A friend of mine, recently mentioned that he gets a bit annoyed when people complain about bugs and demand them to be fixed so they can run their businesses but never offer to support the developers or say "thank you."
Now, I agree with the statement. I don't like it when people demand bugs be fixed for free so they can run their business either. But then, as the conversation continued, it sounded more and more like my friend was confronting me on providing free code and that somehow, I was feeding into the expectation of slave labor. It got to a point where he told me that what I'm doing is somehow more expensive then people getting paid to code because it feeds the people who expect code for free. So, the bulk of the rest of this entry will be analysis of why I do what I do, what I think I'm getting out of it and an analysis of the conversation.
So, I guess, to understand why I code on OpenSimulator for free, what I get out of it needs to be mentioned. I have a core desire to feel productive. If I'm working on OpenSimulator, I'm producing something and therefore being productive. I like the fact that I /can/ fix issues in OpenSimulator. While, it doesn't make me feel superior in any way to anyone else, it makes me feel useful. I like the community of smart people that surrounds this project. It's a breath of fresh air knowing that the people that I spend the most time with are big thinkers. I like the dedication that the community has for this project. People actually care about how well OpenSimulator performs. It is evident that people care by the sheer amount of bug reports that we get, the forks that people base on OpenSimulator but extend well beyond or original ideas, the press that OpenSimulator gets, and the activity of the IRC channels and mailing lists. This is a fabulous and active community. If I'm working on OpenSimulator, i'm not bored. I'm sure that there are more that I havn't thought of yet.. but lets move on.
So my friend said that he didn't mind contributing code that he developed for himself to an open source project as long as it helped him somehow in something that he's doing. He required reciprocity. To which I replied that I didn't really need reciprocity. As long as I was capable of and had a desire to give code, I would. He replied with, 'giving is one thing, slave labor is entirely another affair'. I thought about that for a second.. and then said.. " If you're doing it for other people, then I can see where you are coming from. If you're doing it for yourself, what they want done.. doesn't really matter the same way. " (This is one of the reasons.. that I've refused the job offers that I've gotten on OpenSimulator. Once I take a job on OpenSimulator, it stops being what I want to do and becomes what someone else wants to do that I need to do to survive. That distinction is important for me and, when I do take a job on OpenSimulator, it will be either an overpaid job, or one of last resort.)
At this point, I want to point out, that I don't think that taking money for working on OpenSimulator is bad. Everyone who is working on OpenSimulator is doing it for their own reasons, whatever they may be.. from personal enjoyment, to providing a service for money.
So, for me, if I get all of that from spending hour after hour working on OpenSimulator.. /and/ it helps the project along, it's a win-win for me. I feel productive. I get to hang out with a great community of developers and enthusiasts. I get to learn new coding techniques from some of the best systems designers out there. And, so what if some people are using my work to build a business and make money? Why should that fact appear in my mind at all? I'm not doing it for them specifically. While, I'm empathetic to businesses reporting bugs in OpenSimulator, what I actually work on is a combination of work(including bug fixes) that will improve the OpenSimulator experience for everyone and what tickles my fancy at that moment. Sometimes, that results in big things.. like MegaRegions.. Sometimes it results in unfinished features.. And, it almost always results in a better experience using OpenSimulator.
Just because I code OpenSimulator for my personal enjoyment, and not for a business, doesn't mean that I'm not getting anything out of it. So, I guess, for me in retrospect, that's my reciprocity. Because I'm getting something out of it, it doesn't seem like slave labor to me. I can see how business oriented people might look at my situation from the outside and see what I'm doing as slave labor.. but I don't consider it to be.
Finally, on the topic of what I'm doing being expensive because it feeds the people who expect slave labor 'coding for free'... Logically, I have a hard time with that statement because for people who expect 'coding for free' not to be fed.. there would have to be no coding being done. No progress or no free download. The license is BSD-ish, so people can pretty much do what they want with the code. Does that mean that people should stop paying developers to work on OpenSimulator because it feeds the people who demand slave labor? To me, whether a developer is coding for free or being paid to code, there is coding being done and the people who want slave labor benefit. If developers are developing, whether free or paid, the community gets code, the platform gets better and it reinforces that the project is active, innovative, and that people care. This draws more attention to the project through media and word of mouth which produces more developers to work on it. It seems to me that being paid to work on OpenSimulator and working on OpenSimulator for free.. are equally expensive in that regard. To not feed the people who want to benefit from slave labor, you have to prevent them from benefiting.. on a BSD-ish licensed project, the only way to do that is to take away the developers who work on it. Make them a scarce resource. If you take away developers producing code, you end up with a non-project. Which is more expensive? If you were to compare them to a spiral.. progress and people benefitting.. whether the progress was free or paid.. would be the upward spiral. No progress.. would lead to the downward spiral.. Is my logic flawed?
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