On Sun, 1 Aug 2010 03:33:15 am Florian Klämpfl wrote:
Am 31.07.2010 19:16, schrieb Steven D'Aprano:
On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:22:00 pm Florian Klämpfl wrote:
I think you miss one important point here: to contribute to an OSS project one must be rather idealistic or even religious about it (yes, this includes me ;)).
"Must"?
"One" in the sense of person obviously and contribute in the sense of coding or why should one code for free?
Who says "one" is coding for free?
Companies like Google, Apple, Red Hat and many others, pay programmers to work on OSS, not because of a sense of idealism but because it suits their business model.
That's probably why Microsoft agreed to match Jeff Atwood's donation of $5000 to support OSS Dot-Net development. Microsoft is famous for being idealistic and religious about open source.
And? $10000 is nothing. This approximately is what a senior software developer/architect with PhD./Master/Dipl.-Inf./Dpl.-Ing. costs a company per month.
Yes, and? The point which seems to have escaped you is that *Microsoft*, a company that a few years ago described Linux and OSS as "cancer", has now realised the business worth of it to *themselves*. It might only be a tiny contribution so far, but Microsoft aren't doing it for idealistic or religious reasons. They didn't become the worlds biggest IT company by writing out $10,000 cheques for nothing.
And I noticed that you just skipped over the companies funding Postgresql development:
Not to mention idealistic and religious companies like Fujitsu, HP, Skype, to mention just a few...
So please, stop making out that OSS is solely some sort of idealistic crusade. People contribute to OSS for all sorts of reasons, including business sense, legal requirements, and others.