How do programmers benefit from open source?

[abuntoyoutoo]

There are many benefits of open source for non programmers, such as freedom of choice, peer reviewed code, price, lack of built in spyware, open standards and many others. However, while those benefits also apply to programmers, there are some problems of open source for programmers such as

Not getting payed for work
Making it more difficult for a small commercial program to make money (as there may be an open source alternative)
Reducing available jobs for programmers (as open source programmers are donating there time)
Finally, most programmers would make more money on software then they do on it (as they write it, and get paid for their work). This takes away the advantage of the price of open source applications

Taking these points into account, why do programmers donate to open source? I can't think of any other profession that so freely donates time, and intellectual rights for non-charity purposes. For example, I can understand the computers for African kids scheme (http://www.cfas.org.uk/) as it is a worthy charity scheme, and it makes sense to give away software and hardware to them, as they couldn't afford to buy it otherwise But most users of open source can afford to pay for their software. I've never heard of an "open source" music band, or a book writer that just gives away the text for the book.

Also, many open source programs are of such a high standard that they would able to sell even if they had to be paid for. OpenOffice is in many ways better than Microsoft office, and could probably be sold for $50 and still be used by many people.

Please don't take this as a criticism of open source, as I have been using open source software for a few years now, and found it the lack of closed source standard, cost and extensibility very useful. I just want to understands what drives the programmers, who must spend hundreds of hours developing the software, and getting no monetary reward for it.

[~LoKe]

Practice, experience, knowledge.

[Enigmus]

Well I've done a little PHP coding here and there. I'm most certainly not the best coder out there. And if someone else wants to use parts of my code for something and/or improve on it, then Open Source lets them. So really, it gives the programmer practice and helps a great community. Since it's Open Source, we can all teach other tricks and improve our selves as opposed to a closed source community where money has to flow both ways.

[cowlip]

You're wrong--people do get paid for their work on open source :) Chec

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/1613253



Who Wrote, and Paid For, 2.6.20

Programming The Almighty Buck Linux

Corbet writes "LWN.net did some data mining through the kernel source repository and put together an analysis of where the patches came from. It turns out that most kernel code is contributed by people paid to do the work — but the list of companies sponsoring kernel development has a surprise or two." The article's conclusion: "The end result of all this is that a number of the widely-expressed opinions about kernel development turn out to be true. There really are thousands of developers — at least, almost 2,000 who put in at least one patch over the course of the last year. Linus Torvalds is directly responsible for a very small portion of the code which makes it into the kernel. Contemporary kernel development is spread out among a broad group of people, most of whom are paid for the work they do. Overall, the picture is of a broad-based and well-supported development community."

The benefit of the GPL and free software versus simply "open source" (like BSD) means that you will always have freedom, and also ANY CODE CHANGES others make GET BACK TO YOU (means you get to re-implement them for free, others can look through the code for bugs) so there is an equal playing field based on services rather than selling proprietary software based on a lock-in.


And it gets better, because since the code is out there, anyone can provide a service, not just Microsoft or the monoply of the day. A company could hire you to code in a missing feature, because of course money is an incentive even for free software developers. Or they could hire you to support their code long after it has been EOL'd. YOu just can't do that with proprietary software.

BTW some people do make their music and books available for free (some do both and still sell it in a physical form at a book store). Check out "Creative Commons". I know Amarok has an exclusively free music store available.

[daniel of sarnia]

Well a lot of people think it's fun to program and share what they have done, like myself for example.

Besides that, their is still a large industry around open source. The last number I herd wast from Eben Moglen on the floss weekly podcast, saying that the services around open source is a $40 billion industry.http://www.twit.tv/floss13

So their are most certainly a number of payed open source developers.

[abuntoyoutoo]

So really, it gives the programmer practice and helps a great community. Since it's Open Source, we can all teach other tricks and improve our selves as opposed to a closed source community where money has to flow both ways.
I didn't consider the educational side of it. However, couldn't the experience also be gained in a commercial environment by getting a job there, and at the same time being paid for it?

[cowlip]

abuntoyoutoo: sometimes people start coding for free on an open source or free software project and they get hired based on that tangible product. I bet it looks great on a resume.

IIRC, Raymond Chen of Microsoft contributed to Linux before getting a job there in 1994.

EDIT: Similar discussion to this here that you may want to check out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=374923

[Polygon]

they can look at examples of other programs that do similiar things to help give them ideas

they can completely fork projects if they want

there is a lot more people looking at the code so things that one coder missed, another will find. This increases stability and security

it also gives projects that are open source and long abandoned by the original coder to be resurrected by a person / group of people

[Enigmus]

I didn't consider the educational side of it. However, couldn't the experience also be gained in a commercial environment by getting a job there, and at the same time being paid for it?

Well a lot of the time in the IT Community, it takes experience to get a job. And without prior experience, getting a job can be difficult sometimes. So I suppose if an employer looked at a resume and saw that you have done Open Source work, it shows you've got innitiative, desire to work and experience. So I suppose that could be another side to it.

[aysiu]

I don't know how much of the money goes back to the developers, but I know Firefox makes millions of dollars off of its association with Google.

I also know Mark Shuttleworth does pay a core group of Ubuntu developers.

