimate open-source development expense."
Exactly right. I have an income of about £100 per week, so I can't exactly send these guys megabucks. But (to take one example), the 3D program BLENDER gives me a hell of a lot of creative fun and pleasure. I can only send them a small amount from time to time, but I'm VERY happy if they spend it on beer and pizza - It's just my way of saying, 'Thanks, guys'. - brettalton, on 07/31/2008, -0/+2And I can't wait for my great-great-great grandchildren to enjoy it!
Great story though, thanks. - rompom7, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1webmonkey is still alive? glad to see them with 2.0 beta, looking forward to some new content.
- Night, on 08/02/2008, -0/+1As others have said, blog spam. Go read the original at coddinghorror.com
- leetdood, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1That was the first thing I thought when i read the article.. He just quoted everything that Jeff Atwood said.
- TheMachine1, on 07/31/2008, -2/+3Most people who head non-profit organisations are paid to do those jobs. There is not a damn thing wrong with developers spending donated money on anything they want.
- hobophobe, on 08/01/2008, -0/+1Most projects have bug trackers. Go find a bug, squash it, and submit the patch. Repeat as desired. You don't have to be a full-fledged developer with a project to work on it. The caveat is some projects are more open than others to off-the-street patches.
- DavidDigg, on 08/01/2008, -0/+1@kundason
First off, thank you for donating your time, hard work, and energy to the software ecosystem. I hope that your experience was worth it.
Having said this, I think that, under the current system, it is a mistake to believe that you will be adequately compensated for the time you invest in an open source project. In fact, I have trouble even imagining a system in which such a "social contract" would operate. Open source operates via personal conviction, desire for recognition, and civic-mindedness.
This is a bitter pill, but the facts you cite are only "shameful" and "sensitive issues" if you expect certain things from the world of open source that it really cannot reliably deliver. I think it is a fair criticism of open source that the mythology has outpaced the reality somewhat, but in all fairness, very few open source leaders have touted the economic appeal or even viability of the model. In fact Linus Torvalds has gone so far as to openly remark that he gets to take all of the credit for others' work! At least he is being honest! (And, lest anyone get the wrong idea, he has made Linux succeed where BSD has faltered; there is no doubt in my mind that he deserves the recognition he has received).
If you are interested in the ideology of open source, you might find the works of Henry David Thoreau worthwhile, but if you are interested in working in the world of open source, you should check out the classified ads for jobs at the Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs/
Hope this helps - boobsbr, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1if it's gpl'ed than it is free as in beer as long as someones sees fit to share it:
Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor. - ZachSka87, on 07/31/2008, -1/+2Free as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."
Not all FOSS is free as in "Free beer"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis#Gratis - Hello1024, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1It's time someone came up with an automated bounty system. Donations to a project are automatically added to a "bounty pot", which is then shared amongst a series of mini projects or tasks assigned by a project lead.
The bounty system could be run by a company that does all the management - ie. it handles the money and doles it out to the right people when bounties are met. Project leaders could take money out themselves at any time, and donators could see directly which bounties their money has paid for. It would also take legal responsibility and deal with meeting country specific rules and regulations. The company itself would be supported by advertising, donations, or possibly even interest on bounties not yet met.
If anyone would be interested in setting something like this up, contact omattos at g m a i l . com. I'm not going to develop this independently, since I can do software development, but don't think I have the skills to manage a project with this many aspects, but if a group of people are interested in this it might be a go'er. - CYR1X, on 07/31/2008, -1/+1Just keep the money's purpose solely on having to do with make the product greater and you'd have no problem with spending it.
- beingdevious, on 07/31/2008, -2/+2dugg for jeff atwood and coding horror.
(and screwturn to get some ideas for the grant) - ttam, on 07/31/2008, -1/+1$5000 isn't exactly a lot of money. Give this person $100,000 to work on it full time and hire some part time help and I bet you'll see some results.
- kundason, on 08/01/2008, -0/+0Funny, I posted a comment about how people never actually donate money to free software projects and it gets dugg out below the viewing threshold.
People don't like to hear the truth about this subject and it is a sensitive issue both for developers and users.
This article is misleading: It presents a distorted picture in which a "typical" generous user donates 5,000 USD just to find out the developer does not want the contribution. The truth is different. 99.9% of the users will never donate a single dollar in their life, the 0.1% who donate typically give 10-30 USD, no more, and there are many developers who desperately need the money.
Take a look at a project like TortoiseSVN. It was downloaded from sourceforge 10,000,000 times. Take a look in the wayback machine and you will see that TortoiseSVN had 240 donors in 2007 (they removed the list from the site).
I developed a tool used by many thousands of enthusiastic users yet even though I have asked directly for donation in several ways, to this day I only got one donation.
I believe this is typical.
To make things worse many developers think of donations or financial support as blasphemy. However, while this attitude is convenient if you are a bachelor student in your 20ies and have plenty of time and free nights to hack, it is often impossible for older professionals (with families to support) who also happen to consider themselves part of the Free Software community.
What do you suggest? that Free Software programming be left for kids, corporates, and a handful of lucky superstar programmers?
I find it ironic that these developers themselves have come to believe that the Free in Free Software means free-beer or no-money instead of free as in free speech. There should be nothing wrong in developing Free Software for a living. In fact this is also Richard Stallman's position and he explicitly addresses this issue in his writings: "There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software are contributing to the users’ activities, and it is both fair and in the long-term interest of the users to give them funds to continue."
The fact that so few users donate money to projects they use is a shameful phenomena.
You should change your ways, make a list of the software you use frequently and find out if the people behind them accept donations, then go to their websites and donate! - ritter99, on 07/31/2008, -3/+1is this VIRAL MARKETING?
there's so many wikis out there, and now this one gets good coverage ... -
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