I myself am the beneficiary of many open-source projects. I readily acknowledge this.
That said, where my mind keeps going to is that open-source software is in many ways similar to communism. And communism failed for a reason.
If you want to freely give away your work, then by all means - do so. But do so with the understanding that you are promised absolutely nothing in return. No one owes you anything. This man would have been better off had he pursued a paying career and spent a reasonable amount of his free time working on this.
had he pursued a paying career and spent a reasonable amount of his free time working on this
Please refrain from such unsolicited advice. Everyone has different values and alignment you don't know about. There are so many cases where idealists followed your advice, were in turn drained by mismanagement and burned out of IT completely.
I fully agree with your statements that nobody is owed anything if they give their work/time to a cause. But it doesn’t give a free pass to others to demand work/fixes/time, or have a sense of entitlement, to that work, and become belligerent towards those that are giving their work to them.
It's really a shame he missed the opportunity to gain popularity from this project. He just built and released it, without doing any sort of promotion or whatsoever.
Comments
I myself am the beneficiary of many open-source projects. I readily acknowledge this.
That said, where my mind keeps going to is that open-source software is in many ways similar to communism. And communism failed for a reason.
If you want to freely give away your work, then by all means - do so. But do so with the understanding that you are promised absolutely nothing in return. No one owes you anything. This man would have been better off had he pursued a paying career and spent a reasonable amount of his free time working on this.
Please refrain from such unsolicited advice. Everyone has different values and alignment you don't know about. There are so many cases where idealists followed your advice, were in turn drained by mismanagement and burned out of IT completely.
Please refrain from such unsolicited advice.
I fully agree with your statements that nobody is owed anything if they give their work/time to a cause. But it doesn’t give a free pass to others to demand work/fixes/time, or have a sense of entitlement, to that work, and become belligerent towards those that are giving their work to them.
Absolutely agree.
Totally agree!
It's really a shame he missed the opportunity to gain popularity from this project. He just built and released it, without doing any sort of promotion or whatsoever.