[OSGeo-Discuss] are there any unpaid developers?

[Andrea Aime]

Ian Turton ha scritto:
> One of my students was asking today about the open source development
> process (with special reference to geospatial projects). One question
> I'm left with is are there any OSGEO developers who are doing this
> just for the fun and fame? I know that a lot of us have fun developing
> but everyone I could think of (GeoTools, GeoServer, uDig) gets paid to
> have that fun.

My first few years of Geotools were completely unpaid: wake up at 5,
worth though the weekends, to get it to work enough for my students
at the uni to use (so in a sense there was a "work" purpose, but
I was barely paid just for the hours spent in the classroom and nobody
pushed for them use an open source library).

Today I'm paid to work on GeoTools/GeoServer, but I still put in
weekends time so there is still an unpaid portion.
I don't think it can really go away: paid stuff is directed by
company/customer needs /plans, on the spare time you do what you feel
is good/necessary/fun instead.
I don't believe you can really be "involved" if you don't have
that kind of passion, yes, one can just "work" in an OS project,
but it's not really the same thing as real involvement.

Cheers
Andrea

-- 
Andrea Aime
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.