[abuntoyoutoo]

Contemporary kernel development is spread out among a broad group of people, most of whom are paid for the work they do
Wow I had no idea there was so much sponsorship for open source development.

Is the reason companies pay programmer to write code the company will not own because it ends up cheaper for the company when compared with buying a closed source product?

And thanks for the replies, they really cleared the issue up for me!

[RussianVodka]

Wow I had no idea there was so much sponsorship for open source development.

Is the reason companies pay programmer to write code the company will not own because it ends up cheaper for the company when compared with buying a closed source product?


If you're writing Open Source code, you can use open source code that has already been written, saving you a lot of time. And then, after you give back what you have just coded, some other company can go and expand on it as you did on the previous code. It's an endless cycle.

Also, some companies (like Trolltech) release an open and closed source version of their program. The difference is in the way you're allowed to use them. In Trolltech's case, they release the QT development libraries (or something like that). If you choose to pay for the lisence, you can do what ever you please with your creation. But if you choose to use the free version, you are agreeing that your work can only be published as open source.

And let's not forget Id Software. The guys behind DooM. After their engines become outdated, they usualy give them away as open source. Though the engines are no longer competitive in the commercial gaming market, they are a godsend to hobbyist developers. Nexuiz (http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/) for example, was made using the Quake 1 engine (If I'm not mistaken).

[Somenoob]

Why do so many think that open source developers don't charge for their works? if they want to, they can.

[Jussi Kukkonen]

* Not getting payed for work

The open-source-developers-are-not-paid meme was refuted already. In addition to that, I'd like to point out that most programmers do not actually build software that is sold (it's built for in-house use or to be used as a value-add),


*Making it more difficult for a small commercial program to make money (as there may be an open source alternative)
*Reducing available jobs for programmers (as open source programmers are donating there time)
Your points seem to imply that there's only a certain amount of software that can be written in the world... This has not been proven so far -- in fact experience seems to show that more software available seems to mean even more need for new software.
It is true that in todays software world, companies cannot make a long term profits with trivial software solutions -- personally I believe that's a good thing, trivial and/or popular software solutions should be a commodity...


I've never heard of an "open source" music band, or a book writer that just gives away the text for the book.

Look harder, there are a quite a few of those. The difference between these is that software is easier to collaborate on. Not many people would try to turn a half-written mediocre novel into a complete masterpiece -- in software this is not impossible.


I just want to understands what drives the programmers, who must spend hundreds of hours developing the software, and getting no monetary reward for it.
When you start looking at specific examples, it gets easier to understand. Some actually get paid, some do it for ethical reasons, some do it because getting monetary rewards is not actually possible (as the popularity is a direct result of being open source). A good example of the last case is the Linux kernel: Linus could have kept his kernel a proprietary one, but then we'd never even have heard of it -- no company would have invested a cent in it at that time.

[az]

There are many benefits of open source for non programmers, such as freedom of choice, peer reviewed code, price, lack of built in spyware, open standards and many others. However, while those benefits also apply to programmers,

That's a bit funny to hear. For years, the benefits software freedom were more popular to the developers of the software and many people would say the benefits to FLOSS did not really extend to the end-user.





1Not getting payed for work
2Making it more difficult for a small commercial program to make money (as there may be an open source alternative)
3Reducing available jobs for programmers (as open source programmers are donating there time)
4Finally, most programmers would make more money on software then they do on it (as they write it, and get paid for their work). This takes away the advantage of the price of open source applications


1 Already refuted.
2. So what? Ever heard of competition? That's good for the market place.
3. Only one in ten developers work on proprietary "shrink-wrapped, boxed" proprietary software (Acording to a recent EU study) That means that 90 per cent of developers are getting paid without having the software they write sold or bought. According to the study, this is based on similar salary (and therefore skill level) There is more than enough opportinities for the proprietary devs to work in the FLOSS business.
4. Actually, the only difference is that the software would get better and better for less money.




I've never heard of an "open source" music band, or a book writer that just gives away the text for the book.



Read Free Culture by lawrence lessig. See CreativeCommons.org.



The last number I herd wast from Eben Moglen on the floss weekly podcast, saying that the services around open source is a $40 billion industry.http://www.twit.tv/floss13

So their are most certainly a number of payed open source developers.
http://www.merit.unu.edu/a2k/?p=43
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

FLOSS is a services indusrty. You get paid for providing the service of writing code. You don't write the code as the end-product.



Wow I had no idea there was so much sponsorship for open source development.

Is the reason companies pay programmer to write code the company will not own because it ends up cheaper for the company when compared with buying a closed source product?


FLOSS can create more opportunities than proprietary software. If you need a computer to do something so that you can do business, the cost of paying for proprietary software may prevent you from doing business altogether. Add to that the fact that a free-libre project can be more innovative and follow the market more closely (since it is written by the market itself, often enough) you end up with a competitive edge.



Why do so many think that open source developers don't charge for their works? if they want to, they can.

It's a different business model. They probably already are charging for their work. You get paid to write the code. You don't get paid for the code. Just because everybody else can benefit from the code does not mean that the original author did not get paid by someone to write it.

That means that the code can go on to be a base for someone else to start with.