Re: Prime Mover v0.1

[David Olofson <david@...>]

On Saturday 14 October 2006 17:24, Asko Kauppi wrote:
> 
> Let's not start a too deep philosophic discussion, escaping from
> Lua, but...
> 
> 
> I agree.  The OSS market is a market economy.  Only, it's weird in  
> the way that if I now _were_ to actively market Hamster, that'd  
> actually make my life _less_ comfortable (although I would be proud,  
> of course), since that would incur maintenance requests,  
> contributions, etc... and not bring in actual benefits to my
> enjoyment.
>
> Just letting things be, moving to new issues, I live an easier life.
>
> Something fishy in that. :)  And something completely different from  
> market society.

Not really. If you're not selling the software, and you're not using 
it, what's in it for you? Most people tend to do work in order to get 
something back. ;-)

One way of thinking about software is as living organisms that need 
users and active contributors to stay alive.

Some software stays alive because someone has constructed some way of 
having the software generate money, so that programmers can be paid 
to work on it.

Free/Open Source software usually stays alive as a result of being 
useful enough that people pick it up, use it and improve it as needed 
to get the job done. Basically, users are paying in bug reports, code 
and stuff like that, instead of money. The software doesn't rely on 
any single person to stay alive, as new people may take over as 
others lose interest - and this goes for maintainers as well 
contributors and users.


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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