[OSGeo-Discuss] are there any unpaid developers?

[Jody Garnett]

I echo your thoughts on passion Andrea; most open source project work is done way outside of business hours.

It is a continued effort to include the cost of open source participation and feedback in any work done for customers; feedback to the community is something that often be performed after a deadline after all.  Geoserver-devel had an interesting discussion on the merits of the GPL license in this respect; it ensures such work needs to be performed and costed for.

As a community we treasure any paid work against core project functionality and QA; such time is so much more effective then that snatched out of evenings or weekends.

Jody

On 20/04/2010, at 4:10 PM, Andrea Aime wrote:

> 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
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