Open source projects are neat, they allow ideas that otherwise would go unheard in businesses to gain traction and development time. Open source code development is a great thing, I do it. I have seen lots of great code come out of open source developers. As I see it, all open source projects are destined to one of these 4 basic categories:
- A ‘real’ project / service that is monetized
- A clusterfuck of a bazillion developers that lose track of the original insight
- A clearly guided project of a few individuals who spend their spare time developing something out of the goodness of their heart.
- Total Failure.
In my opinion Options 1, followed by 3 are the best outcomes. If the idea is any good, it will fall into category 1, 2 or 4, if not it will fall into category 3.
The reason open source fails is for one blatent reason: The Community. Recently I have seen several open source communities start to destroy the enviornment that they benefit from. Everyone wants something for free, and the Open Source communities are blatantly at the front of the bread line.
Over and over again I see the real developers driven away from their once beloved projects by people who take personal offense from skilled programmers from making money. Why would anyone want to stick around for that? The second that any developer starts to think about monetizing their creation - the ‘Community’ swoops in and scolds them for being selfish bastards.
With this kind of reaction all developers (me being one of them, sort of ) will always prefer to take their skills to the private industry. Sure, they might contribute here and there to something or another, but their skills can never be fully utilized as they are fully devoted (as they should) to the job that pays the bills, not the one that they take undue criticizing via chat / email / boards from on a daily basis.
If I had a manager that I worked for speak to me the way that I see people treat hard working developers, I’d punch him in the fucking mouth.