Chris, I think some folks do the open source work for vocational advancement.] It looks good on a resume.] Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Brannon" <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2015 12:20 AM Subject: Re: Why I can't recommend Arch or Gentoo Karen Lewellen <klewellen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Perhaps I am an innocent, but the individuals spending time on this > software freely by choice are doing this so that someone other than > themselves can make use of their work. > Is not this the case? > Otherwise, you could perfectly well play with the programs at your > house for your own use, and subject to only your own ideas of > functionality. Nope. You're working under the incorrect assumption that all free software is written out of a spirit of altruism by a bunch of nice people who just want to give away free stuff. Yes, sometimes that is the case, but in fact, there are a lot of reasons why free software is written. I'd argue that one of the biggest is that it scratches a developer's itch. In other words, someone with the skills needs something, so they write it. It serves its purpose for them, so they decide to share it, hoping that someone else will find it useful. After all, it's not nice to keep your toys all to yourself, is it? Chances are that if you've scratched an itch, someone else is going to have the exact same itch. Being a basically virtuous person, it behooves you to post your work on the net, so that the next person can derive some advantage from it. None of this involves *pure* altruism. Actually, that's how Talking Arch got started in the first place. I needed it, so I built it. Since I went to all that trouble, I did the next logical thing and put it up on the net. I made it pretty clear over the years that I was scratching a personal itch. However, if someone asked for something, I did my very best to give them what they wanted. Braille is a case in point. For most of my life, I haven't even had access to a braille display. They're too expensive. Right now, I do have access to Deedra's, but it has a few broken cells on it. Anyway, when I added braille support to talking Arch back in 2010 or so, it was because somebody else asked me nicely and was willing to test a pre-release image that I made for them. Considering that I was just "scratching an itch", I was by no means obligated to do it. I did it because of my personal philosophy. Basically it's mutual aid. Also, sometimes I like to pretend to be a nice guy, when I'm not pretending to be a bad boy. I've rarely pretended to be a charity worker, even though the world could use more charity. I'm not involved with Talking Arch anymore, so I don't know what motivates the current developers. Maybe they'd like to speak up, or not. No, I'm not knocking altruism at all. It's a beautiful thing. I'm sure there are very many developers who give their time and efforts to free software out of the purest of motives. They may feel a great sense of obligation toward their users, but at the end of the day, they also have to decide how best to spend their effort. And sometimes, this means that some user needs are going to go unsatisfied. -- Chris _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
