Reasons Why You Don't Contribute To Open-Source Software

[curaga]

In fact, having 10k coders on a project no one uses sounds like a big waste of resources

That project would then have at least 10k users, quite worthy

[PsynoKhi0]

That project would then have at least 10k users, quite worthy

Argh! Please not down to semantics

[Jimmy]

I don't want to thread jack, but way to completely misunderstand the Mono problem.

Go ahead and enlighten me: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23392

[KAMiKAZOW]

Coding, while enjoyement, I do considder learning and work

Coding is not the only way to contribute.

Bicycling through my city, taking notes of a few points of interests, and later adding them to OpenStreetMap is something I do for relaxation.

[V!NCENT]

Coding is not the only way to contribute.

Bicycling through my city, taking notes of a few points of interests, and later adding them to OpenStreetMap is something I do for relaxation.

Sure, however I want a fully working Evergreen GPU running my desktop

[discordian]

Various reasons, most noteworthy:

• GPL sucks for hobbyists (and unfortunately is the most popular). If I want to share my code I dont care if other hobbyists take my code and release it under other conditions (as long as they give credit), more projects are good no matter the license. It often makes sense keeping your project closed until it got the shape you want, this is my POV and if I had to use it it would just demotivate me doing anything in the first place.
  Further your entire build-system has to be FOSS, so no chance if you need to use some proprietary stuff (eg. embedded systems & consoles).
  GPL is a total oneway-street, its "free" only if you know nothing else than GPL. Its closed in regards to other OpenSource licenses and closed source.. and thus it hinders "competition".
  Im not saying it doesnt have its place (FOSS companies assuring their investment) but its a bad choice if you want to help hobbyists in general.
• giving up your copyright in some GPL projects. Sorry, Im not wanna feel guilty for using my own code. Even if I dont copy it, if I later write a similar module it will suspiciously look alot like my own code.
• quality of the codebase of many big FOSS projects. I submitted a few small patches years ago... there is alot code that would just require a rewrite as its a hopeless mass of such small patches. So Im also kinda responsible for that, but its just a timeconsuming pain to rewrite other peoples code. Nah, just fix the few lines which keep 50% of the videos on your HDD from playing.
• responsiveness of FOSS maintainers. Again this is very project-specific and ties in to the last point. it often takes 2 weeks to get a response and longer for someone to actually commit a 2-line patch, while some flames / aggressive bugreports get immediate attention. Wonder why I dint want to opt for a big rewrite/patch..

[nanonyme]

Well, no one prevents you from having all projects under less restrictive licenses which are automagically transformed into GPL upon linking against GPL software. Then if someone doesn't like this, they can write a replacement for the library and license it with a free'er license too which means they can now use your software as not-GPL even with the functionality that came with linking.

[coats]

No.

A general command-line-scanner library is a general facility, that provides what is in fact a "little language". And one thing that (should have been) thouroughly learned from the Fortran experience is that lexical scanners that "eat" whitespace are EVIL because of the mistakes they cayse, encourage, and/or mis-diagnose.

[discordian]

Well, no one prevents you from having all projects under less restrictive licenses which are automagically transformed into GPL upon linking against GPL software.

And I couldn't get back bugfixes/patches from GPL projects (unless the authors commit them back to me) thus GPL is a one-way street.

Then if someone doesn't like this, they can write a replacement for the library and license it with a free'er license too which means they can now use your software as not-GPL even with the functionality that came with linking.

Sure you can always write replacements, though its always gonna be an uphill battle claiming its your own work and not a "derivate", especially if you could just take the existing stuff and molest it a bit. If I code from scratch and just use similar interfaces its no different to reimplementing a closed-source library. And then there is still the one-way street GPL regarding improvements/bugfixes.

Generally I was speaking about committing to <b>existing</b> projects, I can relicense my own stuff as often as I want so GPL/Opensource is no issue for my own stuff. Its just doesnt make any sense to release anything under GPL for me (though I did before lacking better knowledge)

[Remco]

My take on this is: as a hobbyist you shouldn't really care what the license of the project is. As long as it is a popular free software license, you're good. To paraphrase you: it just doesn't make sense to let licenses get in the way of improving programs.