On Tuesday, 2009-12-08, Dotan Cohen wrote: > 2009/12/8 Kevin Krammer <kevin.krammer@xxxxxx>: > > On Tuesday, 2009-12-08, Thierry de Coulon wrote: > >> I think I'm going to take a look at non free software because if OSS > >> devs develop only for themselves, maybe I have more luck with devs that > >> work for their users... > > > > I think you've got that one backwards. > > FOSS developers work for everyone including themselves, proprietary > > developers mostly for work themselves (maybe a bit for each other in case > > the other one's deadline is getting too close). > > I think you've got that backwards. Proprietary devs work for who is > paying them. I would gladly pay for top-quality software. In the KDE 3 > days I donated regularly. There are a few specific bugs that I am > waiting to be fixed for KDE 4 before I start donating again. Ah, we seem to have a different interpretation of working for something. I was mainly judging this based on my own experience on both kinds of environments. In a proprietary environment I am only working for myself with the exception of helping my collegues because I am nice guy :) I will do stuff that makes my life easier for upcoming work, e.g. making my code easier to maintain or extend, probably do the same for a library shared with one of my co-workers. Managment would be extremely unhappy if I would ever implement something for a user even if the user happens to be an employee of a customer, because they want our customers to pay for such work. Well, not entirely true because I might implement something the way the user wants it dispite their management having it ordered differently. (you basically have to be a user in a very important position in the company of a very important customer to ever get to contact a developer directly). In contrast, when doing FOSS work, I am not only not blocked by commerical interests to work on improvements and I can get actual input directly from the people using the software. Meaning that I at least *have* the option on working on something somebody else needs or wants. Which is not surprisingly more fun than to try interpreting spec totally messed up by layers of management and marketing and repeatedly reiterate until it matches the target user's interpretation at least somewhat. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring
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