| Andrew |
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Girl Watcher
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Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
#313608 - 08/30/13 02:45 AM
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: Andrew]
#313609 - 08/30/13 03:03 AM
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Most of that is bullshit. The biggest reason for contributing to open source is to level the playing field on things that aren't your core competency.
For example Red Hat's core competency is support, consulting and business solutions. To deliver this they need a solid operating system and server stack. They don't have the resources to do this on their own, so they use open source products, and contribute back their improvements, as do others with similar business models. That way they're free to compete with each other on consulting, and the existence of the software is just a given.
IBM makes a lot of money on high-end hardware, but they need a software stack to run on it, and this is often more effort than it's worth to build in-house. So they sell hardware with open source software, and just contribute what's necessary to meet the needs of their hardware customers. Once again, being able to take the operating system and server stack as a given allows them to compete in the hardware space where they feel they have their core competency.
Trading houses also contribute to open source projects to level the playing field on things that should just be a given. For example there's no point developing your own strategy prototyping framework, machine learning system, unit test framework, implementation of standard protocols, etc. So you create or use open source libraries, and contribute fixes and improvements. That way you spread out work on boring stuff that everyone knows how to do and concentrate more time on trading strategies that actually make you money.
The most vocal people talk about the community, altruism and ideals, but in reality most open source exists because it makes business sense.
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: Matty_]
#313629 - 08/30/13 11:14 AM
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> Most of that is bullshit. The biggest reason for contributing to open source is to
> level the playing field on things that aren't your core competency.
You missed the point. The article is about why developers contribute to open source software, not why businesses use open source software.
Not all open source software starts out with a business need. It usually starts out because someone thinks it would be cool to do a certain thing.
Edited by smf (08/30/13 11:17 AM)
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: ]
#313630 - 08/30/13 11:47 AM
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> > Most of that is bullshit. The biggest reason for contributing to open source is to
> > level the playing field on things that aren't your core competency.
>
> You missed the point. The article is about why developers contribute to open source
> software, not why businesses use open source software.
>
> Not all open source software starts out with a business need. It usually starts out
> because someone thinks it would be cool to do a certain thing.
Look at the contributions to any big open source project, and look at who pays the maintainers. There are notable exceptions like MAME (although it doesn't strictly meet the definitions of OSI open source or FSF free software), but the vast majority of contributions to successful open source and free software actually come from big business.
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#313634 - 08/30/13 01:30 PM
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> Look at the contributions to any big open source project, and look at who pays the
> maintainers.
If a project becomes important enough then businesses will often fund the top people, but that is one of the reasons the article gives of why developers contribute to open source projects. There have been some open source projects that have been started by businesses, but across all open source projects they are the minority.
The article is about why developers contribute to open source projects without being paid, not why the project exists in the first place or the minority case of people being paid to contribute.
Edited by smf (08/30/13 01:36 PM)
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#313637 - 08/30/13 03:20 PM
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> Look at the contributions to any big open source project, and look at who pays the
> maintainers. There are notable exceptions like MAME (although it doesn't strictly
> meet the definitions of OSI open source or FSF free software), but the vast majority
> of contributions to successful open source and free software actually come from big
> business.
While that's true, even very heavily business-associated projects (e.g. the compilers: GCC and LLVM/Clang) still started out as private projects. Projects originated purely by business have a generally poor lifespan.
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: ]
#313654 - 08/31/13 03:07 AM
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> The article is about why developers contribute to open source projects without being
> paid, not why the project exists in the first place or the minority case of people
> being paid to contribute.
That's the thing - most of the contributions to big, recognisable open source projects like the Linux kernel, GCC or Apache _are_ paid. It isn't the minority case at all.
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Re: Why Do Developers Contribute to Open Source Projects?
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#313681 - 08/31/13 11:45 AM
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> That's the thing - most of the contributions to big, recognisable open source
> projects like the Linux kernel, GCC or Apache _are_ paid. It isn't the minority case
> at all.
The article didn't restrict itself to just those types of open source projects. There are other open source projects too & the big recognisable open source projects are in the minority. If you count the sourceforge and github projects then Linux/gcc/apache are just statistical noise in comparison. Your examples all started as unpaid projects as well.
An article on why paid developers contribute to the handful of major open source projects would be pretty short, it's because they are paid. It really is very few people, even if their contribution seems more significant.
You only have to look at the number of people porting new android versions to old phones. After starting Cyanogenmod, Steve Kondik got a job at Samsung but left earlier this year. He was one out of dozens of people, the rest usually start because they want new software on their old phones but end up porting to phones they don't own.
Edited by smf (08/31/13 12:50 PM)
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