I was recently considering adding on a testing framework and refactoring part of the databasedotcom gem, since I’ve been nominally involved since the inception — but then was considering the question, “Why do I do all this stuff for free?”
I think there is an interesting set of motivations in the enterprise world, where most people are in it for the $$$ and it is difficult to see why you would contribute something for free, especially to people who will simply use it to add to their pile of cash. So, to those involved like me, why do you do it?
Seriously, I’d like to know as I’m doubting my own open source commitment at the moment. It is all well and good, but “freebies,” especially in the Salesforce world, don’t pay the bills.
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April 1, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Alex Berg (@alex_berg)
Well, there’s different kinds of targets for open source software. Think of the difference between applications and infrastructure.
Open source infrastructure is an attractive choice, because everyone who uses it has incentive to contribute bug fixes and feature enhancements to keep the infrastructure fresh and to keep the community around it.
Open source applications are an attractive choice for people who want an application that is not business-critical and to use on a basic level.
It’s tough to make money in either of these open source areas, but there are ways. For infrastructure, you can charge for premium support. For applications, you can charge for pluggable add-ins as your product.
This is just a quick viewport onto the topic. I would guess that most open source developers don’t intend to make money, but just want to be members of a community or just want to learn by aasking for feedback.
April 3, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Joel Dietz (@fractastical)
Absolutely. The thing for me is that it is easier to work in the context of an existing enthusiastic community than create your own and the interests of many in the enterprise don’t tend to be a cause for enthusiasm among talented developers. I occasionally wonder even if it was a mistake spending time developing my jQuery library for Salesforce given the general lack of interest and the fact that only very few people contribute back.