[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Simon Waters wrote: >Jonathan Roberts wrote: > > >>Wow - BBC covering OSS software twice in a week!! >> >> > >I wonder if the term "volunteer" is something we should de-emphasise? > >OpenOffice.org may have been a volunteer effort in parts, but the bulk >of the work was done by paid programmers a long time before, and many of >the contributors were SUN employees. > >I think the language is misleading. Or perhaps we should encourage >people to state more clearly whether a contribution was done on a >volunteer basis, or whether it was done as part of paid work, or some >combination. > >There is a big difference between spending 40 hours fixing a program you >are paid to fix, and sending the result upstream, and spending 40 hours >of ones own time on it. > >But also it paints a different picture to business when you discover >that a large proportion of the "volunteers" you rely on, are paid >professionally to write/use/test the free software they provide you with. > > > Having said that, there is a lot of voluntary work that goes on behind the scenes with OpenOffice.org, for example to pass some of the ingot qualifications you have to contribute to open source / free software in some way (usually something to do with openoffice.org like writing a macro and gpl'ing it etc.). While its fair to say that most of the programming in big projects is "paid for", a lot of forum question fielding, website maintenance and documentation etc is voluntary effort, which saves countless hours of "real programmers" time so that they can get on with the important task of doing valuable real programming. Some of this "voluntary" work is stratified through GLUG's like ours. How often do you see postings saying does anyone understand X or know how I solve Y ? And when its fixed at this level it saves distracting someone further upstream (eg the developer). This "voluntary" community effort is also present in proprietary software, the BIG difference being that at any time a programmer can pick up free software and continue development (voluntary or paid) whereas some good code goes to the wall simply because the software is "destroyed" when companies go under. Blender (having been in exactly this situation) became liberated due to the efforts of volunteers contributing directly out of their pockets. Something that the programmers couldn't have done on their own. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software) Voluntary contributions to the free software community come in many shapes and forms. What distinguises the free software community from others is that we accept and encourage contributions not matter what size they are. Whether programmers are paid or voluntary is not so important as long as everybody is aware of the ethos of the free software community and continues to uphold and strengthen it. Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html